The Robert Redford Conservancy (RRC) is located just a short walk north from Pitzer’s campus. It includes approximately 12 acres of Coastal Sage Scrub Habitat. The Coastal Sage Scrub plant community harbors an abundant and moderately diverse fauna, the most conspicuous of which are arthropods and vertebrates.
The RRC is situated on alluvial outwash from the San Gabriel Mountains (see Geology & Geography) and contains remnants of the once widespread Coastal Sage Scrub plant community, well adapted to our Mediterranean climate (see Climate). This plant community now exists only as islands in a sea of urban areas and (formerly) citrus groves, but at one time all the alluvial deposits of the Los Angeles Basin were clothed with this type of vegetation. As land was cleared for agriculture the only undisturbed areas left were in nonarable regions at the base of the mountains, especially near canyon mouths. Eventually even these previously undisturbed areas gave way to subdivisions, which have also replaced the citrus groves. The Robert Redford Conservancy and the Bernard Field Station contains one of the largest remaining parcels of Coastal Sage Scrub in Los Angeles County.
