Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve, also known as UCLA Stunt Ranch, is a 121-hectare (310-acre)

University of California Natural Reserve System The University of California Natural Reserve System (UCNRS) is a system of protected areas throughout California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents acros ...

reserve and biological field station located in Los Angeles County. The reserve protects habitat surrounded by the

Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a United States national recreation area containing many individual parks and open space preserves, located primarily in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. The SMMNRA is in t ...

. The address is 1201 Stunt Road,

Calabasas, California Calabasas (from Spanish ''calabazas'' "gourds") is a city in the southwestern region of the San Fernando Valley, between the foothills of the Santa Monica and Santa Susanna mountains.Malibu, the reserve is administered by the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

History

Although humans have occupied the

Santa Monica Mountains The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in ...

for at least 10,000 years, the oldest human artifacts found on the reserve date from 1,000 to 3,000 years before the present. These include

soapstone Soapstone (also known as steatite or soaprock) is a talc-schist, which is a type of metamorphic rock. It is composed largely of the magnesium rich mineral talc. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occur in the ...

bowl fragments, hammerstones, and mortars. In more modern times, the area was occupied by the

Gabrielino The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historicall ...

and

Chumash Chumash may refer to: *Chumash (Judaism), a Hebrew word for the Pentateuch, used in Judaism *Chumash people, a Native American people of southern California *Chumashan languages, indigenous languages of California See also *Chumash traditional n ...

people. The first Europeans to settle in the Cold Creek watershed were the Stunt family, who arrived in the area from England in the late 1800s. Ethel Stunt bequeathed the ranch to Occidental College as a field station in 1971. The property was bought by the state in 1979. The University of California obtained the property and made it part of the UC Natural Reserve System in 1995.

Geography

The reserve is located within the

, part of the

Transverse Ranges The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie within Santa ...

of California. The range is oriented east to west due to a dogleg of the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...

. The predominantly north-south movement of the Pacific Plate stalls along this dogleg. As the Pacific tectonic plate compresses against the North American plate, the crust uplift to form the Transverse Ranges. Stunt Ranch reserve is oriented around perennial Cold Creek, a tributary of

Malibu Creek Malibu Creek is a year-round stream in western Los Angeles County, California. It drains the southern Conejo Valley and Simi Hills, flowing south through the Santa Monica Mountains, and enters Santa Monica Bay in Malibu, California. The Malibu C ...

. Cold Creek is the only stream in the Santa Monica Mountains that flows north to south.

Natural history

The reserve includes riparian corridor lined with willow, coast live oak (''

Quercus agrifolia ''Quercus agrifolia'', the California live oak, or coast live oak, is a highly variable, often evergreen oak tree, a type of live oak, native to the California Floristic Province. It may be shrubby, depending on age and growing location, but is ...

'') and California bay (''

Umbellularia californica ''Umbellularia californica'' is a large hardwood tree native to coastal forests and the Sierra foothills of California, and to coastal forests extending into Oregon. It is endemic to the California Floristic Province. It is the sole species in th ...

''). Farther from the creek, reserve slopes are dominated by drought-tolerant chaparral featuring species such as

chamise ''Adenostoma fasciculatum'', commonly known as chamise or greasewood, is a flowering plant native to California and Baja California. This shrub is one of the most widespread plants of the California chaparral ecoregion. Chamise produces a specia ...

(''Adenostema fasciculatum'') and bigpod ceanothus ('' Ceanothus megacarpus''). The largely wild mountain range gives big carnivores such as mountain lion (''

Puma concolor The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere ...

'') and bobcat (''

Lynx rufus The bobcat (''Lynx rufus''), also known as the red lynx, is a medium-sized cat native to North America. It ranges from southern Canada through most of the contiguous United States to Oaxaca in Mexico. It is listed as Least Concern on the I ...

'') room to roam within largely urban Los Angeles. In fact, the reserve is a site for research on the effects of

rodenticide Rodenticides are chemicals made and sold for the purpose of killing rodents. While commonly referred to as "rat poison", rodenticides are also used to kill mice, squirrels, woodchucks, chipmunks, porcupines, nutria, beavers, and voles. Despi ...

s on predators. These carnivores prey on mule deer (''

Odocoileus hemionus The mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus'') is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer. Unlike the related w ...

''), rodents, and rabbits are among reserve herbivores.

Education

Thousands of schoolchildren from largely urban Los Angeles neighborhoods visit the reserve on field trips each year. Since 1977, the Cold Creek Docents have led these lessons on ecology and the human history of the Santa Monica Mountains.

References

Fiedler, Peggy Lee; Rumsey, Susan Gee; Wong, Kathleen Michelle, eds. (2013). ''The Environmental Legacy of the UC Natural Reserve System''.

University of California Press The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facult ...

External links

UCLA Stunt Ranch
{{Protected areas of California, UCNRS University of California Natural Reserve System Protected areas of Los Angeles County, California