Budding environmentalists connect with nature in Newport Beach event
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Nature lovers and families came together on Saturday, cultivating plants, creating art and connecting with local conservation groups at the Newport Beach Civic Center.
The gathering was hosted by the nonprofit Wildlife Jewels in advance of Tuesday’s World Wildlife Day, an annual United Nations-designated celebration of nature. The theme for 2026 focused on the ecological, medicinal and cultural significance of plants.
Many of the 70 people who gathered for the Newport Beach event armed themselves with shovels to plant milkweed, and various flowers to attract butterflies and other pollinators to Civic Center Park.
“Every single action can make a huge difference,” said Azi Sharif, founder of Wildlife Jewels.
The nonprofit she runs uses art depicting wildlife as an entry point to discussions about conservation and environmentalism. They host flower-planting events, beach cleanups and an animal rescue team in Orange and San Diego counties, and also raise funds support of rescue efforts abroad.
Ladera Ranch Middle School student William Attreed, 12, has helped out at several of Wildlife Jewel’s past conservation events, and was among those planting flowers on Saturday. He was joined by his father, David Attreed, who said it’s important his son is taught to be a good steward of the environment at an early age.
“It’s very important to us, and I’m very happy and proud of him that he’s more than keen to do this stuff,” David Attreed said.
“We haven’t done too many things together lately, just from work and other things going on,” he added. “So it was really nice on a beautiful day like this to, just me and him, spend a few hours learning about stuff and meeting cool people.”
Eyleen “Mango” Cheng, 7, and her brother Yenchiel “Kiwi” Cheng, 3, furrowed their brows as they applied acrylic paint to wooden butterflies at one of the stations set up at the Civic Center on Saturday. The younger sibling took an experimental approach to the task, gripping the brush with tiny fingers and swirling almost every color on his palette together. Meanwhile, his older sister used black and rich orange hues to faithfully recreate the patterns of the monarch species.
Mango became particularly fascinated with monarch butterflies and is concerned about the dramatic decline in their population in recent years after taking part in a school project several months ago, her mother, Christy Cheng, said. The family traveled from Cerritos to the event in Orange County in hopes of fostering her newfound interest in conservationism and discovering ways to stay involved.
Saturday’s event gave people a chance to get in touch with local organizations working to preserve vital local habitats like the Newport Bay Conservancy, California State Park Rangers for Crystal Cove and the Laguna Ocean Foundation, as well as rescue and research groups like the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, and the Ocean Animal Resonse and Research Alliance.
Carissa Rice, education field coordinator for the Laguna Ocean Foundation, said many of the people who visited their booth on Saturday hadn’t heard of the organization she’s a part of, or the tidepools they focus their education and conservation efforts on. The delicate coastal habitats are extremely sensitive to human activity, and home to unique species like the California spiny lobsters and various sea urchins.
All of Laguna Beach is a protected habitat, so it is illegal for people to take anything from the beach there or place their hands or feet in tidepools. These provisions have helped dwindling starfish communities rebound in Orange County despite struggling to recover in similar habitats like La Jolla in San Diego County.
“You had so many people who were excited about this, but maybe not being responsible in how they showed that excitement, so picking up the sea stars and being like ‘Look I found a sea star, this is really awesome!’ and then chucking it back into the ocean [is] not the best behavior,” she said.
“We definitely don’t want to discourage visitation,” Rice added. “But again, it’s how can we show awareness about these special areas so you can visit next year, 10 years from now, with your children, with your grandchildren.”
