By Rhay Flores
About the Ballona Wetlands...
The Ballona Wetlands were first home to the Tongva and Gabrielino communities. These wetlands served as a constant and renewable source of life for these groups for thousands of years.* Only in recent history has the habitat began to experience degradation in the forms of agriculture, industry, and urbanization within and around the habitat.
Consequently, Friends of the Ballona Wetlands* has been contributing to the restoration of this habitat by permanently protecting the area from development and also combining the efforts of multiple conservation organizations and volunteers from the community*.
ERA has had a great time participating in their restoration events which they host on the last Saturday of each month. Our student body is extraordinarily lucky to be so close to such an exciting restoration effort in our local community; take a look at what we worked on just this weekend!
Planting Natives at Ballona
The event was led by Patrick Tyrell, the Manager of Habitat Restoration and Upper Education with the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands*. He started by explaining the history of the wetlands and also discussing why restoration of this habitat is so important. He then split the large group of volunteers into three smaller groups; about half went to go pick up trash near the creek, a smaller group went to build chicken-wire cages to place around seedlings in order to prevent herbivory, and the last group was instructed to plant natives in a recently weeded field.
New seedlings were planted, watered, and then caged to protect it from herbivores!
Patrick explained to us why planting these natives was a super exciting opportunity; their organization has been working to gradually transition this area from one completely overrun by invasive species to one which could allow native plants and animals to thrive. This effort was years in the making! They’ve organized events for volunteers to weed this area and consequently deplete the invasive species seed bank for three years until it was finally ready for native plants.
Our club members were lucky enough to participate in this first planting! We learned all about the proper way to transfer plants from nursery pots into the ground in order to maximize their chances of thriving. While watching one of the more experienced volunteers demonstrate the first planting, I heard another volunteer comment about just how beautiful the process was; each step was intentional and carefully thought out with the goal of bringing new life to a rich, resilient ecosystem.
We worked in pairs and spent the morning planting four different species:
A lupine species Peritoma arborea, Bladderpod
A phacelia species Encelia californica, Bush sunflower
One of our club members was coincidentally working on a class assignment about one of the species we were planting. She got to have an engaging conversation about Encelia californica, invasive plants, and climate change with an experienced ecologist! This is just one example of one of our members being able to both network with professionals in the field and also apply concepts we learned from lectures in real life. In just a few hours, we had planted, watered, and protected about 100 total plants in the field. 📷
We wrapped up the event by walking up to a viewpoint where we could see the entire wetland habitat. An intern with their organization pointed out a white egret resting near the creek. We sat and appreciated the breezy, coastal weather while we talked about the animal and plant life on the reserve.
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