[2] The FBW also partners with faculty and staff from a Catholic college, Loyola Marymount University (LMU), and with Heal The Bay.
The FBW was founded in 1978, and legally continued their access in 2003, when the CDFW acquired the private Ballona Wetlands.
[citation needed] Led by founding President Ruth Lansford, in 1978, Friends of Ballona Wetlands filed a lawsuit against landowner Summa Corporation, heirs to the Howard Hughes estate which owned the 1,067 acres of wetland habitat.
Their decades long battle ultimately saved the Ballona Wetlands from destruction when in 2005 it was declared a California State Ecological Reserve.
The Friends' activities include providing input at government hearings,[4][5] commenting on a wetlands restoration project,[6][7] participating in science and research symposium,[8] supporting the former Native American Indigenous cemetery at Ballona Discovery Park in the Playa Vista mixed-used development below the bluff of LMU,[9][10] taking legal action protecting the wetlands,[11] and formerly worked in the past with Marina DeBris, now in Australia, who developed an art-inspired educational event about pollution.