Preserving a Slew of Memories : Environment: Gardena plans to convert an old 10-acre patch of wetlands surrounded by urban sprawl into a nature center. The city will receive nearly $1 million in state and county funds for the Willows project.

Walk with Jim Cragin in “the slew” and hear him recall memories of a Depression-era boy who drifted across ponds on plywood boards and fetched tree frogs off branches and garter snakes off the ground to startle teachers and little girls.

“One time we got a whole bunch of these little frogs and put it in the teacher’s desk so when she opened it they all came jumping out,” said Cragin, now a Gardena city councilman. With a mischievous giggle, he added: “We heard her screaming and screaming.”

Such memories have sustained Cragin in his long campaign to preserve the obscure slew, an unlikely 10-acre patch of wetlands amid Gardena’s urban sprawl.

Gardena has plans to convert the wetlands--today known as the Willows for the old narrow-leafed trees clustered in the

marsh--into a nature center. As Cragin puts it, the center off Vermont Avenue and Artesia Boulevard would be a place to “leave the concrete jungle” and would include a walking trail around the perimeter and lookouts for photographers and bird-watchers.

This year the city will receive nearly $1 million from state and county sources for the project, dubbed the Willows Wetland Nature Center, although it probably won’t be completed for a few years.

For Cragin, the project feeds his dream that some day people will appreciate the marsh, one of four freshwater wetlands remaining in the South Bay. The others are Madrona Marsh in Torrance, Machado Lake in Wilmington’s Harbor Regional Park and Wilderness Park in Redondo Beach.

The wetlands (they are wet only in winter after heavy rains) once sat on tributaries feeding the Los Angeles River. They teem with fragile plant and animal life and recall how the land looked before condos and shopping malls took over.

“Our youngsters could come in and see what I saw as a youngster,” Cragin said, strolling through the brush and blooming wildflowers, as the squawk of birds broke the silence.

The city plans to use some of the funding for a biological study to see just what plants and animals are in the Willows.

Studies of the Willows in 1986 and 1988 by Richard Vogl, a biologist from Cal State Los Angeles, showed the property lacked birds common to such wetlands--mallards, green herons, common egrets, and wood ducks, for example.

But Vogl did find many other birds, including killdeer, kingfishers, mourning doves, a loggerhead shrike, and a flock of white-crowned sparrows, suggesting that proper maintenance of the wetland’s tiny ponds might encourage the return of other creatures.

Aside from the willows that give the wetland its name, the area has Siberian elms, ash trees, mustard plants, and scores of wildflowers that covered the South Bay before development uprooted them.

The Willows, Vogl said, are “valuable from a historical standpoint in that it represents a vegetation type that once dominated large areas of the low-lying portions of coastal Los Angeles and Orange counties.”

“More importantly, the area is biologically valuable because of the species it contains, or the potential species it could support,” he added. “The Willows area might again, with the right conditions, proper management and protection, support a rich mixture of wildlife.”

Nature lovers, too, have marveled at the wildlife, with butterflies swarming at the swamp in spring and summer.

“I saw 35 buckeye butterflies there and I have never seen so many in one place,” said Shirley Turner, a member of Friends of the Madrona Marsh, a group working to preserve that wetland.

Gardena has owned the Willows since 1930. The idea to convert the area into a nature center has lingered for years but never moved forward because of a lack of funding, said Gail Doi, the city’s grant manager.

The city finally secured funding this year through the state Habitat Conservation Fund and Proposition A, the ballot measure approved by voters last year that will finance $540 million in park and beach improvements countywide.

The state funding totals $162,000, with the city providing the same amount in matching funds. The Prop. A funds, which have been approved but not yet delivered, total $850,000, Doi said.

Gardena will use the money to build a 1,600-square-foot nature center and install a 3,100-foot trail around the perimeter of the swamp, with benches and displays identifying the flora and fauna. The project would need approval from state and federal authorities, but city officials do not expect problems since the goal is to enhance the swamp, not destroy it.

Gardena has few open spaces left, so the Willows has become increasingly valuable as a refuge from all the sprawl, Cragin said. Right next to the Willows are a 200-unit senior citizen housing complex and a row of townhouses.

Over the years, developers occasionally have inquired about building on or near the swamp, with one proposing a glass-walled restaurant with a lawn that would slope into the Willows. He was rebuffed.

Still, people have left their mark. Crushed beer cans and plastic foam containers lie in clumps scattered about the Willows, although from time to time city public works crews clean up the property. Five years ago the city erected a fence around the perimeter and hung a sign: “City Property. Keep Out.”

“We didn’t want it to become a public dump,” Cragin said. “Give people a chance and that’s what they’ll do.”

Approaching a small pile of trash, Cragin says: “It’s kind of a symbol of civilization. Here is all of this nature, and man throws all of this trash on it.”

But it doesn’t take long for the swamp to win him over again. He speaks earnestly of what the Willows will offer visitors when the gates swing open.

“You will be able to sit on a few benches and say civilization has disappeared. It’s back to the way it was.”