Urban growth puts squeeze on horse-keeping
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Each morning, Lynn Brown saddles up Cleopatra, her black Tennessee walking horse, and rides through a narrow concrete tunnel. Above them, thousands of cars race along a busy freeway connecting downtown with Burbank, Glendale and the San Fernando Valley. Her destination is the high trails of Griffith Park with its dramatic views of neighborhoods, highways, film studios and the downtown skyline.
Like many horse lovers across the West, Brown must do her riding in an urban setting. And she finds herself increasingly fighting developers and city officials who want to put homes on traditional horse paths or new neighbors who don’t like the smell of horse manure.
“I have fought a constant battle for 15 years against developers, against being zoned out of existence,” Brown said. “We have won a lot of battles, but you have to pay attention all the time.”
In California, Arizona and Montana, state horse councils lobby regularly in city halls and legislatures to preserve trails and trail access for riders.
“We’re really losing a lot of our rights to keep horses,” said Gini Richardson of the California State Horseman’s Association. “When you have a lot of developers come in, they make a lot of donations; you see a lot of horses losing their areas.”
In addition, many trails on public land are being closed in response to complaints by environmental groups and by hikers who don’t want to share the trails with horses, said Charles “Toby” Horst, a Fresno rancher who helped form the California Equestrian Trails and Lands Coalition.
Around Boulder, Colo., urban encroachment and land use regulations may be part of the reason the number of horses dropped from 16,000 in 1982 to 8,000 in 1999, according to a recent count.
“We’ve lost our horse population to abusive land use regulations, purchasing of open space and development,” said Eloise Joder, president of the Colorado Horse Council. “Regulations are coming down on us.”
There are more horses in California now than 100 years ago – at least 275,000 pleasure horses alone, state organizations estimate.
“There are more people than ever involved with urban horsekeeping,” said Randy Witte, publisher of Western Horseman Magazine. “And that means more issues about keeping horses.”
Like other Western cities, Los Angeles has a long tradition of urban horse-keeping.
Film stars such as Bette Davis and Ida Lupino kept horses in the Rancho area that runs along Griffith Park and crosses through the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Los Angeles. Hundreds of B-westerns were filmed farther north around the Santa Susana Mountains near Chatsworth. And in the northeastern San Fernando Valley, around Lake View Terrace, a thriving horse community borders the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest.
In parts of the valley, horses and riders are common sights along busy streets, and crossing buttons on traffic lights are set at rider level. Grocery stores sell 25-pound bags of horse-grade carrots, and a dry cleaner in Burbank offers a tack-repair shop in the back.
While special zoning protects many urban horse-keeping areas, those rules often are subject to change. If developers win variances, neighborhoods begin to lose their horse-keeping majority, said Wendy Greuel, a Los Angeles City Council member who has proposed an ordinance protecting areas zoned for horse-keeping.
“We’ve had conflicting and inconsistent policies within the city that threaten our horse-keeping traditions,” Greuel said.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Planning Commission amended the regional planning document for the Chatsworth area, making changes that could make it easier for developers to build on parcels cherished by horse-keepers.
The commission vote was a warning to horse-keepers around Los Angeles, said Deb Baumann, who lives across the San Fernando Valley from Chatsworth.
“Chatsworth is much more upscale than we are,” she said. “If they are having to fight for their horsekeeping lives, it can happen to us.”
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On the Net:
California Horseman’s Assn: http://www.californiastatehorsemen.com/
Western Horseman: http://www.westernhorseman.com/
Colorado Horse Council: http://www.cohoco.com/