One of the most important and fulfilling aspects of our work as stewards at the Ballona Wetlands is the opportunity to work closely with local scouts (both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) to plan, develop and lead service projects here at the Ballona Wetlands. For local Boy Scouts seeking to achieve the level of Eagle Scout through a service project benefiting the environment, Ballona is one of the few open spaces left in Southern California where small restoration projects are possible. In addition to helping restore and maintain the health of Ballona, what’s so great about these projects is the opportunity to get to know all of the scouts, as well as their troops, friends, and families. Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable for Boy Scouts, and we take our role as facilitator with the utmost seriousness and pride.

While Friends of Ballona Wetlands is responsible for bringing over 7,000 folks into Ballona every year through our education and restoration programs, Eagle Scout projects require great thought, preparation, and trust – and the results are often astounding, and the leadership on display humbling. It’s a real pleasure to see the process whereby people gradually form a tight bond with Ballona – after you’ve spent a number of hours walking the trails, observing first-hand the abundance of birds and other wildlife, running your hands through the soil – and contributing to the work of thousands of volunteers to restore Ballona to a more healthy and functional ecosystem after so many years of degradation and neglect.

We’ve recently had two consecutive projects in a particularly neglected corner of the sand dunes. Layers and layers of iceplant covered the whole slope, with a sprinkling of other non-natives throughout, including euphorbia terracina, jade plant, and castor bean. During the first of the two projects, Elliot Storey worked independently to reroute irrigation to the site from a previous restoration area, cleaning and testing all the equipment along the way. Elliot then invited his troop to assist in the heavy duty work: clearing the ice plant by hand and carefully raking and sifting the soil to remove years of ice plant detritus and any seeds that were mixed in. If you’ve never pulled ice plant you wouldn’t believe how heavy the plant is and how hard it can be to successfully clear a patch like the one we tackled.

Here’s what the site looked like before Elliot’s project:

Next, we worked with Brennan Balson to design a new native plant garden, carefully choosing the plant palette from species native to Ballona and already found in the reserve. Over fifty plants were purchased from Theodore Payne Society and from SEA Lab, consisting of deerweed (lotus), bladderpod, dune buckwheat, and encelia. His troop worked hard to get the plants in the ground as quickly as possible, where they are much happier to be than in a plastic container. The rest of the afternoon was spent putting some final touches on the drip line irrigation system and creating a walkway through the middle of the garden to allow for observation and easy maintenance.

Here’s what the site looked like, minus the iceplant and with 50 natives in the ground:

Both Elliot and Brennan showed great leadership through out their projects, organizing the troop and their parents into work teams and making sure everyone was busy working on something through out the day, whether it be weeding, watering, adjusting the driplines, or just pulling ice plant. Most important, both scouts demonstrated a deep respect for Ballona, making sure everyone was being safe and always mindful of the wildlife around us – such as the gorgeous garden spider whose web was nearby. Not only was this particular site transformed from an iceplant-dominated monoculture, almost devoid of bugs and insects, to a young but diverse (and once the plants mature, a thriving and resilient) addition to our other successfully restored areas, but we even had a lot of fun in the process. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get after a warm, sunny day at Ballona spent working to restore the last coastal wetlands in Los Angeles County.

Enjoy the pictures from Brennan’s project below, or click here to see them on our Flickr page here.

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