SoCal's newest nature preserves brighten urban settings

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USA TODAY

SoCal's newest nature preserves brighten urban settings

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The value of open space in an urban setting is infinite. Beneath an open sky, surrounded by an uncluttered horizon, land — in all its weedy and rutted splendor — has a restorative effect.

Preserving open land — and in some cases, restoring it — can be nearly impossible. Yet in bits and pieces, Southern Californians are restaking old claims.

Portuguese Bend Nature Preserve
1,400 acres Coastal sage
Open, with ongoing restoration

On the southwestern flank of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, butterflies hover above sticky monkeyflower, bush sunflower and mariposa lilies, each muscling through soft-leaved coastal sage scrub and purple needlegrass.

Scenic overview at the 160-acre Forrestal Nature Preserve on the Palos Verdes Peninsula shows the coastal sage scrub habitat. The habitat stages periodic incursions into the miles and miles of trails — a hikers' paradise — overlooking the long, lazy breakers of the Pacific.

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Ballona Wetlands
190 acres Coastal marsh/wetland
Ongoing restoration

Talk about a scrap of land in need of some love: Look no further than Ballona Wetlands. Marshes once dotted the Southern California coast. Almost everywhere, a creek or river flowed to the ocean. Now Ballona is the last coastal wetland in Los Angeles County. Environmentalists have drawn a line in the sand. Working with private developers and government agencies, they are trying to save the marsh from bulldozers and restore sullied portions of the land.

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Orange County Great Park
1,100 acres Lakes, streams and marshland
Scheduled to open 2008

In Orange County, a chain-link fence surrounds what remains of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station — miles of cracked asphalt, a city of rusting military buildings, mountains of dried tumbleweeds and acres of parched, undeveloped land.

Within three years, however, this expanse will begin a caterpillar-like metamorphosis into Orange County Great Park, one of the nation's largest metropolitan parks, an 1,100-acre recreational area with streams, lakes, soccer fields, hiking trails and vast stretches of green open space. The project not only adds much-needed parkland to a congested urban area but also connects more than 70,000 acres of open space, including the Cleveland National Forest, the Irvine Ranch Land Reserve, the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park and Crystal Cove State Park.

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Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor
17,000 acres Oak woodland and coastal sage
Open, with ongoing acquisitions

The Puente-Chino Hills Wildlife Corridor, southeast of Los Angeles, shelters a strip of wild land where bobcats and coyotes can make a living and migrating birds check in for pit stops on their way to Mexico. The rolling country of woodland oak and coastal sage is also a refuge for hikers, mountain bikers, dog walkers and nature lovers on paths such as Skyline Trail.

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Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2006-01-12-cali-preserves_x.htm





An egret fishes along the shoreline in the intertidal marsh area at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve in Huntington Beach.