NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:Shipley building shaping up

The interpretive building at Shipley Nature Center has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last four years. The center now has art murals, fossils, a fabulous wildlife diorama and interpretive panels that cover natural history from the Ice Age to present.

The most recent addition is a preschool corner with nature-themed books, puppets and toys.

Shan Ray, Vic and I are working on another new display. Shan is the artist who painted the lovely mural of Ice Age animals for the center.

Vic and I wrote descriptive text about Shipley’s various habitats. We turned the project over to Shan for artwork and assembly. She will be making a map of the nature center, showing the location of the various habitats.

Shipley has always had bones, feathers, furs and other natural objects for children to touch, but the objects have been put away for the last few years.

I thought that a series of “discovery” boxes under the new habitat map could organize these objects and make them more available for visitors. Putting together this project would be a great opportunity for students at the Orange County Conservation Corps.

My science class students at the Corps — Mike Martinez, Joseph Padilla, Philip Pena, Shayne Kansana, Danny Luna and Daniel Rosales — assembled cubicles and put a fabric box inside each one.

They distributed Shipley’s natural objects into the appropriate habitat box. For this project, the boys needed to learn computer skills, as well as ecology.

They prepared a series of one-page documents, each with the common name, Latin name and picture of every plant that was to be in the discovery boxes. They found the Latin names of the plants on the Internet, downloaded pictures and incorporated the information into documents.

Last Friday, we collected leaves of various plant species at Shipley and put them into a plant press. After the specimens dry, the students will mount them on cardstock with appropriate information about each plant.

Then, with the help of MaryAnne Koepp at Shipley, they will laminate the cards. We hope to be finished with this project by December.

Saturday dawned gray and wet from the season’s first rainstorm. Vic and I headed to the Bolsa Chica Conservancy to see how their Huntington Harbour and Wetlands Cleanup Day was going.

Carrie Katsumata organized the event, which was funded by Proposition 13 and sponsored by the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, California Coastal Commission, Project Greenworks, Simple Green, the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, Project Pollution Prevention from the City of Huntington Beach, and others.

Barry Nerhus is a biology student at University of California at Irvine and the conservancy’s new “get ‘er done” guy.

Barry supervised a group of 10 volunteers who pulled 660 pounds of invasive plants, mostly Russian thistle and Australian saltbush, from the conservancy’s newly restored habitat areas.

The Outdoors Club of Southern California used kayaks, inflatables and a pontoon boat to scoop 125 pounds of surface debris from Huntington Harbour.

The Outdoors Club sponsors a variety of outings that include hiking, climbing, skiing, kayaking, backpacking, diving, rafting and snowboarding. This active group — with nearly 10,000 members — has something going on nearly every day. Check their schedule at www.outdoorsclub.org.

Members of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, an organization of private boaters who help the Coast Guard, distributed information on clean, green boating at the environmental fair.

Tips included not spilling fuel while filling a boat’s tank, wiping up any spilled oil and placing an oil-absorbent pad in the bilge to soak up any oil or fuel leakage from the engine.

If you see someone polluting or if you want to report any oil or fuel spill, call (800) 424-8802. You can report poaching or polluting to CalTIP at (888) 334-2258.

This weekend will bring more opportunities to volunteer at Bolsa Chica.

The Bolsa Chica Stewards will meet at 9 a.m. Saturday in the north parking lot at Warner and Pacific Coast Highway to begin their fall planting. The Bolsa Chica Land Trust was awarded a grant from the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project to work on restoring the pocket marsh northeast of the tidegates.

They also need to replant the hill south of the gun turrets. Call Kelly Keller at (562) 920-4215 for more information.

Theirs isn’t the only Bolsa Chica project scheduled for that day. The Bolsa Chica Conservancy has a group of Albertsons employees coming to pull iceplant and clear out debris from the dune area along Pacific Coast Highway, south of the south parking lot. The public is welcome to help.

We will be meeting at 9 a.m. at the south parking lot, across from the entrance to Bolsa Chica State Beach. Barry Nerhus and I will be there to supervise.

The Orange County Conservation Corps, in cooperation with the Bolsa Chica Conservancy and Amigos de Bolsa Chica, is restoring that dune and wetlands area with a grant from the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project.

Over the next few months, I will be working there with my Corps crews and the public. We hope to have the whole strip cleared of trash and non-natives by April, when the terns return.

The Bolsa Chica Conservancy is sponsoring more restoration work on Oct. 28. Call them at (714) 846-1114 for more information. Our environment needs all the volunteers it can get.