An Ugly Duckling : City Tackles Job of Promoting Value of Famosa Slough

Jim Peugh stood on the banks of Famosa Slough, admiring the wiles of willets.

Common to salt marshes like the slough, the spindly-legged birds appear plain, gray and plump as they poke about on land, the chairman of the Friends of Famosa Slough explained. But in flight, the bird’s striped black and white wings are unveiled, cutting an eye-catching profile that bears little resemblance to a willet at rest.

“It’s to confuse predators,” Peugh said, as a willet demonstrated his point, taking to the air with a flourish. “When he sits, he’s as blah as he can be.”

As the city of San Diego sets out to restore the 30-acre salt marsh that the willet calls home, Peugh and other environmental advocates are hoping for a similar blah-to-breathtaking transformation. Six weeks ago, the city paid $3.5 million to acquire the southernmost part of the slough near Ocean Beach, which experts say is one of San Diego County’s last remaining coastal wetlands. But at first glance, the slough looks less like a precious wetland habitat than a vacant lot.

Bisected by West Point Loma Boulevard, the slough has long served as a makeshift dump for tires, used furniture and asphalt debris left behind after street repairs. During years of neglect, its banks have eroded and its marsh grasses have been trampled by people who unwittingly walk dogs or ride bicycles over the sandy terrain.

Surrounded by civilization--a Laundromat, a gas station and several apartment complexes loom on every side--it is vulnerable to sewage spills and urban runoff. Every few minutes, an airplane roars overhead.

And yet, Famosa Slough has continued to attract the likes of marbled godwits, black-bellied plovers and green-backed herons, to name a few of the birds that feed and nest there. As community activists, environmentalists, biologists and politicians begin planning its future as a city-owned nature preserve, they seem painfully aware of how much they have to lose.

“People like to throw a lot of money at something--see a big flashy result, go away and congratulate themselves,” said Peugh, who sits on the Famosa Slough Guidance Committee, a newly formed group that will advise San Diego’s Park and Recreation Department throughout the slough’s recovery. “But we can’t make that mistake. The place has survived on its own in spite of us. The criminal thing to do would be to ruin it now.”

Joy Zedler, a San Diego State University biology professor who also sits on the guidance committee, agreed.

“These systems are just incredibly complex--we don’t know exactly how to manage Famosa Slough,” she said. “The wrong thing to do would be to spend a year developing a rigid plan and go in and make major changes to the system. We’d probably be wrong.”

So, instead of spending time and money coming up with “a one-shot plan that you walk away from,” Zedler said, the guidance committee has decided to try a more cautious approach: what biologists call adaptive management.

The idea is to try out improvements on a small scale, measuring their effects and adjusting the management plan according to how the system responds. It takes more time, and it’s not as conspicuous, but Zedler says such flexible, long-term planning is essential to assure that intended improvements do more good than harm.

Having rejected a plan that would quickly create “a big flashy result,” however, city officials realize they must find other ways to alert the public to the slough’s worth. In large part, the slough’s most pervasive problems stem from widespread ignorance about its value--vandalism, dumping, pollution. Now, more than ever, there is a need for public education about the slough.

“Miracles don’t happen overnight,” said Gonzalo Lopez, the assistant deputy director of the Park and Recreation Department’s coastal division. “But we need some instant gratification. We need to do what we can to let people know that this has become an active project, not passive anymore.”

The first step will be signs. Right now, the only identifying markers on the site are an “Off-Road Vehicle Activity Prohibited” sign and a water-logged billboard, now outdated, that proclaims that the slough is private property.

But soon, Lopez said, the city will post signs that identify the slough as a city-owned preserve. There is a request in the fiscal 1992 budget for $19,000 for cleanup and maintenance of the slough, he said, so paying for the signs will not be a problem. They’ll be ordered, he said, whenever the guidance committee decides on the wording.

But there are several decisions waiting to be made, each having an impact on how the public uses the slough. Should a protective fence be built around the slough? Or will that alienate visitors? Should there be several destination paths that lead to specific viewpoints? Or would a single path built around the perimeter of the slough cause less disruption to wildlife?

Should there be a touching area, where visitors could learn with their fingers? Should there be a docent program? And, overall, how best can public enthusiasm for the slough be encouraged and put to use?

Before September, when the city announced it had arranged to buy the wetland area from the developer who owned it, the community-based fight to preserve the slough had raged for two decades--at times so fiercely that City Councilman John Hartley compared it to guerrilla warfare.

Throughout the fight, the area’s poor condition was often used as an excuse to destroy it. For years, only the outcry from the community--and particularly from the 800 or so members of the Friends of Famosa Slough--kept the wildlife area from being buried under a condominium complex.

Now, with the biggest battle behind them, the role of the Friends of Famosa Slough and other advocates is changing. But Zedler says they are no less important than before.

“If people have a sense of caring about a system, I think they will treat it differently,” she said. “So much damage can be done by one truck going in and dumping something. If there isn’t a constant watchdog and constant surveillance, we won’t have the kind of system people want.”

Peugh says he is pleased with the direction in which the guidance committee is heading. At their first meeting last month, the members came up with a statement to describe their goal.

“To restore and preserve Famosa Slough as a natural habitat to provide sanctuary for wildlife,” it said, “and to educate the public in the appreciation of the plants and animals that comprise a wetland system.”

Peugh acknowledged that the statement won’t raise any eyebrows.

“It’s pretty vanilla in what it says,” he said. “But what’s important is that it doesn’t say the frightening things it might say. It doesn’t say softball diamonds or water skiing--it doesn’t have a swings-and-slides attitude.”

And if the city’s recent assistance is any indication, he said, a new chapter is indeed beginning for the slough. In the past, Peugh said, the city seemed frequently to do “really offensive things” that damaged the area. Instead of trimming back weeds growing on one of the sloping banks, for example, city workers would hack out the root base, creating what Peugh called “an erosion time bomb.”

But now, in an effort to alert all parties to the special needs of the slough, Lopez has sent a memo to the Planning Department, the streets division, the planners in the Park and Recreation Department and the city attorney asking for a description of how they currently conduct themselves in the area.

“Each agency was doing its own routine, but sometimes conflicting with environmental needs,” Lopez said. “Nobody was trying to damage anything, but sometimes your routine is wrong. You have to educate everybody and to raise the sensitivity.”

As Peugh strolls around the slough, he, too, talks of the primary importance of education. Look there, he says, on the telephone wire--it’s a butcher bird. Named for its unusual eating habits, this little bird impales its insect prey on thorn bushes. When it gets hungry, it returns to the bush to eat.

Across the water, swimming fast, is a pied-bill grebe. And nearby, hundreds of avocets are loafing in a group. The slender-legged waders have long thin bills that curve upward, Peugh says, allowing them to feed by swishing mud back and forth like a gold miner.

“Kids don’t know what a wetland is--they think it’s just a place that hasn’t been built on yet,” he said, heading toward three fat, mottled birds that sit lazily in the reeds. Peugh says they are hybrids, the product of an ill-fated mating of mallards and Peking ducks.

“They don’t do much for themselves except wait to be fed,” he said.

Usually, they don’t have to wait very long. According to Peugh, several people visit the area each day with table scraps and bread crumbs. One man even brings expensive wild bird seed.

“A lot of people think that’s their gift to nature,” Peugh said, shaking his head. “Everybody must think they’re the only ones doing it and that the birds are depending on them.”

But in fact, he says, such generosity does the birds more harm than good. Aside from littering the banks of the slough, bird-feeding visitors alter natural feeding habits. Peugh said studies have shown that such supplemental feeding can disrupt migration patterns of birds--indicating that a shortage of food may be part of what prompts birds to fly elsewhere.

“They ought to depend on themselves,” Peugh said.

Even before the renovation begins in earnest, Peugh has begun allowing himself to dream. Maybe someday, he said, if the slough’s cord grass becomes abundant enough, the slough might lure light-footed clapper rails, a long-legged wading bird that is an endangered species.

“All you can do is provide the environment and hope,” he said.