River Targeted for Restoration

A key stretch of the Santa Clara River could be taken out of private hands and run by the government to promote wildlife and nature parks under an ambitious new environmental recovery plan.

The proposal, unveiled Monday, seeks to acquire and restore 6,400 acres of some of the best remaining stream-side habitat in Southern California. The plan focuses on a 12-mile portion of the river between the ocean and the foothills that forms an ecologically as well as politically sensitive boundary, dividing stream-loving plants and animals from urban areas and separating Oxnard from Ventura.

It won’t be easy, however, since many difficult agreements must be forged among a multitude of government agencies, landowners and environmental groups. At the outset, two Ventura-owned golf courses, right in the midst of the river corridor proposed for protection, pose a significant obstacle. Nonetheless, the proposal appears to enjoy wide support, and a willingness to proceed prevails, officials say.

“This is a huge, huge step toward the concept of a continuous green-way from the river estuary to about as far as you can get it inland,” said Ron Bottorff of Friends of the Santa Clara River. “This is phenomenal stuff and will give the river a major, major piece of protection.”

The goal is to undo some of the human encroachments that have severely degraded the river, including golf courses, farms, and sand and gravel mines. Those modifications, along with levees to protect homes and highways from floods, have caused big chunks of the riparian ecosystem to come crashing down.

The proposal coincides with a separate 57,000-acre, habitat-protection project at the other end of the river, in the headwaters nearly 100 miles away in Angeles National Forest. That plan, already approved by the state Legislature, would allocate $2.5 million this year to begin acquiring properties under a program run by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

If the efforts succeed, the Santa Clara River could become a model for other parts of the state wrestling with ways to balance growth and environmental protection along contested rivers and streams.

“This will be the biggest river restoration project in Southern California,” said Peter Brand, California Coastal Conservancy project manager. “This could happen in many of the big rivers around California.”

The Santa Clara River is home to 22 rare plant and animal species, including nine threatened and endangered ones such as the least Bell’s vireo and southwestern willow flycatcher birds and a reclusive fish known as the unarmored three-spine stickleback. The stream’s lower stretch is also proposed as critical habitat for the endangered southern steelhead trout, which uses the stream like a freeway to move between the Pacific Ocean and gravelly mountain creeks to spawn.

A 130-acre estuary, the heart of the reclamation project, has been especially degraded, having lost about 88% of its original wetlands. Most of the loss was due to draining and filling, but the estuary remains an important pit stop for shorebirds and migratory waterfowl.