LOS ANGELES— The Center for Biological Diversity sued Los Angeles County today for approving a destructive 1,300-acre development in a wildfire prone area that would pave over a pristine stream and block a critical connectivity area for mountain lions and other wildlife.

Approved by the Board of Supervisors in March, the Northlake development near Castaic Lake would also destroy breeding ponds and habitat for one of the last remaining intact populations of western spadefoot in the county.

“It’s bad enough that the Northlake project would bulldoze a stream that flows into the Santa Clara River, but to build more sprawl in an area that burned just a few years ago is outright dangerous,” said Evan Levy, an attorney at the Center. “The development was a bad idea in the ‘90s when it was first proposed and it’s an even worse idea now that we understand the severity of wildfire risks. L.A. needs safe, sustainable development and this clearly isn’t it.”

Today’s lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, asserts that the county’s approval failed to adequately account for the environmental harms of the project and violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

The Center has challenged this destructive project before and won in 2021 when a judge blocked the project for failing to sufficiently protect western spadefoot populations. The small frog was once common throughout the state but has seen much of its habitat destroyed or fragmented, particularly in Southern California. The court also ruled that the environmental review failed to consider a less harmful version of the project that would avoid destroying Grasshopper Creek.

Today’s lawsuit asserts that the latest Northlake proposal fails to fix the shortcomings identified by the court in 2021. The current project would still pave over nearly all of Grasshopper Creek and eliminate the existing spadefoot habitat. The lawsuit also raises new legal violations, including that the project did not properly consider new information regarding wildfire safety, climate change, and wildlife connectivity.

“Northlake would impede wildlife access to critical underpasses along I-5, life lines for threatened mountain lions and other sensitive wildlife,” said Levy. “It’s shameful that the county would ignore their importance given that state agencies and experts are actively working to preserve and improve wildlife connectivity in this region.”

Today’s lawsuit also alleges that the project violates the county’s 2022 Safety Element, which prohibits projects in very high fire hazard severity zones surrounded by wildlands, like Northlake. The site of this project burned in 2022 and wildfires prompted evacuations again in 2025.