Brochures Tell How People, Nature Can Coexist

Since Anita Weston moved to a cottage nestled between Laguna Creek and Laguna Canyon three years ago, a coyote ate her cat and a flood ravaged her house and destroyed her car. But the former urbanite said she cannot imagine leaving life on the edge of the wilderness.

The flood “was a great experience, to realize Mother Nature is just that powerful, and material things don’t matter that much,” Weston said. Her cat’s death was heartbreaking, she said, but also a solemn reminder of the rugged wilderness that is literally outside her front gate.

The former Long Beach resident is not alone in choosing to leave city lights, traffic congestion and the concrete jungle for the solitude of nature. But conservationists are worried that even the best-intentioned neighbors can have devastating effects on their surroundings.

Actions as seemingly innocuous as allowing pets to run free, planting exotic flora or wandering off from a trail can destroy sensitive habitats and drive away wildlife, including endangered species.

To educate people about coexisting with the wilderness, the Nature Conservancy, Irvine Co. and Nature Reserve of Orange County will mail 5,000 educational brochures this week to residents who live next to Peters Canyon Regional Park, Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park and Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park. Another 5,000 brochures will be distributed through the reserve, the parks, the Irvine Co. and schools.

“Whenever you build up houses right next to wild lands, you just get a whole slew of issues that you have to address,” said Erick Burres, an ecological reserve manager with the state Department of Fish and Game.

The Irvine Co. spent $30,000 producing the eight-page color brochures, which offer tips on gardening, pets, wildfire protection, safety and more. “It’s designed for people who live on the edge of the wilderness--what to be aware of and how to interact,” said Debra Clarke, outreach coordinator for the Nature Conservancy.

Natural areas near housing, such as Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, have more unauthorized trails and trespassing in protected areas than wilderness areas in more remote locations, she said.

Activity that seems harmless, such as walking off trails, can disturb ground-nesting birds, erode soils and crush plants. “Use park entrances and travel on designated trails,” the brochure admonishes. “It doesn’t take much off-trail activity to beat down sensitive vegetation, whether you are traveling by foot, horseback or bicycle.”

Pets should not be allowed to run free because they can decimate bird populations, introduce domestic diseases to wildlife, pick up disease-carrying ticks or be killed by predators, according to the brochure.

Dogs should be left at home while walking wilderness trails, the brochure says. “Deer and other wildlife tend to avoid areas with dog scent or droppings, thus shrinking their available habitat.”

Encroaching development and shrinking habitat are why these large, protected areas are so crucial, said Earl Lauppe, a biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game.

Lauppe said the only true protection for these refuges is education.

A more visible threat to parklands are the brazen offenders: people who carve unauthorized trails into mountainsides with machetes, rearrange soil to build bike ramps and shoot BB and paint guns, according to park rangers.

Because of limited resources and a huge coverage area, it’s difficult to catch these interlopers, and rangers can’t do much even if they catch them. But in March, the park rangers can issue citations.

Rangers say nuisance complaints--animals getting into gardens or the garbage--are far more common at the edge of the wild.

Teaching people this coexistence lesson is the key, environmentalists said. “We need to promote stewardship whenever possible,” Burres said. “Within Southern California, the environment is a very huge issue . . . so we get a lot of Hollywood people promoting ‘Save the rain forest.’ We need the same type of things locally--on how to protect the oak woodlands, the grasslands, the wetlands and the local canyons.”