MAKING A DIFFERENCE / Rhapsody in Green : Environmental Combat with a Smile

Many of the familiar plants of Southern California such as German Ivy, ice plant, castor bean and Eucalyptus and pepper trees are, in fact, non-native interlopers. By accident and design they are obliterating native plants that often provide food sources for the region’s animal life. So it’s good to have a sense of humor to accompany a goal as ambitious as restoring the Southern California’s natural environment in the next 25 years. The founders of Studio City-based Rhapsody in Green, Jon Earl and Ellen Petty, have both, using corny good humor to stir environmental awareness even as they marshal crews to eradicate interlopers. Their roadside signs in the Hollywood Hills announce: “Up Ahead: Gas, Food, 15 Million People,” “Coyotes: Celebrating 40,000 Years on this Mountain,” and “You are Watching the Nature Channel.” Earl and Petty have deployed hundreds of volunteers to help other environmental groups, property owners, public officials, scientists and researchers to restore and maintain native habitats throughout the region, one patch of land at a time. Here’s how a recent collaboration worked:

On Regaining Habitats:

“Consider the grandeur of our original Santa Monica Mountain Range. What would it look like without all those introduced European grasses that turn from green to brown each year? Even now, the green-hairstreak butterfly is flying through South Central Los Angeles looking for the native deer weed plant, and cedar waxwings are coming through the Santa Monica Mountains looking for toyon trees. The story is that no animal or plant stands alone. And the story is that we need to know that we live in a natural habitat. It’s not somewhere else.”-Jon Earl, co-founder of Rhapsody in Green

RECORD OF A MISSION

1.Threatened: the endangered Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis, or Palos Verdes blue butterfly, thought to be extinct until last year; and the delicate Astragulus trichopodus lonchus or rattleweed, upon which the butterfly breeds

2. Wanted: the ubiquitous Carpodrotus edulis , or ice plant, which had overtaken a U.S. Navy fueling facility in San Pedro. Volunteer Walker Wells uproots ice plants, to protect a surviving colony of Palos Verdes blue butterflies, and plants rattleweed in its place.

3. Results: several butterflies spotted, five acres of land cleared of ice plant

TO GET INVOLVED: Call (213) 654-5821.

Researched by CATHERINE GOTTLIEB / Los Angeles Times