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Los Angeles River Internship

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Introduction My internship with Friends of The Los Angeles River (FoLAR) has been a pretty fantastic experience. Although I had a couple of other opportunities, I chose to intern here because I felt it breached the gap between water resource management and the natural world. I also liked the idea of learning more about the damage done to the Los Angeles River when it was channelized and working for a nonprofit organization. I first learned about the FoLAR when they showed up to my work in the River Rover, a 38-foot-long vehicle that has been converted in a multimedia museum about everything Los Angeles River. Founded in 1986 by poet Lewis MacAdams, FoLAR has helped create the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, a principal forum for public discourse in regards to the Rivers' future, and developed a community park at a 30-acre parcel of land between Chinatown and the Los Angeles River known as the Cornfields. It won in a battle to establish a state park at Taylor Yard …show more content…

The list Chris gave to research was very extensive and within the time period I was given I was only able to complete the most prominent topics. The topics I wrote about included a complete history of the Los Angeles River, wildlife, ecology, masterplan, water quality, alternative 20, southern and steelhead trout. From this research I learned a great deal, specifically about how channelization destroyed the ecosystem of the River. Another area that I found very intriguing was to find out how many species were extirpated due to human activity. The list is very long and perhaps the most prominent study in regards to this topic is Biota of The Los Angeles River. This published study is the largest study in the last 30 years of wildlife in the Los Angeles River, however, it took me a few days to find because apparently there only two available copies in the Los Angeles Area Library

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