by Lawrence A. Wan, PhD
Founder and Board Chairman
Western Alliance for Nature, a land conservancy

The Metropolitan Water District (MWD) recently decided to negotiate the sale of the 309-acre Ormond Beach parcel that it co-owns with the City of Oxnard. If negotiations are successful, the buyer will be the California Coastal Conservancy. Once the sale is complete, the restoration of Ormond Beach as an environmental preserve can begin to move forward.

Other communities that have promoted environmental preserves have found them to be a plus for their local economy. This can also be true for Oxnard. The Ormond Beach wetlands can not only become an attractive resource for the community but can serve as a tourist attraction. The South Oxnard community has vigorously supported the vision of an attractive park as an entrance to the wetlands at Saviers and Hueneme Roads. Additional plans call for a Chumash nature and cultural center on the preserve at the end of Arnold Road where anthropologists in the 30s found extensive evidence of a Chumash settlement.

When we think in terms of restoring this area, we must ensure that it is a large enough area to be successful biologically. It's important at this time to go back and look at the Consensus Plan released in 1998 by the Ormond Beach Taskforce. The Plan called for protecting approximately 1500 acres and should serve as the guideline for the community's over-all goal. The purchase of the MWD's 309 acres will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.

Many agencies participated in the taskforce including personnel from the City of Oxnard, the State Department of Fish & Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, the Coastal Commission, the Navy and local businesses, as well as environmental groups.

The taskforce availed itself of the opinions of experts in several fields including the preeminent scholar on Southern California wetlands, Wayne Ferrin, Ph.D., as well as federal, state and local scientists.

The taskforce based its recommendations on the extensive area that the wetlands had covered historically and the needs of Oxnard and other county residents. The goals were to protect enough of the wetlands to make them ecologically viable, while at the same time recommending the best sites on which to locate industrial and residential developments and simultaneously preserving adjacent agricultural lands and meeting the needs of the Pt. Mugu Naval Base.

The size of this project is very important. Wetlands cannot fully function biologically without associated areas of "uplands." These areas act as a buffer zone to cushion the impact of nearby human activity as well as providing areas for foraging raptors, thus relieving the pressure on the wetlands to serve as their sole food supply. This would allow a greater chance of survival for wetland birds than they would have otherwise. In addition, many of the so-called wetland species do not spend their entire life cycles in the wetlands but spend part of their lives time in the uplands. Thus uplands are critical to the full function of the wetlands. Failure to provide such habitat would mean starting off with a less than ideal ecosystem and thus the goal of a truly restored wetland is lost.

The fight to save Ormond Beach from the threat of development has been long and contentious. It's important at this time to do whatever it takes to continue that effort by purchasing all appropriate properties, while the possibility still exists. The Western Alliance for Nature, a land conservancy dedicated to preserving wildlife habitats and indigenous archeological resources, is actively supporting this endeavor in any way that it can and applauds this important next step.