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.
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