Restoring the Ballona Wetland

ad buy you know weapons not far from playa del rey brad henderson of the california department of fish and game weaves through a hodgepodge of exotic plants with the canary island date palms and we've got my stamped them on bermuda grass brazilian pepper all kinds of things that were brought to california these days the wetland is mostly dry and fairly degraded but henderson says several native plants and animals persist he pulls out a pair of binoculars to say whether this class on that small now and it pushes the building savannah sparrow which state is it endangered species are here that by on air we have about a dozen care but not very many andersen says until the late nineteenth century by arnaud was part of a two thousand acre mark that bit by bit people dugout are filled in the marshes and headed off in the ocean by ana well glenn's was the creation of marina del ray not only did they excavate a large amount of wetlands for the marina within the phil was put in what was left of the wetlands

sometimes the fill an approach twenty state biologist and a team of consultants are studying how to return pulses of seawater to diana a little flows in now but it's mostly confined to a manmade channel was a new engineering more tidal water could flow into flood the soil and nourish marsh plants ucla weapons ecologist rich ambrose says returning tidal flow to viola will create habitat for several little fishes such as top smelt and maybe some bigger ones things like halibut for other flatfish which really like to use these fall marshes as nurse or habitat and so and restoration the hope would be that it would be a much better fish for sure that would be a bonanza for birds ornithology kimball garrett a good functioning salt marshes like a big bird feeder in a way says food for not only programmers like shore birds with dr imber boy turned saw

garrett hopes of restoring by ana will bring back a bird that's disappeared from la county to get out of a top cabinet at the county natural history museums and retrieve some say the words they're stuffed with cotton candy rains bailing out on a train there are three some species of college education and we have here is the sub species like loaded clapper rail garrett says the rails thin bodies help them squeeze through thickets of marsh plants and they make a distinctive call just to circle our series of it three live like letting your hands a biologist attempting to restore by ana will face a number of challenges fishing teams brandt anderson points out the spot where horner and jefferson boulevard that's one of our biggest constraint is that we have a regional

anderson says it might be possible to elevate or consolidate the roads even so playa del rey is too close and too low to allow unrestrained title flows back into the wetland so seawater will need to be controlled with gates and much of bionic is now so high it could be very expensive to inundate it but i'll just say there will still be plenty of opportunity ecologist which ambrose bring dial into a portion of that light and you can get other habitats maybe a brackish marcia for for a marsh and says ambrose drier areas called uplands with so many possibilities biologists are contemplating their many southern california species that need more habitat burrowing owls least terns which can they accommodate set there certainly will be species that we would love to buy on a

budget adjusts will be possible to design it to be optimal for those species but a great piece of property but it's only a small fraction of habitat used to be there and it's just not possible to get everything back and there's the little matter of paying for it all the state is allocated twenty five billion to plan a restoration but fish and game will have to hunt around for more it plans to present preliminary restoration ideas to the public this fall from guyana well and also set sail at nine point three kpcc