Wetlands’ Hidden Beauty : Groups Hope Nature Walk Can Open Eyes

To some, it has about as much charm as a mud puddle. But to nature lovers like Robert Lamond, the brackish backwaters of Los Cerritos Wetlands in Long Beach have a special beauty.

When Lamond, conservation chairman of the Sierra Club’s Long Beach chapter, gazes out over the clumps of pickleweed and shallow, murky bays of the wetlands, he sees a precious resource that needs to be protected--and appreciated.

“You see the tide come in, the birds are around, you see fish jumping and all the various marsh plants,” Lamond said. “But some people live around there for years and never realize it’s there.”

If Lamond has his way, more area residents soon will share his vision of the marshland as an important ecosystem teeming with bird and marine life, an area that provides a vital link in the state’s chain of coastal wetlands.

On Saturday, Lamond and other local environmentalists from the Sierra Club and Audubon Society will sponsor a nature walk in an effort to expose the public to the wonders of Los Cerritos Wetlands.

During the tours, which begin at 15-minute intervals between 8:30 and 11 a.m. at Studebaker Road just north of Westminster Avenue, guides will point out plant and marine life on 30 acres of the wetlands.

While the wetlands checker 241 acres straddling Westminster Avenue just east of Alamitos Bay, only that smaller parcel remains relatively undisturbed by humans.

In recent decades, most of the marshland has been diked and drained to allow oil drilling. Access roads crisscross the area, which is now little more than dry salt flats covered with scrub.

“If you drive by on the highway, you’d never know there’s a wetland out there. It just looks like an oil field,” said Wendy Eliot, an analyst with the California Coastal Conservancy, a state agency charged with protecting and enhancing coastal resources.

Ideas for improving Los Cerritos Wetlands abound, but chances remain slim that it will get a face lift soon.

In 1982, the state Coastal Commission approved a plan calling for development of houses, commercial buildings and some light industry on 112 acres in the area. In return for those development rights, 129 acres of wetlands will be re-established in areas that have been damaged by the oil operations. So far, however, no developers have come forward to purchase the land, which is largely owned by Bixby Ranch Co.

“It’s been tough trying to find a developer who wants to go in and build in that area and accept that restoration requirement at the same time,” Eliot said. “What we need is some altruistic developer dressed in shining armor who’s going to come in and take a risk.”

Multimillion-Dollar Price

Alyse Jacobson, manager of the conservancy’s resource enhancement program, said the state has considered buying the property but has been thwarted because of the land’s multimillion-dollar price tag.

Even if the state were to purchase the wetlands, the mineral leases still would be in effect. Since the oil producers plan to drill for another 15 to 20 years, any full-blown restoration of the wetlands will have to be put on hold.

That is where people like Lamond come in.

As he sees it, Los Cerritos Wetlands needs “a constituency,” a group of people willing to act as a watchdog until all the oil derricks are gone. Activities like the nature walks, which have been held for the last five years, can only help to win a few backers, he said.

“We’re trying to keep this in the public eye,” Lamond said.