NATURAL PERSPECTIVES:There are still many opportunities to stay green

Life seems to be an unending Earth Day for Vic and me, so this past weekend’s Earth Day celebrations were nothing unusual for us. For most of last week, I was at Bolsa Chica, removing non-native Myoporum and Brazilian pepper trees. With my crew from the Orange County Conservation Corps, I’ll be working on removing iceplant next week.

A grant to the Orange County Conservation Corps from the Southern California Wetland Recovery Project has funded removal of non-native plants from the dune/wetland interface south of the south parking lot over the past few months. My chainsaw crew finished cutting down the big trees south of the lot last week and moved on to the few Brazilian pepper and Myoporum trees just north of the south lot. You’ll see a huge difference in the skyline there.

Working at Bolsa Chica this time of year is a challenge. The birds are just beginning to stake out nesting territories and their needs take precedence over restoration work. I monitored the elegant terns to make sure that we weren’t disturbing them with our chainsaw work. They were at the beginning of their courting period last week, with only some of the birds back from South America. The early returnees were busy with aerial courtship, flying two by two in close formation, paying attention only to each other.

For our work north of the parking lot, I monitored for Belding’s savannah sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, song sparrows, and common yellowthroats. Removal of non-native plants there opened up about 1,500 square feet of potential habitat. Give the area a year or two to grow new cattails and bulrushes, and it should make prime nesting territory.

The remainder of our work on this project will be removal of iceplant, a task in which the public is invited to share. Contact the Bolsa Chica Conservancy to participate. They are our partners in this grant, along with the Amigos de Bolsa Chica. Beach evening primrose, sand verbena, and silvery beach bur are sprouting where iceplant has been removed and California legless lizards are expanding their range into the restored area.

This was a busy week for other environmental activities as well. On Wednesday, I attended the first meeting this season of the tern colony monitoring team. State Park biologist David Pryor organized a group of volunteers who watch the endangered California least tern colony at Huntington State Beach during nesting season to protect the birds from predators and human impact. They need still more volunteers, so if you can go to the beach for a couple of hours per week to guard the terns, contact Cheryl Egger at [email protected].

On Thursday, Vic and I attended a groundwater adventure tour, hosted by the Orange County Water District. We learned about Orange County’s groundwater, and water usage in general. For example, we heard that it takes 150 gallons of water to grow one pound of corn, but 5,000 gallons of water to make one pound of beef. That’s yet one more reason to eat vegetarian meals. It saves water.

On Friday, I helped Vic teach his natural history class for seniors. We arrived at the tide pools at Crystal Cove State Park at the unholy hour of 6 a.m. to catch a very low tide. We were rewarded with views of many sea creatures that normally elude us, including a brown sea hare, Kellet’s whelks, a young bat star, many ochre stars, and even a couple of poisonous California cone snails.

Vic taught his birding class on Saturday, and on Sunday, he volunteered with the Bolsa Chica Conservancy to work with the public to monitor bird use of Bolsa Chica for Earth Day. He was stationed on the bluff, helping kids count birds in the water, mudflats, and air during 15-minute intervals.

Our daughter-in-law, Nicole, sent us a link to www.greenhome.com for Earth Day that gave us some helpful hints for greener living. For example, we learned that some products, like towels and tampons, are available from organic cotton. Why should we bother with organic cotton, since we aren’t eating it? The answer is that although cotton occupies only 3% of farmland, it accounts for 24% of the world’s fertilizer and pesticide use.

It also takes 2,000 gallons of water to make a pound of cotton. This ties in with last week’s column, in which we urged you not to buy new clothing when you already have a closet full of clothes. Even our consumption of cotton has an effect on the environment.

The death of honeybees is one of the hottest, and yet the least publicized, of our current environmental crises. We wrote about honeybees and colony collapse disorder in a column back in February. Bees still are dying all over the country and reports have come in recently that bees are dying in many European countries as well. One possible cause is a new class of nicotine-based pesticides. However, no one knows for sure why the bees are dying.

What we do know is that bees are responsible for pollinating three out of every four bites of food that we put in our mouths. Our meat animals also are dependent upon bee-pollinated crops. Domestic honeybees are essential to modern agriculture.

Our planet is in serious trouble with global climate change, heavy use of pesticides, pollution of air and water, increasing demand on finite water resources, and over- harvesting of marine life, all caused by overpopulation of the planet by humans. We need to make every day an Earth Day.