Natural Perspectives:

The big environmental news in Huntington Beach this past week was the announcement of a $3.2-million grant to the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy. The conservancy had applied for funds with which to complete the restoration of the Magnolia Marsh, the degraded wetlands west of Magnolia Street just inland of Pacific Coast Highway.

Lou and I want to extend our congratulations to the conservancy, especially to Gordon Smith, its president, and Gary Gorman, its project manager. Both have been with the Conservancy since it was founded back in 1985. I’m proud to say that I, too, was a founding member of the board.

From 1985 to 1990, the conservancy managed to acquire and restore the Talbert Marsh, the badly degraded wetlands east of Brookhurst Street. Further progress was slow, but eventually the group also acquired the Brookhurst Marsh (west of Brookhurst over to Magnolia Street) and the Magnolia Marsh (west of Magnolia to the power plant). Brookhurst Marsh is currently under restoration with other funding. With the new grant, earthwork on the Magnolia Marsh project will now commence in a matter of weeks.

A century ago, the Huntington Beach Wetlands were larger than any salt marsh in Orange County. At 3,000 acres, they were bigger than Bolsa Chica, Newport Bay or Seal Beach. By the 1960s, however, urban development had gobbled up all but about 200 acres. The Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy has been tremendously successful in protecting and restoring this precious remnant.

The Magnolia Marsh funds will come from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, which includes the National Weather Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. The agency’s director, Jane Lubchenko, came to Huntington Beach for a press conference at which she announced the results of the entire nationwide grant program. Fifty projects nationwide received grants under this program, all to accomplish coastal habitat restoration.

Here in Orange County, at least three other organizations applied for funds under this program. One group sought funds for projects at the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge; another at Upper Newport Bay. The third encompassed a number of small-scale stream and wetland projects spanning the area from Bolsa Chica down to San Juan Capistrano.

Unfortunately, it was unlikely that Orange County would receive more than one major grant from a single program. The grants to be awarded had to be spread across the coastal and great lakes states to evenly distribute funds from the recent federal Stimulus Act. Thus, San Diego and Orange counties received one grant each, while Los Angeles County received none.

That so many worthy applications could not all be funded is an indication of just how much work there is to do in restoring damaged habitats in this one small area of the country. Bolsa Chica hasn’t been completely ignored by the granting agencies. The Bolsa Chica Conservancy received a grant to spearhead an effort to design new signage for the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve. Of course, the Department of Fish and Game will have ultimate say so over signs to be installed in the ecological reserve it manages. But the staff of the reserve is small and the grant will fund a professional outfit, the Acorn Group out of Tustin, to design some first-rate interpretive panels.

Lou put in a great deal of work on the indoor panels at the interpretive centers at Bolsa Chica and at Shipley Nature Center, so the two of us have a lot of respect for the talent that it takes to prepare displays like that.

Bolsa Chica’s outdoor interpretive panels and information signage is old; some of it goes back to the creation of the preserve back in 1974. And the panels that were mounted on the boardwalk structure came down when the boardwalk was rebuilt several years ago. I thought those were among the most important on the preserve because they explained the importance of some of the leading endangered species (least tern and Savannah sparrow, for example) for which the preserve was established.

One very positive aspect of this project is that the other two Bolsa Chica groups, the Amigos and the Land Trust, along with Native American groups, are all working together to provide guidance to the professional designer.

With these two new projects, things are looking up for the wetlands in Huntington Beach.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com .