Bolsa Chica Serves as Lesson in Preservation : Education: Foreign exchange students tour the wetlands to learn how U.S. protects natural treasures.

Walking through the Bolsa Chica wetlands on Tuesday, Mamourou Diourte was half a world from home.

Mali, Diourte’s native country in Africa, has no ocean coast, nor does it have many of the birds and plants Diourte stopped to inspect as he walked slowly through the wetlands preserve. But Diourte nonetheless found much in the Bolsa Chica that has environmental application in Mali.

“My country is landlocked, but we have rivers,” Diourte said. “As cities are becoming crowded, the rivers are threatened. People are not thinking ahead.” He said Mali needs to turn governmental attention to the plight of its rivers.

Bolsa Chica, Diourte said, is a lesson in how Americans attempt to preserve some of their natural treasures.

Diourte, a plant pathology student at Kansas State University, was among 16 international students touring the Bolsa Chica State Ecological Reserve as part of a 10-day educational visit to Orange County. All 16 are foreign exchange students at U.S. colleges and universities outside California.

The visit is financed by an $8,000 grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The host agency is the Orange County Office of Protocol.

“Orange County benefits from the visits of these students because we also learn from them,” said Mariebelle Eustaquio, coordinator for the protocol office. “We also benefit because this county has companies that do much international business.”

Orange County is one of 25 midwinter training sites selected this year by the federal Agency for International Development. Communities vie for the opportunity by sending in applications, including a proposed “training theme.”

Orange County’s Office of Protocol for six years has been named as a training site, and for the past three years the theme has focused on the environment.

“The Bolsa Chica is on the students’ schedule in Orange County because we want to address the issue of land preservation,” Eustaquio said. “In many of their countries there is a lot of development by multinational countries, and some areas, such as rain forests, are under threat. We wanted to give the students an idea how some citizens’ organizations, such as the Amigos de Bolsa Chica, can organize preservation efforts for ecological systems.”

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Amigos de Bolsa Chica is a nonprofit citizens’ group that has spearheaded 20 years of efforts to preserve the wetlands near Pacific Coast Highway and Warner Avenue. Members of the Amigos gave talks to the international students during Tuesday’s tour.

“In our country, the environment has taken a beating,” Adrianne Morrison, executive director of the Amigos, told the students. “Here in California, we lead the nation in the percentage of destroyed wetlands, and it’s something we’re not proud of.”

Morrison noted that the Koll Co. is proposing some housing development on land around the Bolsa Chica. In exchange, Koll would aid in the restoration of some degraded wetlands, Morrison said.

Amigos de Bolsa Chica will be watching Koll’s proposed development plans, step by step, he said.

Some of the students said they were impressed that citizen groups like that could successfully pressure government to save the environment.

“We can use this experience (of Bolsa Chica) very, very much,” said Celma Quiroga of Bolivia, an economics student at the University of Illinois.

“Something that really surprises me here (in Orange County) is how people are involved, and how you are aware of your (environmental) problems. This is something we have to do in Latin America.”