First Sunday Outdoor Fun Day focuses on Santa Ana Watershed POSTED: 01/20/15 Redlands Conservancy’s Land Trust Cabinet hosted its first Sunday Outdoor Fun Day Jan. 18. Lisa Pierce, a Land Trust Cabinet member and GIS analyst for the city of Riverside guided 16 guests to learn the essentials about watersheds. According to Pierce, Redlands is situated in the middle of a critical watershed, a system of land forms that collects and sends water to the Pacific Ocean. The Santa Ana Watershed captures water from the San Bernardino Mountains and sends it through Mill Creek, Santa Ana River, San Timoteo Creek and other channels, all of which involve Redlands. Using a three-dimensional model built by Pierce and Cabinet member Bettina McLeod, with help from the City Kids Go Outdoors Level 2 junior stewards, Pierce demonstrated how everything that gets dumped into the water channels of the watershed can end up in the ocean. According to outdoor educator Kathy Havert who coordinates the Sunday programs, Pierce had several messages for the listeners. Taking care of the watershed is essential, she said. “If we don’t take care of our watershed we may end up like Orange County in 1938 when the flooding from our watershed led to creating standing water five feet deep in 70 percent of the county,” Pierce said. Further, paving huge areas of land for streets and water channels leads to loss of millions of acre feet of water, which is lost to cities downstream from Redlands, she said. Pierce said most cities and wildlife, water and conservation agencies do not have a collective plan for watershed management. Working independently of each other has led to many of the problems experienced today, especially following wildfires. Guests learned that big industry in this area uses far more water than residential areas, according to Pierce, thus contributing to more pollution of the water and less water available for agriculture. Because of the development of housing along the San Bernardino Mountains, underground aquifers are not being replenished, leading to more severe drought conditions, Pierce said. “To listen to Pierce talk about the water systems in this area is like going to the best reference books,” said Havert after the program. The event, held at Redlands’ Israel Beal Park with a view of the San Bernardino Mountains as the backdrop, was free and open to the public. The Conservancy will continue the Sunday Outdoor Fun Days on Feb. 8 with a program titled “The effects of drought in our town,” presented by Carrie Raleigh of the Santa Ana Watershed Association. Future programs include a primer on birding on March 8, a discussion and demonstration of native plants and edible natives presented by John Pinson and chef Lee Burton on April 5, and filming and photographing nature, presented by Redlands videographer Peter Coonradt on May 3. All the remaining programs will be held at the amphitheater at Bobcat Bowl in the San Timoteo Nature Sanctuary. The outdoor education programs are presented by the Conservancy and are free and open to the public. redlandsdailyfacts/environment-and-nature/20150120/first-sunday-outdoor-fun-day-focuses-on-santa-ana-watershed
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 03:52:00 +0000
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