Save Elephant Hill

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Save Elephant Hill

El Sereno’s iconic Elephant Hill is one of the largest undeveloped open space areas remaining in Northeast LA.

This beloved hillside covers 110-acres of steep terrain. A resident-led campaign protected 20-acres threatened by development.

05/14/2026

Please help Nicole find her lost bird who may have flown into Elephant Hill on Wed night. She can be reached at (323) 921-9517. See flyer and pictures below. 🙏🏽🙏🏽

04/22/2026

🌿🎉 You’re Invited! Elephant Hill Trail Grand Opening 🎉🌿

Please join us for a community celebration of a major conservation milestone in El Sereno — the official opening of the Elephant Hill Trail! 🐘⛰️

📅 May 2, 2026
⏰ 9:00 AM

As part of the celebration, we’re hosting a FREE raffle 🎟️ featuring locally roasted nuts and dried fruits, and plush toys inspired by the wildlife of Elephant Hill 🐾

🎁 We’ll be raffling:
🥜 Gourmet snacks from , including a new product they have created - the Elephant Hill Trail Mix!💕
🧸 Five wildlife 🐾 plushies — including Coyote, Hawk, Bobcat, Owl, and Bunny

🌳 Come explore the new trail, connect with your community, and celebrate this incredible win for community access to local open space.

✨ Don’t miss your chance to win — and to experience Elephant Hill like never before!

📍 See you there!

02/16/2026

Apologies are due to , the firm that is helping clear out the trash and debris on a set of parcels that had been the site of an illegal encampment, see attached 📸. The very responsible owner of those parcels had generously arranged with to remove and clean up the site. In the spirit of good faith and respect, we urge those who communicated about this incident on social media to remove their negative posts or reviews of as soon as possible.

We have learned a number of lessons and will be more cautious in the future when reporting illegal dumping, especially when that information comes from unknown people. We believe the folks who reported the activity were well intentioned but many have become conditioned to seeing only negative activity happening on Elephant Hill. We urge residents and other stakeholders to vet the allegations and images of those who report unauthorized dumping activity on Elephant Hill.

The good news: There are more and more positive things happening on Elephant Hill, including the trash removal by legitimate operators like , finalization of the trail and other improvements.

We look forward to partnering with on future cleanups! Thank you!

11/14/2025

🚨✨New Article Alert ✨🚨👉🏾👉🏾👉🏾Link in Bio

Thank you writer .la for shedding light on the Northeast L.A. gem 💎 we've spent 20 years protecting ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾

We are forever grateful to El Sereno and Northeast LA residents, partner organizations including .macehualli, , the and , as well as the who continue to work alongside us as we advance the movement to save the 110 acres of open space that is Elephant Hill.

We count on the ongoing support of city, county and state officials and agencies to make Elephant Hill a destination for hiking and bringing the community together in nature.

Save Elephant Hill is committed to protecting this land, restoring its vital habitat and securing public resources to acquire additional parcels and expand public access to this unique natural resource. Thank you!

📸: Greg Keating https://flickr.com/photos/sirimiri/.

10/29/2025

$2 Million Grant for Additional Acquisitions on Elephant Hill

On Monday, October 20, 2025, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy made a $2 million grant to for additional acquisitions and improvements on Elephant Hill.

This grant represents the culmination of dedicated advocacy and activation efforts since the pandemic to build support for the community’s vision of protecting natural resources and creating safe recreational opportunities at Elephant Hill.

The grant will allow for additional MRCA acquisitions of vulnerable properties, protecting them from development and making improvements to increase public access, as key opportunities are identified or made available. One immediate opportunity covered by the grant includes the purchase of a block of 12 high-priority parcels located at a critical spot on Elephant Hill. Save Elephant Hill is proud to support conservation efforts through a separate grant effort to engage residents and property owners and develop an illustrated community vision document for an expanded and restored Elephant Hill Open Space Area.

Please join us in thanking the Conservancy and for their commitment to urban conservation. We owe a debt of gratitude to our many allies—residents, community organizations, and elected officials—whose support made all of this possible. We thank you for your commitment to urban conservation and your collaboration to advance increased investments in Elephant Hill. El Sereno deserves nothing less!

08/19/2025

🚨🚨🚨URGENT ** TAKE ACTION NOW **🚨🚨🚨

Please contact your California Assembly representative and urge him or her to vote in favor of appropriating Proposition 4 funding this calendar year. Here in El Sereno, please contact and ask her to continue her support of Elephant Hill by voting for allocation. If the legislature does not allocate these funds, all bets are off and funding to protect our beloved open spaces will not be available. In 2024, California voters enacted Prop 4 - the California Climate Bond - generating $10 million for climate resilience, fire prevention, and water and natural resource management programs including funding for conservation of local lands.

Jessica Caloza
[email protected]
Chief of Staff: [email protected]
District Director: [email protected]
Capital Office: (916) 319-2052
District Office: (213) 483-5252

Thank you!

07/31/2025

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT✊🏾

As defenders of public land in El Sereno and champions for social and environmental justice, we stand with our immigrant neighbors, including those impacted by ICE activity in areas like MacArthur Park.

Parks and open space are sacred, and should remain welcoming to all. Not only do these public spaces offer immense health benefits like relief from stress and social cohesion, they strengthen our bond with nature and our commitment to a sustainable future.

For decades, MacArthur Park has served as an invaluable space for recreation, summer concerts, community and belonging. The latest ICE operation bypassed communication with elected officials and put public safety at risk. We are deeply concerned by the reckless and illegitimate measures targeting immigrants and sowing fear and chaos.

And yet – we’ve seen these tactics before.

They go as far back as the first public immigration raid at Plazita Olvera in 1931, and skyrocketed during the 1950’s-era “Operation Wetback”, which swept up as many as 1.3 million undocumented workers and U.S. citizens, the largest mass deportation in our history.

And in 1970, hundreds of Sheriffs descended on Salazar Park in East LA and escalated deadly conflict with thousands of peaceful demonstrators taking part in the Chicano Moratorium. Now more than 50 years later, we are reminded that the work to defend green spaces and protect our right to gather socially in public spaces continues.

We support Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, and other elected officials who are standing up to ICE militarization in parks. We support their efforts to rebuild a true sense of safety in our parks, and by extension, all public lands.

07/22/2025

More photos of the burn today. Thank you to for putting out the fire quickly and keeping the majority of the hill safe.

07/08/2025

This illegal GRADING is happening in REAL TIME today on one parcel of Elephant Hill in El Sereno (visible from the gate near Pullman @ Harriman). Since January 2025, numerous individuals and organizational allies have been working mostly behind the scenes to stop one individual who has misrepresented his intentions to the City of LA in his quest to build on Elephant Hill. Since January he has been cited for bringing heavy equipment without permits onto Elephant Hill and is facing an investigation for cutting down a fully mature Elderberry tree. Despite these violations, he somehow was able to secure a permit for a “truck garden” from the Planning Department. Why would anyone supposedly interested in gardening, cut down a 50 year old Elderberry, remove many Coffeeberry plants and clear the land of any remaining vegetation? Why would the City allow anyone to build adjacent to a long awaited trail currently under construction by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority? How can the community’s 40-year land use struggle be invalidated by one shady individual? Please reach out to City agencies and elected officials for answers: Planning Dept., Dept. of Building and Safety, , , . Thank you!

06/20/2025

Greetings! We are pleased to announce that on Monday, June 16, 2025 made two grants focused specifically on Elephant Hill. By taking action to advance community-centered conservation on Elephant Hill has created a pathway for enhanced climate, biodiversity and watershed protections in El Sereno.

The grant to the will enable its staff to undertake acquisition-focused planning and design work such as coordinating potential Elephant Hill land purchases from private owners, conducting real estate appraisals and engaging community partners. is ’s sister organization.

The grant to SEH will allow us to work with to develop an illustrated conservation vision document showing the improvements community members would like to see on Elephant Hill. We will also work with Jill Sourial to develop educational materials for residents, property owners and others about the community’s vision and how conservation-focused real estate works. will coordinate these activities and ensure community voices are represented.

We hope you will join us as we move forward into a new phase of community-centered conservation leading the way to important future outcomes including additional Elephant Hill acquisitions and equitable protections. Please take a moment to thank the and agencies for solidifying their commitment to Elephant Hill and taking these critical first steps towards a more sustainable future in El Sereno. We especially thank YOU--the El Sereno and Northeast LA residents, individual and organizational allies, elected representatives and agencies whose support and efforts have led directly to this moment. Gracias!

04/19/2025

Today, during a site visit on Elephant Hill, our small group came upon someone grading a parcel of land just up the way from Cudahy. It appears the backhoe operator had no permit to grade the hillside. It just so happened that our site visitors included staffers, Krista Kline, Senior Advisor, and Stephen Rodriquez, Constituent Services Deputy. This incident highlights the ongoing need to address preventable access problem on Cudahy, resulting in all types of vehicles entering Elephant Hill to do things like… grade the land without permits, off road on fire prone vegetation, and deliberately dump construction debris, old appliances, toxic liquids and household trash contaminating the hillside. We look forward to working with Councilmember to find long term solutions to the persistent problems that have plagued Elephant Hill and the residents living in the surrounding neighborhoods for far too long.

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Los Angeles, CA

Website

https://linktr.ee/saveelephanthill

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