Year after year, decade after decade, the Hollywood Bowl is championed as one of the world’s great outdoor amphitheaters. Shoehorned in a canyon within Los Angeles’ eclectic urban landscape, the Bowl is both a premier destination for live music and a well-nurtured Los Angeles County park. 

Hundreds of plant and animal species reside in the Hollywood Hills and Griffith Park areas. With support from the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation and researchers from the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains (RCDSMM), the LA Phil has spent nearly two decades documenting the flora and fauna that call the Bowl’s 88-acre park home. 

This season marks the 16th year of the partnership between the Bowl and RCDSMM to conduct a series of biotic surveys, taking inventory of all the living things on these grounds. The first of the surveys was commissioned in 2010 by Mark Ladd—Director of Operations at the Bowl and its county-appointed Superintendent—and over time, they have created a long-term ecological record of how species come and go.  

Leading the fieldwork are Principal Conservation Biologist Dan Cooper and Conservation Biologist Technician Isaac Yelchin. Every month, they roam the property in hiking boots, sunglasses, and baseball caps with binoculars, notepads, and phone cameras to record their findings. On any given day, they might come across leaping Western fence lizards, grazing mule deer, zipping hummingbirds, and a multitude of thriving native plants. 

By placing hidden, motion-activated cameras in the more remote areas of the park, Cooper and Yelchin can also monitor animal activity away from human disturbance. A bobcat taking a nighttime prowl, California thrashers flitting through the branches, and even a coyote curling up for a morning nap in the shade—it’s all caught on camera. To watch a selection of videos, click here. 

“We have this cool video of a bobcat that seems to be listening to the music, and you can hear it on the camera…. I’m not sure if they’re enjoying it, but it doesn’t seem to bother them too much,” Yelchin says.

Most of the species living around the Bowl are adapted to noise, whether it be music, maintenance equipment and generators, or loud city sounds. 

“But once you get away from the stage and bleachers, it gets very quiet,” Cooper says. “And so that’s where we’re finding a lot of the interesting things.” 

The 2010 biotic survey primarily documented organisms found in the park’s three main habitat types—coastal sage scrub, mixed chaparral, and sumac scrub. 

“Based on historical photos from the area, the natural landscape is somewhat more lush than it was 100 years ago, when much of the area was grazed with cattle and sheep,” Cooper reported. Thanks to careful maintenance and stewardship of the land, species with especially ancient roots have remained remarkably consistent. “One can assume that many of the same plants and animals living on the upper slopes of the Hollywood Bowl property are the same ones that have been there for millennia,” Cooper wrote. 

Among the oldest on-site organisms are the goldback, polypody, and coffee ferns—all of which have been around since the age of the dinosaurs. Coast live oak, toyon, and black walnut trees are also some of the venue’s veteran native plants that we continue to plant each tree life cycle, or every 40 to 100 years. 

By comparing the 2010 biotic survey with those from 2015 and 2025, our researchers uncovered a special “lost-and-found” case. Sixteen years ago, Cooper spotted a family of quail with at least eight chicks. But when he returned in 2015, there was no trace of our feathered friends.  

Cooper wrote then: “Whether this is a temporary situation, perhaps due to drought, or that quail have permanently been lost as a resident species from the property, is not known. However, it is troubling since there has been little impact to their habitat on the site (which still supports dense native scrub) and water is still readily available here in the form of sprinklers and spigots.”  

Urban wildlife populations naturally fluctuate. Weather conditions, human interference, invasive plants, and other factors can all affect what researchers observe. As stewards of the Bowl, we take seriously the responsibility for caring for the people, plants, and animals who inhabit or visit this land.  

As a result of sustainability initiatives such as landscaping with drought-tolerant native plants and reducing pollution and waste at the Bowl, populations are thriving and previously undocumented species are being discovered—including the Bernardino Blue butterfly, gray fox, and fuchsia-flowered gooseberry.  

Most notably, the quail, once thought to be gone for good, have reappeared. To date, Cooper and Yelchin have tallied 70 native plant and 76 bird species, among other animals.  

“The ecosystem here in the last 15 years is really heartening. It’s a testament to how connected this open space is,” Cooper says. Despite being surrounded by a neighborhood, the 101 freeway, and LA’s second-busiest street (Highland Avenue), the Bowl thrives because of the level of care and effort put in—by audience members, too. 

“Just coming and supporting the Bowl goes a long way to preserving this large ecosystem site here,” Yelchin says. “It’s a pretty unique situation where it’s a really untouched, healthy, beautiful ecosystem, and it’s awesome to go explore it.”