Spring Update

What a wonderful few months we've had along the beautiful San Diego River! Lots of rain, many wonderful accomplishments by the volunteers of the San Diego River Park Foundation and the Friends of the San Diego River Mouth. We've been very fortunate to have very successful events to help keep up our restoration efforts of this rare and important site where the San Diego River meets the mighty Pacific Ocean.
March was a great month for the river mouth location. In addition to our regularly scheduled Friends of the River Mouth events (4th Saturday of odd numbered months, January, March, May etc.) a large group of military families from Lincoln Military Housing came out for a group event and planted over 100 native plants! Kids and families had a great time and did a wonderful job in helping to restore this area.
During our regularly scheduled event on March 27th we had over 100 people turnout on a bright and warm Saturday morning to help us care for this rare and sensitive site.
Educational tours were given by Botanist and river mouth friend Mike Nieto and San Diego River Park Foundation board member and noted environmental advocate Jim Peugh.
After the tours, volunteers were split into groups and given examples of specific non native plants to search for and remove. We ended up removing 130 bags of invasive plants! That would equal easily 1 ton of invasives!
To top off the days event a very exciting discovery was made by Ranger Lisa.
She spotted the presence of Nutall's Lotus! Here is a picture and additional information:



Lotus nuttallianus is a species of legume known by the common names Nuttall's lotus and wire bird's-foot trefoil. It is native Baja California and just into San Diego County, California, where it is a resident of coastal habitat, such as beaches and bluffs. It is a rare plant of the highly developed coastline in and around the city of San Diego,

Join us for an open house and tour in celebration of River Days on May 15th from 9am-Noon. For more information on how you can get involved call Richard at 619.297.7380 or email him at richard@sandiegoriver.org

San Diego River Mouth Update January 2010

Happy New Year! 2010 promises to be another great year for the San Diego River. As more and more people are beginning to realize the challenges faced by our environment and the loss of irreplaceable habitats, we are beginning to see a groundswell of volunteers, organizations and companies seeking to create action. It's not too late, together we can make a difference. So far in 2010 there are several companies that have signed up to help us to continue our restoration and maintenance efforts at the mouth of the San Diego River. On January 17, the Environmental Bankers Association will be working with us to restore native vegetation to the site as well as help remove this areas biggest threat, nonnative invasive plant species. With the rain comes the cheese weed, the crown daisies, the invasive grasses and more. It is up to us humans really become willing stewards of nature and work to reverse the damage and neglect we have caused. That said, I invite you to our next Friends of the River Mouth event on 1/23/10 at 9am, Chick-Fil-A will be providing breakfast that morning.
As always, we will provide all tools and supplies. Groups and volunteers of all ages are welcomed to help. For more info call 619.297.7380 or email volunteer@sandiegoriver.org

San Diego River Mouth Update Nov/Dec 09

During the last work party event of the Friends of the San Diego River Mouth our beautiful Southern California Weather betrayed us with super high winds and rain, forcing us to cancel our event for November. The core people of friends group made the call so we will just have to wait for our next regularly scheduled event on January 23rd, 2010.
Fortunately though we have a few private team building service events scheduled in the interim. For more info on private events designed to be fun and meaningful at this very rare habitat area in Ocean Beach call Richard at
619.297.7380 or email richard@sandiegoriver.org.

As mentioned in the last post, our newest core member Mike Nieto, a trained botanist and river mouth enthusiast, made an exciting discovery at the site. He found Saltmarsh Birds beak (Cordylanthus maritimus). This is exciting in that this is a federally listed endangered plant, and quite lovely when in bloom. According to my research this plant is ONLY found in San Diego County along the coast. Here is a picture and some additional info on this really cool plant:



The Saltmarsh Bird's Beak is an annual and lives for one year and then dies. Its leaves are alternate, narrow and up to 1 inch long. They are pointed at the end, and bluish green and hairy. The Saltmarsh Bird's Beak has white flowers that grow on 4 to 12 inch high stems.

It belongs to the Figwort Family and is related to the snapdragon.

This is a very interesting plant because it is semi-parasitic. It uses pickleweed and salt grass to extend its growing season.

The Saltmarsh Bird's Beak only grows in the saltmarshes, just above the high tide line of the coastal chaparral of the San Diego County area, California. It is considered an endangered plant in California and throughout the USA.

(by Whit H. 2000)

On October 24th Mike along with a few of his professional botanist friends as well as River Park volunteer Paul Hormick and SD River Park interns Gordon Tong and Shingo Minato performed a biological inventory of the river mouth site including the coastal dunes, marsh and inter-tidal zones. Mike is in the process of collating the data that was collected with the goal of forming baseline data to monitor the effectiveness of our continued restoration and maintenance activities. We also hope to be able use any info collected to seek further funding to help support operations at the site. Volunteers with an interest in our native ecology or a passion for our last remaining coastal wetlands are encouraged to join us on the 4th Saturday of odd numbered months (Jan, March, May etc.)We plan on doing the inventory twice per year, stay tuned for the next date in Spring. No experience is needed as all training will be done on the job.

Thanks! The Friends of the River Mouth would like to extend our gratitude to Billy Swim of BSA troop 500 for installing several hundred yards of post and rope symbolic fencing at the river mouth site. This was done to give visitors some guidance as to where they should not tread in hopes letting the vegetation recover and regrow. Also our big thanks to Ranger Lisa Wilson of the Mission Bay Rangers for all of her support of our efforts at the site.
For more info on the Friends of the River Mouth please call the San Diego River Park Foundation at 619.297.7380 or email richard@sandiegoriver.org

October Update

Ahhh, Summer at the beach! Many of us are so fortunate to be able to live and work near the San Diego Coast. And if you happen to live near or visit Dog Beach in Ocean Beach then you also have the opportunity to be near the mouth of the San Diego River. The river mouth in Ocean Beach is where the San Diego River completes its 52-mile journey from the mountains near Julian, CA to the Pacific Ocean. At this location we are lucky enough to be able to visit one of the last remaining coastal dune and wetland habitats in all of California. The Friends of the San Diego River Mouth with the support of the San Diego River Park Foundation meet here on the 4th Saturday of odd numbered months (Jan, March, May etc) to continue the restoration work began by the Aquatic Adventures wetland avengers event. Our next event will take place on 11/28/09 from 9am-Noon. Activities will include trail maintenance, tending the native plant demonstration garden, trash and invasive plant removal and an educational tour. For the previous 2 events volunteers have been working on removing Algerian Sea Lavender from the marsh zone of the site. It appears that the removal is working as the areas that have been taken care of are seeing the return of native pickle weed and salt grass. In some spots the Algerian Sea Lavender had completely carpeted the ground and had displaced the native vegetation. But the Friends group and our awesome volunteers will keep at it until this pest is eradicated.
In other developments, the Friends of the San Diego River Mouth would like to welcome Michael Nieto to our group. Michael is a trained botanist that works for a local company called Recon. He brings a lot of knowledge and experience with him to help us really care for this rare and important site. Welcome Michael, we are so lucky and happy to have you on our team! During our last work party Michael discovered the presence of a very rare and endangered plant at the site Cordylanthus maritimus or Salt Marsh Bird's-Beak. Great find Michael!
Under Michael's direction we plan to do a plant survey of the site on 10/24/09. Time to be announced.

Mystery Gardeners!
During our last event in September it was discovered that someone had taken it upon themselves to inappropriately prune almost all of the plants in the demonstration garden. They really hacked up the Laurel Sumac, bladderpods, sunflowers and more. Then to add insult to injury, they also removed our recently planted dudleya and replaced them with nonnative aloe, cactus and other nonnative succulents. If you know of anyone doing this please let us know. We would love to have them join our group and learn the proper care of native plants and why we shouldn't introduce nonnative plants to the site.
I can be reached at 619.297.7380.
As always we wish to thank our core volunteers Bob, Leslie, Lara and Michael and also Ranger Lisa for all of her support.

River Mouth Updates

The friends of the San Diego River Mouth had a very successful event on 7/25. With well over 40 volunteers arriving to help we managed to remove over 75 bags full of a non-native recently identified as Algerian Sea Lavender. Jim Peugh, one of our board members and I did a tour of the site and he had a feeling that the plants we discovered did not belong there. After taking a sample to the city's botanist it was confirmed that indeed these plants had to go. We still have many more to remove. The next friends event has been been moved to the 19th of September from 9am-noon. If you have some time and like to hang out at the beach, send me an email to richard@sandiegoriver.org.

Thanks as always to Bob, Leslie and Lara for all of the help and dedication to this site!

River Days 2009 at the River Mouth

As part of San Diego River Days 2009, the Friends of the San Diego River Mouth hosted an event. We had 40 volunteers remove 75 large bags full of invasive plants and weeds from the sensitive dune habitat. In addition volunteers took care of the trails and the demonstration garden. I wish to thank lead volunteer Bob Alden for repairing the informational kiosk doors and helping to host the party. If you haven't been to this rare habitat area, I urge you to check it out. Here is a link to directions (it's at Dog Beach in Ocean Beach)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=san+diego+river+mouth&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=48.909425,79.101563&ie=UTF8&ll=32.814978,-117.193909&spn=0.817133,1.235962&z=10&iwloc=B

We are always seeking volunteers and members of the community to help us in keeping this sensitive area as pristine as possible. We meet on the 4th Saturday of odd numbered months (July, September, November etc. from 9am-Noon)
Call Richard at 619.297.7380 or email richard@sandiegoriver.org for more info.
Community service hours can be verified for those that need them.

Join us For River Days at the River Mouth

The Friends of the San Diego River Mouth will change their normal event schedule for May and will be continuing the care and maintenance of the this rare habitat area. As part of the San Diego River Park Foundation's sixth annual San Diego River Days, our event will take place on May 16th from 9am-noon. For more info or to join us, please contact Richard at 619.297.7380 or via email at richard@sandiegoriver.org.
For more info on the 30 events of River Days visit www.sdriverdays.org