SPECIAL REPORT: Oil on the Beach : MANNING THE BARRICADES : GARY GORMAN : Helped found Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy and worked to keep oil out of Santa Ana River.

If the oil was going to come to newly restored Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach, Gary Gorman was going to be there to stop it.

“He went down there when he first heard it on TV,” said Gorman’s mother-in-law, Juanita Jones. “He and his son went, and they got in at 3 a.m. He slept a couple of hours, and then he went back out again.”

Gorman, a fireman- cum -environmentalist, helped found the Huntington Beach Wetlands Conservancy in 1985 to restore a dusty, 26-acre tract near the mouth of the Santa Ana River to its natural condition as a saltwater marsh. Last year, with the help of a state grant, the sea returned at last to Talbert Marsh, located behind Gorman’s house, when a channel was opened at the Huntington Beach levee.

When the water returned, so did the wildlife: endangered least terns, stopping on their migratory path from South America; Caspian terns, diving gracefully into the water from 25 to 50 feet for fish; the tiny Belding’s savanna sparrow, another endangered species; grebes, pelicans and others.

After all the work that Gorman, his wife, Lynn, their sons Chris, 15, and Gary Scott, 8, and his mother-in-law had put into nurturing the marsh back to life, he wasn’t about to let black goo from an oil spill destroy it.

Officials placed vinyl booms at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, as well as at several other ecologically sensitive locations. But Gorman and conservancy members didn’t believe the plastic would withstand the high-velocity waters of the Santa Ana River.

They were waiting with bulldozers to push sand into the opening, even though it would mean shutting off the saltwater for the tidal pools. But officials said the dam could cause flooding upstream if there was rain.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, officials gave the go-ahead for a temporary dam. And as darkness fell over the oil-slick sea, Gorman and the bulldozers held it back from the river.