Resident Noel Park is a Key Community Partner for Lunada Canyon Restoration By Louise Olfarnes Manager of Communications, Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy
Photo credit C. Belme
Ten years ago, Lunada Canyon resident Noel Park contacted Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy’s Development Director Susan Wilcox. Long a local environmental champion and always eager to help remove invasive fennel inside the nature preserves, Noel had earned the nickname “The Fennel Fiend." However, he called on this particular morning feeling overwhelmed.
Photo credit: Erik Jay
"I can barely even see the sky above me, the weeds are so tall everywhere. If I write a large check, would the Conservancy even have a way to haul so much debris from a narrow, steep canyon?" Noel clearly wanted to make a difference and Susan was eager to find a solution. Knowing the Conservancy’s stewardship team had an eight-month work plan tightly scheduled, Susan asked Cris Sarabia (now Conservation Director) whether the goats we used on a pilot project in the Portuguese Bend Reserve might be hired to accomplish the same task at Lunada Canyon as well. Cris thought that sounded feasible and offered to explore. And the rest, as they say, is history. For ten years now, the goats have come and the Conservancy has asked the public to consider "adopting" a goat to make their work possible. Goat adoptors enjoy an event where they get a portrait with their goat while they witness the restoration underway.
Thanks to these restoration efforts coordinated by Cris and the rest of the Stewardship team, the Land Conservancy was recently awarded a large grant from the US Fish & Wildlife Service, to fund expansion of the restoration to support the recovery of the federally endangered Palos Verdes blue butterfly. This project will use innovative techniques to mimic natural disturbance events which the Rattlepod needs to stimulate germination. By continuing to use the goats to graze specific areas, invasive plants will be removed and during that time the hooved animals create a much needed “disturbance.”
Over years of urbanization and development, much habitat has been damaged, degraded or destroyed on the Peninsula. With the City of Rancho Palos Verdes and other partners in the Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly Recovery Group of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, Moorpark College, the Urban Wildlands group and the U.S. Navy, the Conservancy is helping the Palos Verdes blue butterfly and other threatened flora and fauna to gradually return to the lands they once called home.
Creating a refuge for the Palos Verdes blue butterfly makes all of the hard work pulling weeds worthwhile to Noel Park and many other volunteers in the Lunada Canyon and will keep the hungry goats busy helping to achieve an exciting conservation goal.