What’s going on with the Shipley Nature Center?
NATURAL PERSPECTIVES
When we heard that the Shipley Nature Center was staying open, we
were thrilled. But it turns out that this isn’t really what is
happening.
Ranger Dave is being reassigned to beach duty as of Oct. 1, where
he will issue parking tickets. All the animals in the center--six
snakes, three turtles, a tarantula, stick insects, fish, a desert
tortoise--will be given away. The lights will be off, the door will
be shut and the gate will be locked. That sure sounds like closed to
us.
The city hoped that volunteers from the newly formed Friends of
Shipley Nature Center could keep the center open and give the tours
for school children that Ranger Dave formerly conducted. Sounds good,
but there’s a problem with that plan. The group is not up and running
yet as an organized group. They hope eventually to have a docent
program, but they don’t yet. And even when they do have their docents
trained, volunteers cannot take the place of a full-time ranger. The
group cannot possibly provide as much presence at the center as
Ranger Dave did, and they certainly won’t be able to patrol the park
with the full air of authority that his uniform and badge provided.
Also, it will be hard -- no, impossible -- to replace the depth of
biological knowledge that he brought to the nature center. While
we’re really happy that there is a group willing to try to fill the
void, we know -- and they know -- that it won’t be the same.
The nonprofit group won’t be able to give as many tours as Dave
did and they won’t be giving tours for free. They’ll have to charge
to offset their expenses, which will put this experience out of reach
of the poorer school districts. Many of the children who come to the
nature center have never seen anything outside of their neighborhood.
To their eyes, our little nature center is a true wilderness. An
eye-popping, awe-inspiring, scary adventure into the wilds of nature.
If you walk the winding, intersecting paths of the nature center,
which you can still do for the rest of this month, you can see how
the kids might think that. It’s a wild world apart from the rest of
the park, a world filled with turtles, frogs, butterflies,
dragonflies and birds. But the children won’t get to walk through our
urban jungle this school year, because it will be closed.
The closing of the nature center couldn’t have come at a worse
time. All of the giant reed (Arundo donax) that was crowding out the
native plants has just been removed. Huge piles of it now sit on bare
dirt, awaiting a decision of what to do with it and the money to deal
with it. Next spring, the deeply buried roots will send up sprouts.
Arundo is amazingly resilient and incredibly hard to eliminate. To
kill the sprouts, the area will need to be sprayed with herbicide.
(Yes, there is one that is approved for use near wetlands.) However,
the city won’t allow volunteers to use it due to liability issues.
That means that city workers must do the spraying. It is our
understanding that there is no money for this project.
This is a job that needs to be given high priority. If the work
isn’t done in a timely fashion, it will cost the city vastly more to
do it in the future. If Arundo is allowed to grow back, the project
will need to be started all over again, as it was after the delay in
restoration that occurred several years ago when mitigation funding
was lost.
A ray of hope in this dismal picture is that the council did
approve $21,000 to pay for landscape architect Guy Stiver to draw up
detailed restoration plans. However, there is no money to implement
these plans. Already, deadly castor bean, which contains the poison
called ricin, is sprouting where Arundo used to grow.
There are more glimmers of hope for the future. Ron Hagan,
director of community services, said that he is requesting $10,000 in
the budget to fund California Conservation Corps workers to continue
to weed and do trail maintenance and that Ranger Dave will be able to
spend up to one-third of his time at the center to work with the
volunteers on weed abatement. The Huntington Beach Tree Society has
donated $12,000 worth of trees toward the $500,000 restoration
effort. And the Friends of Shipley Nature Center have a work party
scheduled on Nov. 23 to plant some of those trees. But there are no
plans to reopen the center.
We look at the price of housing in this town. It’s astronomical.
We see many cars on our streets that sell for more than $50,000. We
know there is money in this community. We don’t believe that the
citizens will allow a beloved nature center to close over a measly
$120,000 a year. That’s less than $1 per capita for our community.
We’re sure that there are private funds available to reopen the
gates. If you can offer help, the Friends of Shipley Nature Center
could certainly use it. Visit their Web site at www.fsnc.org, call
them at (714) 963-1658, or e-mail them at stephpac@socal.rr.com.
* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and
environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.
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