The Bio-Blitz Is a Bio-Blast in Malibu’s Bio-Backyard

BY SUZANNE GULDIMANN

More that 1300 school children and many adult volunteers joined teams of top scientists on Friday for a 24-hour field inventory of living organisms in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area that included two field stations in Malibu.
The event, sponsored by the National Geographic Society, is the second in a series of annual BioBlitz events that will take place in a different park each year, leading up to the National Parks Centennial in 2016.
Congressmember Brad Sherman, Director of State Parks Ruth Coleman, Director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Joe Edmiston, SMMNRA Superintendent Woody Smeck, and former Malibuite and environmental activist Margo Feuer were at the opening ceremony. The event was dedicated to lifelongSanta Monica Mountains advocate Jill Swift, who died earlier this year.
Coleman talked about Governor Schwarzenegger’s decision to keep all California State parks open despite budget shortfalls. She also had a message for the children attending the event.
“So I know a lot of you guys, you kids, you hear about the environment, climate change, it can be a little scary, you wonder what your future is going to be like, but the purpose of today is for you to get involved, because you’re going to make a difference,” Coleman said. “Because you should never let the grown-ups make you feel that there’s no future for you, or that the environment is just going to disappear. You can make a difference. You can save it. It’s going to be up to you.”
Congressmember Sherman, unfazed by the state’s budget woes, outlined the ongoing federal plan for a Rim of the Valley National Corridor project, that would more than triple the area of the SMMNRA.
“Now we need to go forward,” Sherman said, “We have to buy a lot of land inside the SMMNRA borders to preserve the parcels that will allow for wildlife diversity.” Sherman spoke of an “organic whole,” saying that “we need to expand the borders of the SMMNRA through the Rim of the Valley Corridor, so all mountains surrounding the Los Angeles Megalopolis will be preserved.”
In an interview with the Malibu Surfside News after the opening ceremonies, Sherman expressed more optimism about his ambitious plan, which would incorporate large areas of the Santa Monica, Santa Susanna, San Gabriel and Verdugo mountain ranges, and entirely encompass a number of communities, including the City of Malibu. Sherman said that the study to assess the potential impact of the expansion is progressing and that the plan is realistic and can be achieved.
The hundreds of children, age 8 to 18, didn’t care much about the speech making but they were fascinated by the exhibits set up throughout Paramount Ranch, the BioBlitz base camp.
“Many of these kids have never been to a park before,” said State Parks Interpreter Karma Graham. She was on hand to greet volunteers with her reptile goodwill ambassador, a California king snake named Richard. “Not only do they get to spend some time out here, they’re going to have a chance today to go out and participate in real scientific field research with the scientists. It’s a great opportunity,” she said.
Scientists from all over the country were at the event, including top experts in the various fields: Seth Riley, National Park Service mountain lion biologist gave a presentation on radio telemetry and GPS collars, Duke University professor Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist international respected for his research on biodiversity, species extinction and habitat loss, led a bird walk. UCLA’s Arthur Gibson, an authority on Southern California flora, talked about his work researching documenting the plant life of the local mountains.
Over in the main science tent where experts prepared to identify and document specimens from the field, Gibson told The News he was expecting some 125-150 species to be brought in. The plant teams in the field would end up bringing in over 495 species.
“I’m not as pessimistic about extinction as some of the some of the people you’ll talk to here. I don’t think we’ve lost any [plant] species in the Santa Monicas,” Gibson said. “I think we haven’t looked everywhere yet.”
At the field stations, teams were already spreading out to begin the BioBlitz inventory. Two sites in Malibu were important survey locations. At the Malibu Lagoon, teams used seine nets to hunt for fish, identified and counted bird species and searched for plants, terrestrial and aquatic insects and invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians.
At Leo Carrillo State Park, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Michael Glenn was setting out with the reptile and amphibian team. The aquatic insect team, however, had to head for Malibu Creek—the stream at Leo Carrillo was already too dry to yield results. “I camped here just last week, too,” the team leader, complained ruefully.
A woman and her son who came all the way from Santa Barbara were anxious to hunt for something called a tardigrade, which turned out to be a tiny, segmented animal related to the arthropods. “I’m not sure what a tardigrade is,” confessed a volunteer. “Neither am I, that’s why it’s so interesting,” replied the woman. “I’m looking forward to learning something new.”
Kimball Garrett, a bird expert from the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, led an inventory team in a coastal bird and marine mammal count. Perched high on a windy cliff above the beach, Garrett’s team learned how to tell the western gull from the California gull—the western gull estimateguess the age of brown pelicans—juveniles are brown, adults have lighter feathers on their heads. A large pod of bottlenose dolphins and a sea lion were a bonus for the team.
“It’s a little late for the migratory birds, this is the tail end for the year,” Garrett said. His team did spot some long distance travelers, including surf scooters (pronounced, Garrett said, with a long o, like scope, not scoop), western loons and sooty shearwaters. “The shearwaters are on their way to the arctic for the summer. They’re up from Chile or even New Zealand,” Garrett said.
“People think that birds fly north to breed in the summer, but that isn’t necessary true. These birds breed in the southern hemisphere during our winter and spend the summer in the northern hemisphere feeding,” Garrett explained. Sea birds travel huge distances. Garrett pointed out that this makes setting aside a small reserve pointless. Only global conservation efforts can help save far travelers like the shearwaters.
Down on the beach, marine biologist Dennis Lees, an expert in the littoral or intertidal zone, led a search for marine invertebrates, algae (seaweed), and other organisms. “Nothing south of Santa Barbara is really pristine,” Lees said, adding that, even so, there were still plenty of interesting things to be found. The biologist entered into the hunt with even more enthusiasm than his Boy Scout assistants, making announcements such as: “That’s a kelp crab. It’s just the shell, see how the crab backed out of it, leaving it behind? That’s the holdfast of macrocystis pyrifera, the giant kelp. It anchors the kelp to the sea floor, see? Like the roots of the tree.”
A fern-like seaweed with small air bladders proved to be a cystoreisa. Another was a member of the sargasso family, but a furry pinkish algae defied field identification and would have to be brought back to the field station. All specimens were put in bags and jars and carefully noted. A large bag of trash was also collected during the course of the walk that might have shed some light on the homo sapiens species if it, too, had been cataloged.
Back at BioBlitz base camp scientists worked through the night identifying and recording, while the night teams hunted for nocturnal species like bats, owls and spiders. At 10:30 a.m. on Saturday the results were in: 1364 species located and identified by 1400 volunteers within 24 hours—almost one species per participant.
Here’s the breakdown: algae—22, amphibian–4, arthropod–628, bird - 86, fish–6, lichen–3, mammal–12, marine invertebrate –91, other invertebrate–2, plant–495, Reptile–15. The count provides a rich picture of the biodiversity of the local are.
Who knows what else is in Malibu’s backyard?