The Wild Life: The Last Wild Place in Long Beach

Volunteers breaking ground to plant native Salt Grass

This past Saturday, the Los Cerritos Wetlands Stewardship Program, a program I help lead, put on a Habitat Restoration and Native Plant planting at Zedler Marsh in the Los Cerritos Wetlands in Long Beach and Seal Beach, California.

This event we had volunteers from St. Anthony’s High School through the Aquarium of the Pacific and other public volunteers come out to create two new alkali meadow habitat sites and help plant two dozen plugs of native salt grass in the mid-marsh zone of Zedler Marsh. This Salt Grass is important because it houses our endangered species of butterfly called the Wandering Skipper.

Salt Grass going in!

Finished Product! Give it a couple of months and it will be a viable part of the habitat.

This land is not public, yet. It is fully functional oil land but has been purchased by the Los Cerritos Wetlands Authority for conservation purposes. The plan is to conserve and restore the land, roughly 450 acres, and then form it into a public area where people can recreate and enjoy the only wild land left in Long Beach.

Volunteers from the Aquarium of the Pacific building habitat

This program is amazing. It allows the public of Long Beach to be an integral part of the restoration and creation of the Los Cerritos Wetlands recreation area. Depending on the season, we have native plant plantings, which we grow ourselves at our growing space on site, trash cleanups and nature walks all to get people into the wild and start enjoying and caring about the environment around them. We try to connect the enjoyment and fun of the outdoors with personal lifestyle choices, possibly changes, that can positively effect the environment.