In the News

Photographer Daniel Beltra spent 40 days photographing the aftermath of the BP oil spill. The spill resulted in 4.9 million barrels of oil pumped into the gulf; only 800,000 barrels have been trapped by containment efforts. We still don’t know the full impact of the spill. Beltra’s photos are now on display through April 21 at the G2 Gallery in Venice.

For the last seven years, Culver City-based artist Jennifer MaHarry has been photographing wild horses in the West. “Their free spirit and majestic beauty is what initially captivated me,” said MaHarry, founder of Eden Creative, where she designs print ad campaigns for film.

The LA Art Scene is abundant. Each weekend one can pick and choose from a variety of events to go to…some free some not – but many help great causes… Let’s take a look forward at what’s coming up…and point out some important nonprofit events.

Getting There is a group exhibit that culled images from Southern California photographers in pursuit of showing just how many animals could benefit from a wildlife crossing. Coyotes, mountain lions, deer, foxes, lizards and many other creatures are killed each year trying to cross Los Angeles highways and roads.

Conservation works. In the past century or so, efforts to save American species like the peregrine falcon, the American bison, and the Pacific gray whale have succeeded.

A naturalist studying the Gottlieb Native Garden, a single acre in Beverly Hills, California, documented over 1,400 species in the past five years, from cougars and ospreys to varieties of bark lice previously unknown to science.

Daniel Gottlieb chuckles thinking back to when he first showed his bride-to-be the house in the late 1980s. She looked at the back said, “It’s all covered with ivy. There’s nothing for the birds.”

By popular convention, we often use biologically arbitrary boundaries for native plants. For example, gardeners in California see plants labeled as “California native” and may assume these are well-suited for their landscape. However, consider the breadth of botanical and biome or ecosystem diversity in that state, which further spills over the borders. Using geographic areas defined by flora species, like the California Floristic Province (CFP), to help define native plants is an improved alternative approach but still not the silver bullet.

Exploring biodiversity in gardens seems simple at first glance. Many of us define it in relatively simple terms—how many species of plants? Birds? Insects? Our gardens are relatively small ecosystems, but if we consider the possible number of interactions in even a small urban garden, it is immediately evident that biodiversity is almost unimaginably complex. Why does biodiversity matter, and how is it measured? Here I connect with three scientists in our region to talk about their work on biodiversity.

The drought is changing California’s landscape in some unexpected ways. Not only is it drying up lakes, turning streams to a trickle and causing the land to sink, it’s weaning Californians off lush, water-guzzling lawns.

Amid the weedy vacant lots, tired storefronts and roughened asphalt of Compton, crows and pigeons thrive. But, if residents think these often derided city birds are the beginning and end of urban avian life, they need only venture to nearby Earvin “Magic” Johnson Park in unincorporated Willowbrook.