Crew revitalizes Shipley Nature Center

NATURAL PERSPECTIVES

A crew of young workers from the Orange County Conservation Corps has

been working at Shipley Nature Center since 2001. Quietly, steadily

and without fanfare, they have worked a minor miracle on the

landscape.

In 2001, the city hired the corps to remove Arundo donax, also

called giant reed, from the nature center. One trail had shrunk to a

mere tunnel through the dense reeds. Arundo is a fire hazard even

when green; it sucks up the ground water; it crowds out native plant

life; it provides no food for local wildlife. It had to go.

Using a rake-hoe combination hand tool called a McLeod, the corps

crew dug Arundo out, day after day. The reeds can regrow from thick

rhizomes that lay buried in the soil, so they were dug out and hauled

away. By fall of 2002, the Arundo was mostly gone. The few stalks

that crop up now and then from hidden rhizomes are quickly dealt

with.

With the Arundo gone, the crew turned their attention to the

castor bean forest. Ten-foot-tall stalks towered over the trail.

Castor bean is the source of ricin, a deadly poison. It had to go,

too.

The crew eliminated the dense forest of beanstalks. But each plant

can produce 150,000 seeds, and the seeds can live in the ground for

10 years. Although the crew had all the old castor bean out, a whole

new forest sprouted with the first rain last fall. The crew removed

them too. None of the plants have been allowed to mature and set seed

so far this year, so eventually the castor bean will be eliminated.

There has been some turnover of personnel on the corps work crew,

but mostly the same workers have been there since the beginning of

the project. Benny Ramirez, the crew supervisor, is the newest team

member. Benny had just finished battling Arundo and tamarisk at

another job site, so he was ready for the challenges he faced at the

Shipley Nature Center. With valuable experience, good judgment and a

strong work ethic, Benny has continued the attack on invasive

non-natives along with crew leader Jay Knight, and team members

Angela Cowan, Norman Leimer and Edwin Coreas.

Some days they brought a chain saw and cut trees such as tamarisk,

eucalyptus, Brazilian pepper and Myoporum. They cut some of the trees

into firewood and chipped others to make mulch for the trails. They

also cleared trails and planted trees.

The Orange County Conservation Corps is a great program. Founded

in 1993, the corps hires young people, generally ages 18 to 26, and

provides them with work experience, job skills and education to help

them make the transition from adolescence to employable adulthood.

The corps has 90 members. In addition to basic job skills, they learn

about landscaping, masonry, irrigation systems, trail building and

power tools. No, they’re not prisoners. Yes, they take a lot of

breaks. It’s hard work out there in the sun. We know. We’ve worked

with them. Despite all the breaks, they loaded 75 tons of weeds into

dumpsters in 2002, and more than 10 tons so far this year. Plus,

they’ve recycled 20 tons of vegetation on site.

The crew of five works at the Nature Center from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Monday through Thursday. On Fridays, the crew members go to class.

Some work on their high school diplomas, while others take courses

such as tool safety, computers or leadership development. For

example, Benny is taking a course in plant identification, and Jay

just received his GED.

June 26 was the last day in the city’s contract with the corps.

The crew had eliminated the Arundo, pulled a passel of passionvine,

and felled a forest of castor beans. By the end of June, they had

made tremendous inroads into the morass of weeds that had overrun the

nature center. But some of the meadows are still filled with poison

hemlock. Brazilian pepper and tamarisk are re-sprouting from roots.

Passionvine is once again smothering some of the willows. And castor

bean will be a problem for years to come.

The Friends of Shipley Nature Center took over management of the

center in October 2002. On the first Saturday of every month,

volunteers pull weeds, but weekend warriors can’t do the job alone.

So with a $10,000 grant from the Santa Ana River Conservancy Trust

Fund, a $15,000 matching grant from the Orange County Conservation

Corps, and $5,000 from their treasury, the Friends hired the corps

crew for another four months.

The Friends of Shipley Nature Center are hosting a lunch for the

work crew this Thursday at the Park Bench Cafe in Central Park to

celebrate the crew’s transition from being hired by the city to being

hired by the volunteer group. The only downside is that there is

funding sufficient to hire only three of the original crew. Benny,

Jay and Angela will stay at Shipley, while Norman and Edwin will join

another crew to work in parks at other cities in Orange County.

Now the question remains, can a crew of three finally win the

battle against the weeds at Shipley in the next four months?

* VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and

environmentalists. They can be reached at [email protected].