A face-lift for mother nature

Bryce Alderton

Willowy branches extend over walkways blocking the path. A murky,

oxygen-depleted pond sits stagnant.

These sad conditions at the Donald G. Shipley Nature Center have

whipped volunteers into a action in hopes of cleaning up the wildlife

habitat.

“It needs to be put back together, it’s not a hodgepodge thing,” said

Jean Nagy, president of the city’s environmental subcommittee that has

been meeting for more than a year to seek funds to restore the center’s

wildlife habitat. “We want it to be spectacular.”

A recent grant of $10,000 from the United States Fish and Wildlife

Service is enabling the center to repair portions of the 18-acre site

that sits in the northwest corner of Huntington Beach’s Central Park.

That money will be used to fund park improvements and maintenance,

said Jim Engle, Deputy Director of the city’s Community Services

Department.

Although the group is pleased with the grant, it wants more.

Center staff and volunteers are also looking to hire a landscape

architect that would be responsible for designing the four signs circling

the pond and drawing up plans for a stream leading into the pond.

So far the group has raised $11,000, which is not enough.

And so it toils on.

The group has begun to recruit volunteers to help with a fund-raising

campaign that volunteers say has been needed for some time.The center

also recently applied for a state environmental education grant of

$159,000, said Dave Winkler, the central park naturalist and nature

center director. That money would be used to aerate the pond, form a

stream and design plans for new plants.

Some of the other improvements Winkler would like to see are the

replacement of exotic plants with native California species, remodeling

the nature center’s house and improving the quality of the pond by adding

a stream.

Winkler is concerned about Brazilian pepper trees, which he said are

crowding the native willow trees and another pest called arundo, a

nonnative plant that looks like bamboo.

Arundo plants can suck water out of other plants within a one-acre

radius, Winkler said.

Adding four additional informational signs around the nature pond

would also be a welcome addition, he added.

This isn’t the first time restoration has been discussed at the

center.

A restoration plan backed by developer Robert Mayer Corp., which spent

three years and $150,000 on the plan, would have restored 2.8 acres at

the center in exchange for a portion of the Waterfront Hilton Beach

Resort Expansion for the developer to build townhomes and condominiums on

seven-tenths of an acre of wetlands.

But the city decided to protect the seven-tenths of an acre in

November 2000 and put it under the supervision of the Huntington Beach

Wetlands Conservancy.

The center, located between Edwards and Goldenwest streets, was

established in 1974 and is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven

days a week.

Approximately 40,000 visitors come to the center each year, Winkler

said.

Some of the wildlife that can be found includes foxes, raccoons, king

snakes and lizards, but the park is a renowned birding area featuring

more than 300 species, he said.

Friends of the nature will hold a meeting next Thursday from 6 to 7:30

p.m. in Room D of the Huntington Beach Central Library to recruit

volunteers.