Youths Give Nature a Hand : Environment: ‘Someone has got to care,’ girls says of cleanup job by those attending national convention in county of United Synagogue Youth.

From atop a hill, Darren Shane admired the dazzling view of Upper Newport Bay and puzzled momentarily about why he and his friends had been brought here.

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“My first thought, when I looked and saw how beautiful and clean everything was, was that we were in the wrong place,” the 17-year-old Canadian said Wednesday. “I said to myself, ‘There’s nothing to clean here.’ ”

Then Shane and his friends hiked down the winding trail leading to the bay and its marshes. As they got closer, the teen-agers saw the streams of litter and garbage. Their work lay ahead.

The teen-agers were members of United Synagogue Youth, a social and education group for Jewish youths. The group’s annual international convention was held in Irvine this week with a theme of “Who Renews Creation.” Since Sunday, 1,200 youths from throughout North America have attended various study sessions, exploring how Judaism defines their relationship to the natural environment.

On Wednesday they applied what they had learned by traipsing fields and beaches to do their share of preserving the environment as part of United Synagogue Youth’s Social Action/ Tikun Olam (repairing the world) program.

In eight separate groups in different parts of the county, the youths picked up trash on beaches, cleared land of dead shrubs and planted trees.

“For Jews, it’s our moral imperative to do what we can do to help the world,” said Jessica Steinberg, a United Synagogue Youth staff member. “A big part of being an observant Jew is understanding your surroundings and helping people around you.”

The girls rolled their sleeves up and tied back their hair, while most of the boys stripped off their shirts to work under the hot sun.

“Someone has got to care about saving the environment,” said 17-year-old Pamela Rich of Florida as she scooped up and bagged a pile of dried ice plant that she and others had scraped from the hard ground in Crystal Cove State Park. Removing the ice plant, an African import normally used for landscaping, will allow natural vegetation to grow back, Pamela and others learned.

“All this space will not last forever if we don’t do something about it,” she said.

Several miles up the coast, another group plucked trash from the marshes on the Upper Newport Bay.

From afar, the bay looked pristine and clear. But up close, as the teen-agers soon discovered, garbage big and small dotted the area that is habitat for wildlife including the California gnatcatcher.

In only 25 minutes dozens of bags were filled with litter such as bottle tops, cigarette butts and beer cans. Also in the haul were a vial that had apparently held crack cocaine, a light bulb, a yo-yo, part of a bedpost and a seat cushion.

“It just amazes me how some people could be so uncaring,” said Kerri Shaffer, 17, of Maryland. Added Anne Miller, also 17 and of the same state: “I wish more people would just have a little more self-control whenever they think about littering properties that don’t belong to them.”

As Andrew Binstock, 17, of Maryland struggled with a friend to carry a dripping bag holding a chintz-covered seat cushion, he said, “I’m glad I was here today, doing this.”