Finding money to restore natural habitat in California is a tall order these days; state funds have mostly dried up because of the budget crisis, and many private groups are unable to provide the help they once could because of the worsening economy.

One group has managed to eke out some funding, however, to help a variety of scientists and land managers across the West to restore damaged scrublands, forests or wetlands to a more natural state.

The Partners for Fish and Wildlife, part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, met at Orange County’s 4,000-acre Starr Ranch Sanctuary  onTuesday. And the setting would be pretty hard to beat: campfires burning and barbecues roaring amid brush-cloaked hills near a wooded stream. (Photo courtesy of Scott Gibson, Starr Ranch Sanctuary.)

On a television set hooked up for the occasion, guests could view a live video feed of a nearby barn owl nest.

Many of those who attended, a number of them wildlife biologists, marveled at the abrupt boundary between urban dwellings and the open space on Starr Ranch, near Dove Canyon. 

“You make that crazy transition from the Orange County of television to the Orange County of the eons,” said Jill Terp, manager of the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge who is involved with the Partners group. (Register file photo of Starr Ranch by Marilynn Young.)

The meeting was unusually all-encompassing: group members from Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon’s Klamath Basin and New Mexico, as well as California, were there to talk about their projects.

“It’s rare to have this many states and coordinators together,” said Samantha Marcum of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Carlsbad.

The group, funded through the U.S. Fish and Wildliife Service budget, lends a hand to private landowners and organizations for habitat restoration. It has helped fund restoration efforts at Starr Ranch, where non-native plants can take root and disrupt native plant communities despite the best efforts of the sanctuary’s managers.

Related post:

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