Don’t Endanger Nature Center

* Shipley Nature Center, a quiet eight-acre retreat within a remote area of Huntington Central Park, is a unique preserve open to the public year-round.

It is in jeopardy of having nonnative vegetation overrun the native plant life. If that happens, the center will be less likely to support native species of flora and fauna.

In addition to the estimated 290 bird species that live and visit the center, there are crayfish and red-eared slider turtles living in the freshwater pond, as well as coyotes, raccoons, skunks, mice, gopher snakes, king snakes, western fence lizards, alligator lizards and dragonflies inhabiting the center. The plant life is just as varied, and includes willows, redwoods, sycamores, alders, oaks, chaparral plants and grasslands.

The center has approximately 40,000 visitors annually, 9,000 of them on guided tours by elementary, high school and college science programs.

The purpose of the nature center is to protect and maintain native vegetation, which in turn provides a setting for an abundance of animals and migratory birds.

But sadly there are those who have put politics ahead of the environment. The Shipley Nature Center has been conveniently left out of the debate on the so-called Little Shell site, a degraded freshwater wetland property near the northwest corner of Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway.

Because Little Shell is a nonfunctioning site of less than an acre, the Robert Mayer Corp. must replace the lost wetland property at another location on a 4-to-1 basis.

The Shipley Nature Center is to be the benefactor in fulfilling this requirement, with about $500,000 slated to go toward restoration of the center’s freshwater wetlands and native vegetation.

Because of the relatively small size of the Little Shell property and its proximity to the heavily traveled and noisy Beach Boulevard and Coast Highway, it is unlikely that the site can be restored into a viable and functioning freshwater wetland in which plant and animal life would flourish.

In all the excitement to focus attention on the historical destruction of wetlands in California--and around the world--everyone has forgotten about the Shipley Nature Center, one of only a handful of nature centers in the region. Little Shell is being used as a symbol for all the wetland destruction that has taken place in years past. Lots of talk, lots of irreplaceable Shipley Nature Center.

The center is a beautiful area and one that needs protection.

PETER M. GREEN

Councilman

Huntington Beach