UPPER NEWPORT BAY UPDATE:Help out at 22nd annual Coastal Cleanup Day

The 22nd Annual Coastal Cleanup Day at Upper Newport Bay is from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday. The event is organized by the Newport Bay Naturalists & Friends, Orange County Beaches and Parks and the California Department of Fish and Game.

This is the one day of each year that we are able to enter many sensitive areas of the bay to remove harmful and unsightly garbage. Please help!

To join the cleanup, come to the Peter and Mary Muth Interpretive Center at 2301 University Dr. at Irvine Avenue in Newport Beach. It is free and includes lunch. Families are welcome.

For more information, call (949) 923-2269 or go to www.newportbay.org. To register a group of 10 or more, call (949) 923-2295

Restoration and education at Upper Newport Bay

It has been another successful year for the California Coastal Commission’s Roots program.

Throughout the past year, Roots has hosted more than 1,300 volunteers at our restoration events. These volunteers have contributed more than 3,600 hours, removing more than 4,300 pounds of invasive plant species and planting about 550 native plants, most of which were grown in our own native plant nursery on Shellmaker Island. A variety of native seeds were also spread on the restoration sites. All of these activities contributed to restoring a viable wildlife habitat, increasing biodiversity while educating visitors to the value of the ecosystems at the bay.

A number of volunteer groups help us on a regular basis such as master gardeners, churches, corporations and schools.

If you would like to get involved, call Matt Yurko at (949) 640-0286 or e-mail [email protected] for details.

Our overall restoration efforts have covered a wide area.

At the Newport Valley restoration site (also known as John Wayne Gulch), we have planted coastal sage scrub and riparian habitats. This begins a long-term project that will result in the restoration of one of the largest natural “gateways” to the bay. By removing invasive plants from this space, we hope to prevent them from spreading into the open areas directly abutting the bay.

The Eastbluff Vista restoration site (corner of Back Bay Drive and Eastbluff Drive) has shown great potential as a restored area as well as a native plant demonstration area for visitors to the Vista Point. The basic structure of the coastal sage ecosystem has become established there. We have also seen results form our wildflower seeding efforts including the California Poppy.

At the Bayview West restoration site, we recently installed more than 300 plants, despite hard soil, and we removed an overgrowth of Black Mustard that threatened to drown the native plant life.

We are also conducting a watering experiment at the Bayview Mesa restoration site (near the Mesa Drive entrance to the bay.) In the second year of a three-year plan, this experiment is testing several irrigation methods including drip irrigation, hand-watering and overhead spray on the restoration of four coastal sage scrub plants: deerweed, California sagebrush, California buckwheat and California encelia.

In addition to ecological restoration, education is the other main goal of the Roots program. With the release of the “Our Wetlands, Our World” curriculum in 2005, the California Coastal Commission offers a site-specific, high school curriculum that includes classroom work and hands-on field work for students at the bay. Workshops to facilitate teachers’ use of the curriculum are planned for this fall and winter, 2007. With this educational effort, we hope to bring students, of all ages, to Upper Newport Bay to find their own reasons to protect this natural gem and its habitats from further degradation.

Next year, Roots will be partnering with the Bolsa Chica Land Trust to propagate native wetlands plants at Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach. Also, Roots volunteers will aid in the planting effort on the berms and wetlands demonstrations once the new Back Bay Science Center is complete.

The Roots model is also inspiring further restoration work at the bay. Orange County will sponsor regular restoration workdays for volunteers on the second Sunday of each month to complement Roots’ monthly efforts. Please contact Jennifer Naegel at (949) 923-2297 for more details.

Matt Yurko and Rita McCoy contributed to this article.