Turnout Up at Expanded Earth Day Observance : Ventura: The ecological festival is combined with a children’s arts event and the Cottontail Canyon celebration.

Standing behind a folding table laden with pamphlets on the dangers of pesticides, Linda Dillon looked approvingly at the passing throng Saturday at Ventura’s Arroyo Verde Park.

“Usually at Earth Day, we’re preaching to the converted,” she said. “This time, we’re seeing people we haven’t seen before.”

That was the idea behind combining the city’s Earth Day celebration this year with two other crowd-pleasing events: the Children’s Celebration of the Arts and Cottontail Canyon Day, a spring festival. Organizers estimated that as many as 10,000 people attended the six-hour event.

“We knew that Cottontail Canyon Day would draw the kids out, but Earth Day has not had that appeal to young children,” said Jenise Heck, the city’s coordinator of youth programs, who helped stage the event. “By combining them, we expose the kids to it.”

Which was exactly what Dillon was trying to do. Her group, Mothers & Others for Safe Food, tries to educate parents about the risks to children of eating fruits and vegetables grown with toxic chemicals.

“The is an important event for us because we’re trying to reach parents of young children,” she said.

Nearly every adult had at least one child in tow, and there were plenty of free games, rides and entertainment to go along with the exhibits on composting, recycling and energy conservation.

Moorpark College’s Exotic Animal Training and Management Program put on shows featuring a California sea lion, a baboon, a squirrel monkey, an African cat known as a serval, and a kinkajou, sometimes called a honey bear.

Clint Lusardi, a second-year student in the program, said showing children the animals gets them concerned about preserving their habitats. Other organizations brought owls, hawks and snakes to pique interest in the environment.

Judging by the long line, one of the most popular activities was camel riding. But Rebecca Sams, 9, of Ventura, felt a little queasy after she and her sister Michelle, 6, dismounted.

“That was worse than the elephant,” Rebecca said, recalling a pachyderm she rode at a circus in Oxnard last year. “It was bumpy. I wish I wasn’t sitting on the hump.”

Ten-year-old Jamal Lyksett of Santa Paula entered a contest that required him to select environmentally correct products. For example, he had to decide whether a plastic milk carton was better or worse than a paper one.

“The paper is easier to recycle,” said Jamal, a Boy Scout who is working toward a merit badge in environmental science. At home, he said, “we get all the cans and paper and stuff and put them in different containers to take to the recycling center.”

With such expertise, it was no surprise that Jamal had a perfect score, good for a free T-shirt.

At other tables and booths around the park, hundreds of children were using construction paper to make bunny ears and other artwork.

Ojai artist Gayel Childress showed a group of children how to re-create the art of the Mimbres, the ancestors of the Apaches.

“They were famous for their black-and-white pottery,” Childress said, allowing the children to use white paper plates, black construction paper and ink to create designs using their favorite animals.

“This is the only way to expose kids to art,” Childress said, “especially with all the cutbacks in the schools.”