Community Comes Together To Restore Habitat In Redondo Beach

REDONDO BEACH, CA — Marine Biologist Ann Dalkey was walking along Esplanade in Redondo Beach in 2008 when she saw an invasive species of plant growing there and thought, "Well what if we put in native plants?"

Since then, a multi-year effort has been made to remove the invasive ice plant and other weeds and bring life to the Esplanade. Other organizations, such as the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and the South Bay Parkland Conservancy, brought more people to help plant, water and weed along the coast.

Saturday marked the first time that all of the organizations worked together, but they have all been separately dedicated to restoring the Esplanade Bluffs throughout the years. SBPC board member and project lead Jim Montgomery said it was awesome to be good relatives with the rest of the planet and was excited to be a part of a beautiful, budding community.

"What I'm so excited about right now is it's like this groundwork has been laid," Montgomery said. "In my vision eventually all two miles of the coast are going to be restored. That's the vision, I just close my eyes and I see, in the spring, a super bloom of native wildflowers."

What the groups are focusing on at the moment, is removing the ice plant, which originates from South Africa according to Dalkey and forms a large blanket of quick-growing greenery that chokes out native plants and alters the composition of the soil.

With the help of the US Fish and Wildlife Service funding the restoration with a $79,000 grant, the goal is to expand the Bluff Restoration Project and create a habitat for the endangered El Segundo Blue Butterfly. By planting native plants such as sea cliff buckwheat and other dune plants, other pollinators and lizards and birds will come to thrive in the area, according to Fish and Wildlife coastal program coordinator Carolyn Lieberman.

"If things aren't going well for listed species are potentially not going to go very well for us either or for other species," Lieberman said. "you're recreating an ecosystem, so that's better for all the other animals and plants and ultimately it is better for us as well. What's good for the butterflies is good for us."

LACC has been working on the project for almost four and a half years, according to senior program director Robert Skillman, but was running out of money to maintain the site. Skillman said it was a perfect partnership when they came together with SBPC in 2020 to keep the work going.

Corps employees are comprised of at-risk young people aged 18 to 25 who may be on parole, just released from prison or didn't get their high school diploma. They come out two to four times a week during the week to maintain the land and connect inner city youth with meaningful restoration work.

Skillman said over the last four years, probably 60 corps members have touched the project and have seen hundreds of blue butterflies at the site during the flight season.

"We bring inner city youth out to project site like this and they learn about restoration and then they also are exposed to a piece of land that belongs to them as well, this beach," Skillman said. "Some of our corps members have never seen the beach before even though they're 15-20 miles inland, they just never had access to the beach."

Over the next five years, the organizations will continue their work removing the ice plant and other exotic invasive species and replace them with dune and bluff habitat that will eventually cover 6.9 acres.

So far, the project is considered majorly successful. El Segundo Blue Butterflies have returned to the Esplanade and have been documented up the coast up to Avenue I in Redondo Beach.

People interested in volunteering and being part of restoration efforts can sign up at SBPC's website here.