Community Corner
Conservationist Preserves Open Space for Future Generations
Aerospace engineer Bill Ailor, founder of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, has spent 25 years fighting to preserve open space in the South Bay. Sponsored by Grape-Nuts.
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Bill Ailor’s aerospace credentials reach from here to Mars, quite literally. The principal engineer with the Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies at The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, Dr. Ailor is deeply involved with the safety of deep space missions such as the Mars Exploration Rover and Mars Science Laboratory. The Palos Verdes Estates resident has chaired or co-chaired nine international conferences, including five on protecting Earth from asteroids, and provided expert opinion related to the reentry of the Russian Mir Space Station for major networks and newspapers.
He also plays a mean clarinet, classically speaking, with the Peninsula Symphonic Winds.
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Around the South Bay, however, he is known for something else: his passion for conservation, specifically the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, an organization that preserved some 1,000 acres under his 18-year leadership and now boasts 1,600 acres. With 30 miles of trails offering magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island, the preserve overlooks the south side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, including Abalone Cove, Terranea Resort, Wayfarer's Chapel and Portuguese Bend. Despite initial opposition by environmental groups that were suspicious of his dealings with property owners and developers, Ailor worked in earnest with all of them -- as well as with cities -- to locate funds for purchasing land, restore habitat and promote conservation.
Today, the Land Conservancy’s education program provides monthly nature walks, volunteer opportunities and programs for third-graders in 19 schools in Palos Verdes, San Pedro, Lomita and Carson. But the benefit to the community as a whole, not to mention tourists, rests in the untouched vistas of land that sweep along the coastline, a gift preserved forever for generations to come.
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Here is some of what it took for Bill Ailor to realize his conservation dream.
Q. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve taken on? The biggest challenge was creating an organization that could preserve large blocks of land in the South Bay. In the beginning, many liked the idea but thought it would be impossible to acquire open space in a location where land prices were quite high (the Palos Verdes Peninsula). Others thought the new organization, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, was simply an opposition group and were very suspicious. Surprisingly, environmental groups became our enemies when we would not contribute funds to fight development (we were hoping to buy land from developers, so needed to be able to work with them). Finally, the L.A. Times quoted one landowner as saying, "They are nice people, but they have no money."
Q. What inspired you to take on this challenge? My wife, Barbara, and I came to Palos Verdes 1974 when we moved from West Lafayette, Indiana, after I completed my Ph.D (from Purdue University). We had selected Lafayette because of the open spaces around that small city, and we came to Palos Verdes for the same reason: It was an island of open space in the South Bay. After we arrived, we watched developments spring up in open space areas where we liked to hike, and the only preservation efforts were protests that I knew were destined to fail. Property owners had the right to develop their land. I joined the Planning Commission in Rolling Hills Estates and also ran for city council in that city, and my conversations while walking the streets convinced me that others supported open space preservation, but there was no non-confrontational approach available for actually guaranteeing that land would be preserved. In 1987, a conversation with city staff convinced me that a local community could create a nonprofit to buy land from willing sellers, and we were off. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy was incorporated in 1988.
Q. Did you succeed? In the beginning, success seemed to be a very distant goal, but some very dedicated, creative and talented people joined the board of the new organization and with patience and a clear understanding of the organization’s role, the community began to trust us and believe in our approach. Some landowners quickly understood what we were trying to do, and we received our first donation a short time after our founding. Over the last 25 years, we’ve now preserved nearly 1600 acres of natural open space, with great coastal sage scrub habitat and trails offering magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean. And thanks to those creative and talented volunteers, we now have an educational program that highlights open space as well as an active program that is restoring natural habitat to areas used by early settlers for grazing cattle and farming. I think our accomplishments have far exceeded our hopes when we started the organization what seems to be a short time ago.
