White pelicans keep company with a cormorant at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Refuge. | Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
If theres one thing we know about Angelfest, the three-day music festival proposed for the Sepulveda Basin in October, its that we dont know much about what its backers actually plan. An early draft description of the event, though, has upset a whole lot of fans of the San Fernando Valleys beleaguered wildlife. And to veteran conservationists the proposal carries with it a distinct feeling of d j vu. Weve seen this before: someone gets a bright idea and nature pays the price.
That draft proposal, said to have been modified in the environmental review process, involves building five temporary stages in Woodley Park between Woodley Avenue and the 405, upon which bands playing popular music from the last 70 years would attract as many as 60,000 ticketholders from October 7 through October 9.
The problem? That would put the music festival hard up against the 225-acre Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve, in a month in which naturalists expect migrating birds to be counting on the Reserves willows and sycamores for a much-needed bit of rest. And thats hard to do with five bands playing to tens of thousands of celebrating fans, under bright lights with occasional pyrotechnics.
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Its hard to overstate the Sepulveda Basins importance to wildlife. A restored fragment of what was once a chain of wetlands and flood plains along the course of the Los Angeles River, the Wildlife Reserve offers a bit of habitat for the more than 200 species of birds that have been sighted there, including the Federally Endangered least Bells vireo. White pelicans, North Americas second-largest native bird, use the Reserve in Woodley Park as a migration pit stop in September and October.
Seasonal migration is an incredibly perilous undertaking for most birds. The amount of energy put into flying for hundreds or thousands of miles is just part of the issue. While aloft, birds must contend with a wide range of stresses from dehydration and hunger to extremes in temperature. Without enough so-called stopover habitat to provide not only fod and water but just a place to sleep for a few days, migration can often prove fatal for birds on the edge.
And that rest and recuperation is likely next to impossible if bright lights disrupt your sleep, and you must spend energy instead of conserving it contending with the unexpected sight, noise, and distracting movement of tens of thousands of revelers.
Not a great place for a nap: Coachella in 2014 | Photo: Thomas Hawk, some rights reserved
Even absent music festivals, birds at the Reserve have it tough enough. In order to protect the wildlife that uses the Reserve, the Los Angeles City Recreation and Parks Department has crafted a list of rules for visitors that include staying on designated paths, disposing of trash in designated containers and refraining from feeding the animals - all of which would seem essentially unenforceable if 60,000 festival goers descend on the park.
For its part, Recreation and Parks, which favors the festival idea, says that the Departments share of the proceeds from the event - a $250,000 user fee paid by promoter Make Good, plus a percentage of ticket sales - will bring a much-needed infusion of cash into the department thats not vulnerable to political whims. Most of the cash would be spent in the Sepulveda Basin, but the benefit to wildlife in the Reserve is arguable. Much of the spending is projected to cover hardscape, concrete and lighting and other such infrastructure.
According to Rec and Parks Valley Superintendent Charles Singer, the initial proposal that drew so much ire from conservationists - including a petition against the festival launched by the San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, which calls the festival an existential threat to the Reserves wildlife - has been modified significantly. How so? Its hard to tell at the moment. Theres a federal draft Environmental Assessment in the works, as a result of the festivals being held on land Rec and Parks manages for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which essentially built the basin as a flood control project. That draft Environmental Assessment will gauge the degree of damage the (presumably modified) festival will do to the Reserve and other environmental resources. The document is due out in mid-April, after some delay. Once its made public, the public will be able to see just what changes the proponents have made in the festival proposal. Fewer stages? Orienting the activities away from the reserve? Well only know when the documents published.
Singer told me this week that he expects Angelfests Environmental Assessment will find the festival poses no real threat to either the wildlife in the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve or to any other part of the environment. Under federal law, if a projects Environmental Assessment results in whats called a Finding of No Significant Impact (or FONSI, an admittedly odd acronym in the context of a festival featuring music from the 1950s), then project proponents dont have to put together a full-fledged Environmental Impact Statement. Singer says that extrapolating from the hundreds of other events Rec and Parks has overseen in its history, a FONSI in Angelfests Environmental Assessment is a near-certainty.
Part of the reason proponents are confident in that FONSI is that the Environmental Assessment only covers the 2016 Angelfest. But promoters say that if 2016s festival is successful, they plan to repeat the event in subsequent years.
And thats a problem. The bird population at Sepulveda Basin might well be able to recover from the disturbance of one festival, the way they might from a week or two of really bad weather hitting a crucial bit of stopover habitat. Thus an assessment of one festival, with three da
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White pelicans keep company with a cormorant at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Refuge. | Photo: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 
