Natural Perspectives

Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray

Mother Nature often needs a helping hand. Or in the case of the Bolsa

Chica, many helping hands.

On Saturday, March 16, several groups dedicated to making the Bolsa

Chica a better place worked their magic in the wetlands and on the mesa.

This time, we showed up merely to watch.

The Bolsa Chica Stewards, an offshoot of the Sierra Club Preserve

Bolsa Chica Task Force and affiliate of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, held

their monthly work party along the mesa trail. They planted Cleveland

sage, bush monkeyflower and California buckwheat on the overlook by the

tide gates. They also pulled up nearly 1,000 old planting flags that

marked where they had planted native plants over the past several years.

In 1996, the Stewards started revegetating the bluffs east of Outer

Bolsa Bay with native plants. Their goal is to restore the coastal sage

scrub plant community to Bolsa Chica Mesa. The Stewards also have

installed interpretive kiosks with picture displays of many of the shrubs

and flowers growing on the mesa. Guy Stivers, a landscape architect, and

Kurt Loheit, a nationally recognized trail engineer, helped design the

plantings and lay out of the current mesa trail.

The mesa has suffered over the years at the hand of man. In the 1800s,

the area was a cattle ranch subject to grazing. A century ago, the men of

the Bolsa Chica Gun Club built their lodge and roadways and closed the

bulk of the wetlands to tidal flushing. During World War II, the area was

a military installation. All of these impacts reduced the native

vegetation and allowed nonnative weeds to grow. The Stewards are

reversing this trend.

On the Saturday we were there, Kelly Keller of the Stewards took a

moment to show us their progress. She had supervised over 60 volunteers

that day, tending plantings near the gun turret overlook. Many of those

early plantings have matured and are in full spring bloom. Bright yellow

deerweed, bladderpod, and sunflowers vied with bush monkeyflower and

California poppies for our attention. Recently planted Catalina cherry

trees stood bravely against brisk ocean breezes. California buckwheat had

just started to bloom with lovely clusters of pink and white blossoms.

The sweet and pungent smells of California sagebrush and coastal sage

scrub species filled the air with a delightful perfume. This fragrance

has been absent from the Bolsa Chica for far too long.

Keller pointed out a rock pile that held several Southern Pacific

rattlesnakes, a subspecies of western rattlesnake. The snakes had just

awakened from hibernation. They seemed rather cranky, so we left them

alone. Keller told us that previous work parties had found silvery

legless lizards on the mesa. That was an important finding, since we

previously had found them only on the sand dunes by Pacific Coast

Highway. This means that the threatened silvery legless lizards may be

distributed throughout the sandy soil of the mesa.

Last year they had uncovered a western skink, a beautiful lizard with

a coppery back and an iridescent blue tail. We had not known of the

existence of this species at the Bolsa Chica. To complete our day, we

came across a 40-inch gopher snake on our walk along the mesa back to our

car.

While the Stewards mustered their volunteers at the north parking lot,

Amigos de Bolsa Chica and Bolsa Chica Conservancy volunteers gathered at

the walk-bridge parking lot to prepare the tern islands for the return of

the terns in mid April. The Amigos started this annual spring tern island

cleanup more than 20 years ago.

The two man-made tern islands in Inner Bolsa Bay have been wildly

successful. About 10% of the California Least Tern population nests at

the Bolsa Chica, mainly on the smaller south tern island. The north tern

island is one of only four places in the world where Elegant Terns are

known to nest. With more than 2,000 breeding pairs, the Bolsa Chica hosts

the largest colony in the U.S. Royal, Forster’s and Caspian Terns also

nest there in small numbers, along with Black Skimmers. Keeping the tern

islands suitable for nesting with an annual March cleanup is one of the

many projects of the Amigos de Bolsa Chica and Bolsa Chica Conservancy.

The Conservancy also hosts monthly wetlands cleanups and nonnative

plant removal parties. Thanks to the Conservancy’s effort over the past

11 years, much of the iceplant that smothered the native dune plants has

been removed. Native plants now flourish in the weeded areas between

Inner Bolsa Bay and Pacific Coast Highway. This improves dune habitat for

threatened Wandering Skipper butterflies and threatened silvery legless

lizards. We are pleased to see that this volunteer project that we

initiated in 1991 is still ongoing.

If you’d like to get involved in this marvelous restoration work, call

the Bolsa Chica Stewards at (562) 920-4215 or the Bolsa Chica Conservancy

at (714) 846-1114.

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY PhD are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at o7 vicleipzig@aol.comf7 .