Ballona Wetlands

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The Ballona Wetlands are located in Southern California, USA south of Marina del Rey and east of Playa del Rey. The wetlands once included the areas now taken up by Marina del Rey, Venice, and Playa Vista, extending north to about present-day Washington Blvd. in Venice^[1]. It is one of the last significant wetlands area in the Los Angeles basin, and is named for Ballona Creek which now runs through the area as a flood control channel. In the 1930s the Ballona Creek corridor was channelized in concrete, ^[2] thus greatly reducing the inflow of salt water to the marsh, and eliminating spring floods which brought freshwater to the wetlands. This channelization, and the construction of Marina del Rey in the late 1950s, reduced the 2,100+acre estuary to some six or seven hundred acres.^{[citation needed]} Additional open space east of the wetlands was converted to agricultural uses by the early 1900s, with cultivation continuing into the 1990s, when these became some of the last farm fields in the Los Angeles Basin. Most of this remaining open space was eliminated by the early 2000s to make way for Playa Vista, a planned mixed-use community east of Lincoln Blvd.

These wetlands, and the remaining open space, have been the subject of a battle between developers and environmentalists that has been ongoing for decades. Numerous environmental lawsuits and the acquisition of a part of the Wetlands by the State of California has helped to protect a portion of this area, including nearly all the open space west of Lincoln Blvd. (including all of the remaining tidal wetlands). ^[3] In 2002, remains of indigenous Indian villages and artifacts were found during excavation on the Playa Vista site that have fueled the controversy over the development.

The state-owned wetlands (just over 600 acres) are traversed by Culver Boulevard, from Playa Del Rey to Culver CIty, and bordered by the 90 Marina freeway to the east. 83 acres of the Ballona Creek estuary were included in the state acquisition, previously privately owned by Howards Hughes, his heirs and subsequent developers of Playa Vista.

The Ballona Wetlands, and its surrounding ecosystem, host such wildlife as the California Killfish, California Least Tern, Belding's Savannah sparrow, the Ballona Wallflower, Southern Tarplant, Lewis' Primrose, and Great Blue Heron and Snowy Egret rookeries. Ballona Wetlands and the adjacent city-owned lagoons are a stop along the migratory Pacific Flyway.^{[citation needed]}