SBCC Stadium Hill Restoration

When the Santa Barbara breakwater and harbor was completed in 1929, sand immediately started accumulating behind the jetty and a beach (and a world-class surf break) was formed. Nine years later, the University of California built the La Playa Stadium on the coastal bluffs overlooking the harbor. Generations of students, alumni and sports fans have practiced, played and watched their favorite field sports with an unparalleled view of the coast as backdrop.

However, the undeveloped steep slopes leading down to the playing field/track are subject to ongoing erosion and weed infestation. To help shore up and beautify the slopes, Growing Solutions, with a private donation from a Chumash tribal member, began to revegetate and restore the long-neglected slopes in 2007. 

Over the next two years SBCC Ecological Restoration students weeded, laid down irrigation and erosion control fabric during several class labs. Section by section students from SBCC’s Ecological Restoration class planted Santa Barbara-native quailbush, coastal sunflower, sages and lemonade berry. Today we have nearly 100 percent cover providing slope stability, cover and forage for birds and small mammals. The next time you’re on campus, check the view and smell the lovely coastal sage!

Hidaway Creek Update Winter 2022

We had a good day yesterday at Hidaway which is tucked away in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. It was sunny and warm, a balmy 35F degrees compared to the sub-freezing single digits we’ve had this week in Pendleton. We drove in from the forest service road before the permit expires on Monday with team member, John. Due to road conditions, we parked and hiked 2.5 miles down to the river, contouring the mountainside, and descending over 600-feet in elevation. All downhill in…and all uphill out!

The $470,000 Hidaway Creek Restoration project (to help the native Steelhead populations recover) is slated to be installed this coming July. The project has been jumpstarted by cutting trees and staging them for the summer install in the creek. This winter portion of the project cost $140,000: $20k to get the feller/buncher, bulldozer and excavator on and off site. After that, $15k a day for equipment and their operators —eight days on site to complete the staging. This work is being done during the winter as the ground is frozen and mostly covered in snow which protects the soil from disturbance and does the least amount of damage.

During the day we spotted two coyotes and three deer along with snow-hare prints and other prints we couldn’t identify. John came across a canine print as big as his fist (he’s a big guy) and suspects it was a wolf. If so, this would be the first wolf on site although some locals swear they’ve seen them nearby. We haven't "caught" a wolf on camera yet, or a beaver. But we’re ever hopeful. Beavers are the keystone indicator species that will indicate the success we’ve been working towards…a healthy river ecosystem.

New Santa Rosa Island Virtual Gallery

Over Easter weekend 2019, Growing Solutions staff, students and colleagues made their first official trip to Santa Rosa Island to study island-endemic plants and help Dr. Kathryn McEachern remove non-native invasive species from one of her many island test sites. With mild sunny weather after a wet winter, the island was painted with amazing wide swaths of rainbow-hue wildflowers. Santa Rosa Island, which opened to the public as a national park in 2011, has a full-time research field station run by California State University Channel Islands. Seven students from the SBCC Restoration Ecology Class made the three-hour crossing (with stops on Santa Cruz Island) and stayed for two nights at the field station. Lots of fresh air, fun and good food…and absolutely no cel reception to keep people off their smartphones! Plans were made to return the following year but were abruptly shut down by Covid-19 precautions. But we look forward to 2022. To learn more about Santa Rosa Island and to tour a gallery of SRI images, CLICK HERE

Blue Camas First-Food Seed Rescue

Camassia quamash, or camas for short, is our target species for grassland restoration in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. This bulb, which is related, to asparagus was and continues to be an important “first-food” species for the tribes of the Northwest. Historically the bulbs were tended by setting periodic fires to encourage the camas’ growth. While harvesting larger bulbs to eat, the smaller bulbs were divided and spread to increase the stand.

Camas is declining due to a century of cattle overgrazing. We are collecting and planting for diversity of the meadow in an effort to mitigate the adverse effects. Our goal is to gather ripe seeds during a narrow mid-summer seed window with the intent of planting them in the meadow where they have been out-competed by weedy non-native species.

To accomplish this, we rallied two hardy volunteers to join us in roughing it in July, during a summer heat wave where temps in the flatlands regularly topped 110. However, up in the Blues daytime temps rarely went above 90 and we had plenty of shade oaks and a nearby creek to keep us comfortable during midday. At 4200 feet, night temps can plunge into the mid 40s so we needed to be prepared with lots of wool blankets and down jackets.

The first morning we set out at daybreak with shears and paper bags to begin collecting. This would give us working time of 3-4 hours before the summer sun began baking our brains.The process: walk, stalk, bend, cut, shake the seed head into the bag. Each dried camas stalk would yield a few precious grams. Repeat until lunch. It’s either a peaceful Zen activity or torturous menial labor – all about perspective. As we picked and the bags were filled, it was satisfying to hear the seeds rustling against the bag. After a week of daily collecting we had close to five pounds of small black seed. A very respectable total.

Hand collecting seed is a good option to give Mother nature a chance to do her hear healing magic, boost a restoration project, and secure a portion of the camas harvest from mice and birds so that we can increase our targeted species.

Postscript: Some of the seed was hand-sown in on the site just before the snow fell. In another month after the snow has melted we’ll start watching for the blades of green to appear, signaling our success and another patch of the lovely edible blue camas. A word of caution, there is a white-flowered “camas” that is poisonous , aptly named Mountain Death Camas, Zigadenus elegans. So if you are wildcrafting and harvesting…know your plants!!


Mud Creek Spring Survey

Mud Creek was named for the land-management practices of the 1800’s. At that time the prevailing viewpoint was to bring in a hundreds of cows and let them wallow where they would. By the middle of summer when the grass is dried up and the days hot the only cool place was in shade of giant cottonwoods, and very prickly hawthorne trees growing along remaining trickle of a stream. Fast forward two hundred years – we have fenced out the cattle, the riparian vegetation is coming back, but the name remains. Mud Creek hosts an elk calving ground and bear habitat. It’s always exciting to walk this area and see who’s around. Last week we walked Mud Creek which is still flowing, albeit at a lower level than a month ago. As we walked further downstream, we came across a very distinctive bear print.



New Hidaway Weather Station

Last week we installed a basic analog system at the Hidaway site to collect real-time weather data that we can access 24/7 on our cel phones and computers. If all goes as planned and the weather station isn’t molested by curious elk or a mischievous bear we will soon be collecting wind speed and direction, temperature, barometric pressure and rainfall totals. Anecdotally, we have noticed how quickly and seemingly random the weather changes up here – a balmy seventy-degree day and then wham! -snow that night, followed by blustery winds and then a beautifully calm day. Over time we hope to answer some questions; Is this late snowfall normal for 4000ft elevation in the Blue Mountains? Is there a pattern we’re not seeing? Are warming global temperatures impacting our local weather? Stay tuned – this weather station project ties in with a tribal pollination project and native-plant regeneration project.



Introducing Holly North And The Thin Green Line Of Conservation

This just in Downunder from our newest GS advisory board member Holly North (pictured with stunning green hair). Holly, who lives in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, is a career National Parks ranger-ecologist who has an exciting, often dangerous job of mapping raging bush fires from helicopters. In past years Holly has volunteered her ace mapping skills to Growing Solutions out at Santa Cruz Island. In her spare time Holly’s passion is working with wild-land rangers from around the world through Protected Area Workers Association (PAWA); helping to raise money for underfunded programs and exchanging critical techniques and technology with her fellow rangers. In some countries like Kenya, these skills can be the difference between life or death when dealing with armed poachers in the wild. This November Holly will be traveling to Nepal an international rangers’ conference to learn and conduct workshops in fire management. What follows is Holly’s PAWA newsletter reporting on a recent trip by her colleagues to train Kenyan ranger in anti-poaching techniques and fire management.

“ In July 2019 PAWA members Dave Hitchcock and Peter Brookhouse travelled to Kenya to run part of the LEAD (Lead Empower Act Defend) Ranger program. The training was sponsored by the Thin Green Line Foundation (TGLF) and International Anti Poaching Foundation (IAPF). The LEAD Ranger Program trains Rangers to train other Rangers. It’s about developing leadership skills so that 1 trained ranger can supervise a team of colleagues on the ground.

The TGLF website explains the concept: “A single Ranger trained in anti-poaching, intelligence gathering, tracking, first aid and community engagement techniques is more likely to safely apprehend poachers, survive wild animal encounters, prevent the killing of target species and return home to their families. If this is what one Ranger can achieve then imagine what 1000 Rangers trained in the very latest techniques could achieve.”

Fire management training is part of this. The latest techniques and technology will be used to build a network of conservation support to bring our ranger colleagues home safely, protect natural and cultural values and combat poaching.

The LEAD Ranger program covers emergency response, dealing with injuries in the field especially , critical bleed control and evacuation, response to fire incidents, defensive tactics, radio communications and other technology and equipment.

To donate to the LEAD Ranger Program check out this link.

Sssssspringtime Appearances On The Puma

Graced with ample rains this year, the Puma Ranch is blooming with new plant growth which feeds the bugs that feed the critters and the critters that eat critters. Case in point, reptiles. Santa Barbara’s foothill canyons are prime habitat for all manner of beautiful lizards and snakes that are an important part of of our coastal sage ecology in controlling rodent populations. Most are non-venomous such as the California Kingsnake and Gopher Snake featured below, but a few like the Western Pacific Rattlesnake can be deadly so take care when walking through bush or around boulders where reptiles like to sun. And never pick up a snake unless thoroughly trained in identification and handling.

UCSB Coastal Service Program At GS This Fall

Growing Solutions' staff would like to thank UCSB Coastal Service Program and the two student groups that joined us this fall in working towards a healthy environment. This quarter students from the Muslim Student Association and Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers joined us in propagating native plants for a Gaviota Coast restoration project. The students divided and repotted Disticlis spicata a.k.a. salt grass that is used in local restoration projects among the dunes in and around Isla Vista. These students are enrolled in a wide range of majors at UCSB, including some that one would assume have nothing to do with ecological restoration. The beauty of this program, however, is that young people get to experience scenarios outside of their comfort zone and get a glimpse of how connected everything is in the natural world. While propagating plants students learn the attributes of the plant species they are working with, how it fits into the habitat it belongs to, and what benefit (ecosystem service) it provides for the environment.