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Malibu Lagoon Project Updates; L.A. County Birding Guide
The California Coastal Commission met yesterday, Wednesday 8/8/12 and voted to deny the request to revoke the lagoon restoration project permit, brought by project opponents. The project will continue. Work on the channels is scheduled to be completed by Oct. 16, 2012. Work on the various interpretive features will continue for a while after that.
“There’s not a single shred of evidence that would have to be proven for us to entertain revocation,” said Commissioner Jana Zimmer. David Wiseman, attorney for Cal. State Parks, said: “ [The request] was not timely and not filed with due diligence….These types of revocation requests are really broad for the intention of causing delay.” He also asked the commission to consider granting a request from State Parks to recoup attorneys fees and other costs to staff.
Link to Malibu Patch blog article on the CCC decision.
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Sometime next week the path to the beach will be changed to follow the newly-constructed berm. Some mechanical work will be done on the current pathway. While it is, we’ll be using the berm.
Our Malibu Lagoon 2012 Project page has links to this patch article, YouTube interviews with the project staff (latest is 8/3 interview with Mark Abramson, talking about how the channel and island grading work is going, the path change, and just what was going on with that weird classification by the USF&G of Snowy Plover critical habitat, which included areas covered by fill dirt, brush and the southern channel.
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In our never-ending effort to bring you quality birding information and news, we now announce that our Los Angeles County Birding Spots page is now, finally (more-or-less) complete. Give it a try. Tell your friends. Comments and suggestions welcome!
I put this page together primarily as a service to birders visiting or passing through L.A., new birders looking for good birding spots in their area, and…me! I get a lot of email from strangers looking for information (RFI – request for information) on when & where to bird in L.A. From now on, I’m going to send them a link to this page, adding that if they have any additional questions, send me an email. A big time saver in the long run.
[Chuck Almdale]
Blogs & Websites
Series on the Western Snowy Plover
I recently finished a 7-part series on Western Snowy Plovers, which is now posted on the Malibu (California) Patch blogsite.
It contains a couple of typographical errors.
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If you’ve looked at our permanent page on the Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project, you know that we’ve been doing 10-year comparative censuses of the birds of the lagoon. I recently put these figures into a Malibu Patch blog, with a bit more explanation for the general reader who might not know a raptor from a passerine. Bottom line: So far, the project is not having a significant effect on the birds.
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The Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology is a great outfit, well worth supporting if you have a few extra dollars rattling around. They also have a great website. One of their useful features is All About Birds. On various species it has photos, sounds, videos, facts of all sorts. One useful feature, difficult to find elsewhere, is it shows the entire range of a species including its wintering range south of the border. So if you’re wondering about the Cerulean Warbler, for example, a name-search will quickly show you that it breeds in the Eastern U.S., migrates through eastern Mexico and winters in South America from Venezuela to Bolivia.
[Chuck Almdale]
One of the Ballona Salt Marsh channels (Leslie Davidson ’07)
Ballona Wetlands is recruiting volunteers for the Audubon Society’s education program to lead small groups of schoolchildren on nature walks. No experience necessary. Six Tuesday classes of docent training will be offered beginning Sept 11, 2012 from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information call Diana at 310-821-6444.
Link to our website.
Thanks so much.
Diana Spurlin
SANTA MONICA BAY AUDUBON SOCIETY
STATEMENT OF SUPPORT FOR
THE MALIBU LAGOON RESTORATION PROJECT
August 3, 2012
The Board of Directors of Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society (SMBAS) supports the Malibu Lagoon Restoration Project. This is not a new position for us. Members of SMBAS began attending the Malibu Lagoon Task Force (MTLF) meetings in the 1990’s. We took part in the numerous MLTF discussions, and our suggestion to add ornithological expert Kimball Garrett to the Lagoon Technical Advisory Committee was accepted. At the conclusion of the planning phase, we voted in favor of the MTLF final recommendations. In October 2010, we sent a statement to the California Coastal Commission affirming our support for the project; we now reiterate our continuing support.
Over the past two months we have observed the progress of the project and have witnessed nothing unexpected, unplanned or dangerous. We continue to hold monthly bird walks at the lagoon as we have done for almost thirty years. We continue our monthly censusing of the birds at the lagoon and of the Western Snowy Plovers at their winter roost on the beach. Our results indicate that as yet the project has had no affect on the lagoon’s birdlife, either in species diversification or total bird numbers; both quantities are varying within their usual ranges for the most recent ten-year period. Western Snowy Plovers, a threatened species which roosts on Surfrider Beach adjacent to the lagoon, are similarly unaffected.
Based on our observations, bird population in the channels average approximately five percent of that in the main lagoon. Our understanding is that low oxygen and high bacteria levels in the channels severely limited invertebrate populations in the mud substrate, leaving little for the birds to eat.
We continue to support the plan: to remove the fill dirt placed there decades ago, redesign the channels to create better water circulation and increase ground area subject to water level fluctuation, replant the area with native plants appropriate to a brackish wetland, and redesign the pathway to the beach.
The Board of Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society
Charles G. Bragg, President
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The above notice was sent on August 3, 2012 to California State Parks for their records. It also was sent to the California Coastal Commission, to reiterate SMBAS’s support for the project. The Coastal Commission currently is reviewing a petition from project opponents to revoke the project permit. [Chuck Almdale]
Full Sturgeon Moon 8/1/12 4:27 p.m. PDT
Here’s another update from SMBAS Blog on that large, circular, shining object which has frequently and mysteriously appeared in our nighttime sky this year (some, speaking in hushed whispers, call it…the moon).
Aug. 1, 4:27 p.m. PDT — Full Sturgeon Moon, when this large fish of the Great Lakes and other major bodies of water, such as Lake Champlain, is most readily caught. A few tribes knew this moon as the Full Red Moon because when the moon rises, it appears reddish through sultry haze (in 2012, “The Old Farmer’s Almanac” gives this moniker to the full moon of Aug. 31). Other variations include the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon.
The next significant full moon will occur on Aug. 31, 6:58 a.m. PDT. Keep an eye on this spot for additional breaking news on this unprecedented event.
This information comes to you courtesy of:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45911225/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/how-s-full-moons-got-their-strange-names/#.T16CDHlIXUx
But that’s waaaaay too long to type in, and besides, you don’t need to go there because SMBAS has done the work for you!
[Chuck Almdale]
