The hillsides and open spaces that abutted the mountains were brown, gray, and muted. Up until this

Editor s Note: The natural history museum is a venerable seventeenth-century institution. But curiously, it may well be one of the civic institutions best suited best city to live in florida to help us think with nature in the twenty-first century. In recent years, the Natural History Museum best city to live in florida of Los Angeles County has reinvigorated both the natural and the history in its mission. The museum is reconnecting to the city around it and in the process discovering a vital role for itself in the life of the city and its future. best city to live in florida Lila Higgins and Emily Hartop both work at the museum.
best city to live in florida I grew up in the British countryside, five miles from the closest city. My parents were both children of farming families, and I spent my early years living in and playing best city to live in florida around farms. I had a huge home range, which included woods, hollow trees, streams, hedgerows, and derelict farm buildings. best city to live in florida I searched for tadpoles in the farmer s pond, pretended to be a badger, and once tried to dig up an ant s nest to find the queen (sorry, ants). I was allowed best city to live in florida to stay out until it got dark. Even when bad things happened—like the time I fell out of a rotten tree into a stream and lost a Wellington boot, or the time a puffball mushroom exploded all over my head while I was climbing inside a hollow tree—it best city to live in florida was always an adventure. I developed a deep connection with nature and these adventures became the foundation of my more serious interest in nature exploration. When I moved to Southern California in the 1990s—the Inland Empire, best city to live in florida to be exact—I didn t so much experience culture shock as nature shock. The environment was just so different. In the suburbs, there were yards instead of gardens. These small parcels of land allotted best city to live in florida to each house, fenced or walled off from your neighbors, were full of sharp prickly grass and other plants that had to be watered every day. As I walked through my neighborhood, I d look into yards where my new neighbors were trying hard to mimic the landscape I d just left behind in England. The yards made such a stark contrast to the San Gabriel Mountains that towered behind.
The hillsides and open spaces that abutted the mountains were brown, gray, and muted. Up until this point, nature for me had meant vibrant green hues and lots of them. It was difficult to believe that these small, scrubby plots could support life. But when I looked closer, I found a vast array of nature inhabiting California s muted landscape. Charismatic mega- and minifauna were out there to be discovered. I was compelled to understand these new landscapes, to find nature in my new home.
Los Angeles is often cast as the iconic concrete jungle—it is the second largest urban agglomeration in the United States, with over thirteen million people residing in a metropolitan area of about five thousand square miles. best city to live in florida It s viewed as a place devoid of flora and fauna, and certainly devoid best city to live in florida of anything worth caring about or studying. But this just isn t true. The city sits in the southern portion of the California Floristic Province—one of thirty-five biodiversity hotspots in the world.
A biodiversity hotspot is a classification given by Conservation International. It denotes a place not just where there is an incredible range of biodiversity (there are over fifteen hundred species of vascular plants best city to live in florida endemic to the California Floristic Province), but where species are under threat (over 75 percent of the natural vegetation has been lost here). This puts the vast majority of California on par with places like the island of Madagascar and the tropical Andes.
As soon as I moved to Los Angeles best city to live in florida in 2009, I began looking for natural places to play. One of my first discoveries was Debs Park in northeast LA, home to the local Audubon center and miles of trails. The first time I explored it, I walked up a very steep path on the south side of the hill. It eventually best city to live in florida led me to a stand of walnut trees where I heard an odd guttural gurgling sound. Big dark birds flew overhead, and I realized they were common best city to live in florida ravens. As I began to explore, I turned a corner and my jaw dropped. I came upon a large pond at the very peak of the hill. It was the last thing I expected in this dry climate, but it was just so stunning. A big placid pond, ringed best city to live in florida by green vegetation, with downtown LA as the backdrop—whoa!
I have come back to this spot many times. Sometimes I share this special place with the introduced species that call this pond home—the red-eared slider turtles, the American bullfrogs, and the mosquito fish. Other times I m there watching children playing in the mud, searching for tadpoles—just as I did when I was a kid.
Downtown is home to what is probably the most awesome nature spectacle LA has to offer. Vaux s swifts are small sickle-shaped birds that spend their days on the wing feeding on insects. Every spring they migrate from south of the Mexican best city to live in florida border up the West Coast to their breeding grounds in the Pacific Northwest. In the fall, they stop off in LA for a breather on their way back. During the day, they hang out by the LA River and other open spaces, eating their fill of insects. But, every evening the group—which can range up to tens of thousands—comes home to roost in abandoned chimney shafts.
You can witness this massive influx of birds from the roof of a parking garage on Broadway. On one visit, I saw thousands of birds flitting around above us, and as sunset approached they began swirling toward the chimney. Soon, it became a very precise choreographed dance. The birds vortexed around and around, and on their last turn they neatly slipped down the chimney. The drama didn t end there. We also saw hungry common ravens and even a peregrine falcon attack and catch a few of the swifts for dinner. Even in the heart of this urban megalopolis nature can still take your breath away.
Although I ve still never seen a tarantula in LA proper best city to live in florida (the closest was in Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains), best city to live in florida I have seen its arch nemesis—the tarantula hawk wasp. It was a hot, sunny day, only a few miles from downtown. I was out hunting for bugs in the Natural History Museum s new Nature Gardens with the curator best city to live in florida of entomology, Brian Brown. He was looking for flies, I was looking for anything that caught my eye—and there s nothing that can quite catch your eye like a tarantula hawk! They are one of the largest wasps in Southern California, measuring in at an impressive one-and-a-half inches. Their exoskeletons are metallic blue with large orange wings, and long curly antennae. This particular wasp had no idea the ruckus it was causing. It placidly landed on a flowering coyote bush while Brian and I snapped pictures. It was the very first wasp of its kind recorded in the Nature Gardens. Naturally, I wondered: where is it going to find a tarantula?
The Nature Gardens were built on three-and-a-half acres of outdoor space surrounding the main Museum best city to live in florida building in LA s Exposition Park. Parking lots and lawns were transformed into an urban habitat—a place for wildlife to call home, and for visitors to experience and study nature in the city. But would it work? If we built an urban nature habitat, would any nature show up? The scientists said yes. Nature is everywhere in Los Angeles, and our gardens aren t any different.
Brown was so certain about the new urban habitat he made a bet with a museum trustee: not only will nature show up in our new gardens, it would be as easy to find new species in Los Angeles as it was at his research sites in Costa Rica and Brazil. To prove the point, Brian set up an insect best city to live in florida trap on an ivy-covered slope next to a swimming pool in a Brentwood backyard. After a week of collecting, the first fly Brian put under his microscope was a brand-new species, never before identified by science. In that same sample, Brian also discovered two other interesting flies, neither found before in North America.
The garden at the museum is an experiment, but we see the whole region as our laboratory. The trouble is there aren t nearly enough scientists to study the whole thing, so we ve turned to citizen scientists. Essentially, citizen science is a way to crowdsource research best city to live in florida by engaging people in the scientific process. It s an emerging field that the Natural History Museum s scientists have been exploring since 1994 when ornithologist Kimball Garrett launched the California Parrot Project, looking at introduced parrot populations. Then, in 2002 we launched the Los Angeles Spider Survey to get a more accurate picture of which species live here. The project opened to all Angelenos, and in the first weekend, over one thousand specimens were submitted best city to live in florida to the museum. Today we have almost six thousand local spider specimens in the entomology collection and a much better sense of spider diversity in the region.
Angelenos now have many citizen science projects they can participate in to help us better understand biodiversity in Los Angeles. The Reptile and Amphibians of Southern California project—or as the Museum s herpetologist Greg Pauly nicknamed best city to live in florida it, RASCals—calls on the twenty-two million people living in Southern California to document reptiles and amphibians by snapping photos with their smart phones. A nine-year-old boy, who found an interesting gecko in the San Fernando Valley, made one of the most interesting discoveries so far. Will Bernstein and his son Reese had found what they thought might be the local Western Banded Gecko. With the help of the Museum and herpetologist Bobby Espinoza of California State University, Northridge, it was identified as an introduced species from Europe, the Mediterranean House Gecko. To follow best city to live in florida up on this discovery, a group of us went to Chatsworth on a lizard-hunting adventure. A number of curious homeowners helped us; and by the end of the night, we had determined there was, indeed, a population present in this neighborhood. It was an important moment—not only did we make a lasting scientific discovery but we found a neighborhood awake to the nature best city to live in florida in their own backyards.
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