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Life & Times Transcript
12/27/06 Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times -- It took three decades to undo a century of environmental damage. Was it worth it? Jim Lee>> I'm just in shock (laughter). I really am in shock. I would have never imagined it would have come out like this. Dick Newell>> It's so seldom that we see anything positive happening that it just made me feel extremely good. Val Zavala>> And then, ever heard of a professional tree climber? Whether it be for hire or for fun, this outdoorsman knows the ropes. These stories and more on tonight's Life and Times. Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Val Zavala>> Welcome to this special edition of Life and Times where we bring you our favorite stories all dealing with nature. We begin with a place that was destroyed and some believe lost forever. Consider this. Ninety percent of California's wetlands have been lost to development. Our wetlands are vital ecological sponges along our shoreline, so when hundreds of acres of wetlands got restored recently near Huntington Beach, environmentalists popped open the champagne. But as Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, tells us, a last-minute setback dampened the celebration. Roger Cooper>> It is three o'clock in the morning in late August on the shore in Huntington Beach. A small but dedicated group has gathered, people who don't mind losing a little sleep to witness something that hasn't happened in over a century. Jack Fancher>> First let me say that I wasn't alone. There were between eighty and a hundred people there all doing the same thing I was, which was holding our breath until the water flowed, to cheer. Roger Cooper>> At low tide, earthmovers move in. They plow through the last few feet of sand that separates the Pacific from the Bolsa Chica Wetlands Restoration Project. Then as the tide rises, it begins to happen. After more than a hundred years, the ocean is flowing back into Bolsa Chica, replenishing a habitat that used to teem with life. Environmentalists and engineers alike celebrate with a pre-dawn toast of champagne. This site is what this restoration project was all about. For the first time in a hundred seven years, the ocean's waves are washing into this inlet carrying with them the ocean's amazing ability to sustain life. But how did this once rich wetlands come to be dry for more than a century? The story starts in 1899. That's when a duck club closed the ocean connection to build ponds for hunting. Fifty years later, the duck club was replaced by vast oil-drilling operations. Then, if developers had their way, Bolsa Chica would have been the site of thousands of houses and a marina. That's when environmentalists stepped in and waged a thirty-year battle to block the project. They won. The ocean began to re-enter the picture in 1997 when money was found to buy the land from its owner, clearing the way for a giant wetlands restoration project to begin. Since then, seven agencies have spent a hundred forty-seven million dollars scooping out a giant basin, removing sixty-four oil wells and building two bridges to allow the ocean to flow under Pacific Coast Highway. But after all this work, a key question remains unanswered. How soon would the wildlife return? The answer came almost immediately. Within minutes, living things began to discover the four hundred acres of restored wetlands, something that thrills Jack Fancher of U.S. Fish and Wildlife. Jack Fancher>> Now it's connected to the ocean and some fish came in immediately, so it's like instant payoff. Lots of shore birds and the fish-eating birds. Brown pelicans here in large numbers. Roger Cooper>> Animation shows how the tides now rise and fall twice each day to bathe the wetlands in sea water, providing a nursery for marine life, marsh plants and migratory birds. Grace Adams>> There was actually a group of pelicans just waiting for fish and food, an early breakfast at five a.m. Roger Cooper>> Grace Adams of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy is also spotting the signs of new life. Grace Adams>> How exciting it is to see wildlife back again in this area. You see a lot of shore birds. I saw some Skimmers back there earlier. Roger Cooper>> And there are lots of signs of human life. A steady stream of people with cameras and binoculars now moves along Bolsa Chica's newly created nature trail. Some try to capture it on canvas. Some just stand and take it in. Among them, naturalist Dick Newell. Dick Newell>> It's so seldom that we see anything positive happening. It just made me feel extremely good to see it happen, to see people like yourself out here looking at the resource and thinking about it in a new light. People are starting to get excited about things like that and, if that happens, maybe their votes in the future will change and maybe they'll start to be concerned about the natural world. Roger Cooper>> The reality that the wetlands are back is enough to leave an old outdoorsman like Jim Lee almost speechless. Jim Lee>> I just can't describe it. I'm just in shock (laughter). I really am in shock. I would have never imagined it would have turned out like this. Roger Cooper>> But some last-minute news dampened the celebratory mood. As it turns out, the restoration of Bolsa Chica is not yet complete. The moment you heard the oil company wasn't ready to go ahead and flood their area, what did you say? Jack Fancher>> I can't repeat that. We were pretty upset. Roger Cooper>> At the last minute just before the ocean was to be re-introduced, an oil company notified the project that it was not ready to allow flooding of the final one hundred eighty acres. Aera Energy still operates oil wells here. The gates that were supposed to open to let the ocean in remains closed. Jack Fancher>> To be less than two months from completion and hear that they objected to completing the project made us individually very angry. Roger Cooper>> The issue was clean-up. In a statement, Aera Energy told Life and Times, "Before introducing sea water into an active oil field, it’s prudent to understand the potential environmental risks and impacts." Aera says an analysis is underway. Jack Fancher>> We're urging Aera to complete the clean-up in a timely way so that we can open those gates. Roger Cooper>> Asked why the delay came at the last minute, Aera said, "It's a very complex project. We want to make sure we protect the environment and we want to do it right." Jack Fancher>> We have engaged them in a discussion now. We're trying to work our way through it, but at this moment, we don't have resolution of those issues. They have not cleaned up the oil field contamination in the remaining part of the project. Roger Cooper>> Negotiations are continuing and, despite the frustrations, people who have worked on this project are still beaming over what has been accomplished. Grace Adams>> This certainly is one of the largest restoration efforts in the history of the state of California and this makes Bolsa Chica one of the largest saltwater marshes that exists in the state of California. More than ninety percent of our wetland population has been eradicated because of development. Roger Cooper>> And people are still getting to know the wetlands they have back. Dick Newell>> I have never spent a day in nature that I didn't see something new. Every single time I come out, I see something new. Now that may not be a new species, but it might be a new behavior. I see a bird acting differently than what I've ever seen happen before. Roger Cooper>> Grace Adams says that educating the public will be vital if what's happened at Bolsa Chica is to keep going. Grace Adams>> That is very important to us in particular because we really need to nurture the next generation of stewards for this area. Jack Fancher>> Now we're very much on the threshold of having it done, so that part is a very good feeling. Roger Cooper>> So mark down the morning of August 24, 2006 as a milestone for southern California's ecology. It's the day nature got a second chance. Jim Lee>> Well, there is a place in this world for tree huggers (laughter). Roger Cooper>> At the Bolsa Chica wetlands, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times. Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times". Val Zavala>> I'm out here at Topanga Canyon State Park where most people just stick to the trails, but we met one young man who went off the beaten path for an entirely different experience. His name is Nick Araya and he's a professional tree climber. That's right. You can hire Nick to take you up in a tree for a different view of the world and maybe, if you're adventurous, a little swinging. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> But today, he's hitting the trail for a solo climb just for fun. About a quarter of a mile off the trail is a growth of his favorite climbing oaks and, along the way, a rattlesnake which we opted to walk around carefully. Now do you know this tree? Nick Araya: Yeah, I've climbed it, oh, four or five times already. Val Zavala>> How did you get into this? Nick Araya>> I started as a rock climber, actually. I lived in Wisconsin and, when I was in college, I didn't have a car, so I couldn't just drive to the nearest rock-climbing crag. So I had all the rope and the harness and everything and I thought, hey, I bet I can use this stuff to climb those oak trees on campus. So when the security wasn't watching, I gave it a shot and, sure enough, it worked. Part of it can be intimidating, I think, for people. They see all the ropes and all the equipment and helmets and swinging around and all and "I could never do that". But also keep in mind that the people that are doing it this way have been doing it for a long time and they have a more advanced understanding of what they're doing. I could set up a system in just a few minutes that any person, any able-bodied person, can do and even handicapped people have been brought up into trees. Most of us, probably all of us, have climbed a tree or several trees when we were little and, to be able to kind of get back to that, but now the lawyers are involved, so we need ropes and everything to keep us safe. But in reality, the ropes let you go a lot further than you ever could when you were a kid without that fear of "Mommy, I can't get back down." [Film Clip] Nick Araya>> When I was coming up from the ground, I was setting up what I call a foot-lock that attaches me to the climbing rope so that I can foot-lock up the rope, which is what I was doing where I was pinching the rope with my feet and kind of inch-worming up the rope, so that was it. Once I got up into the tree, then I switched over to the climbing setup, the doubled-rope climbing setup, which lets me go up and down at ease just by leaning on this knot and it locks in place. Then if I grab it and pull it, it will let me slide down. Val Zavala>> What do you see from up there? Nick Araya>> Oh, I can see the whole ridgeline of Topanga Canyon. I see a helicopter way off in the distance. What the neat part is, in the neighboring trees, I can see birds fluttering in the canopies way at the top which you might not necessarily see from the ground, and then the deer in the field way over there. Val Zavala>> Now when you climb, how long do you stay up there usually? Nick Araya>> If I'm climbing by myself, it's not uncommon for me to spend all day in the tree. Maybe get here in the morning, maybe it's ten o'clock right now, and stay here until the set sets and watch the sun set. I would be perfectly content to just sit right here for an hour or so. Maybe I'll bring a book and just kind of lean up on the tree. Val Zavala>> You'll spend all day there? You don't get bored? Nick Araya>> No, no. I'll bring a camera. Once you get set up, if you quiet down, the birds forget about you. I've seen some remarkable things from up in the canopy and taking some really neat shots of hawks and hummingbirds and things of that sort. I'm going to kind of scoot along and maybe walk across it if I can and set my rope on the other side of the tree. Once I do that, there's a good opportunity for me to lower myself down and stand on a branch and do some big swinging, which is a lot of fun. Just kind of pendulum in and out of the tree. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> What do you think of people who, you know, those environmentalists and protestors who stay in trees from month to month to month? Nick Araya>> Well, it's kind of -- what they're trying to accomplish is very political and they're battling the lumber companies or something like that. I have a lot of respect for what they do, but also the lumber companies are just trying to meet the needs of the people -- the demands, I should say, of the people -- so we can make it a lot easier on the tree sitters if we just stopped buying so many wood products and use more recycled products. That said, I've actually climbed a couple of trees with tree sitters and brought them food and things like that because I'm a tree hugger and I side with the tree sitters more than I would the lumber companies. [Film Clip] Nick Araya>> But one of the other things that we strive for is to not hurt the tree. I could take this rope and just throw it over the branch like that and clip into it, but as it rubs on the branch, it starts actually cutting into the branch and that can be damaging to the tree. So if I run it through this pulley, now the rope rubs on that pulley and not on the branch. Most of the time when I climb is by myself, but occasionally I'll climb with other people. Sometimes you just want to get up as high as you can and get as far away from the people walking on the ground as you can, so a tall redwood would be the ideal. But typically, I like a tree much like this one. It's spread out a lot. I like the big jungle gyms. [Film Clip] Nick Araya>> I guess the neatest thing, the draw, for a lot of people is that it's different from what we see in our day-to-day. You know, most people get up, get in the car, drive to work and do whatever it is you do at work. Then you get in the car and head back and do it again. Just to be able to stop that and just explore a world that we only see the bottom of as we walk around on the ground. We only get to see the bottom of branches. To see what the animals see and to play in a different kind of way than we got to play for a long time since we were kids. Phew, that was fun. That was one of my better swings. Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address: Life and Times 4401 Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90027 You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org. Val Zavala>> The Los Angeles Zoo has two new inhabitants, Snow Leopard cubs. Their names are Tom and Jerry and, as you'll see, they can charm the spots off a leopard. Danielle Fogel>> My name is Danielle Fogel. I'm an animal keeper at the Los Angeles Zoo. It's pretty exciting. We haven't had Snow Leopard cubs in about ten years or over ten years, I should say. The mother is Gail and the boys are Tom and Jerry. There are a hundred seventy in North American zoos, but they're very endangered. Their habitat is dwindling, so we do know their numbers are dwindling. They're from all over Central Asia, so Nepal, Tibet, China, I think they used to be in certain parts of Siberia, but their habitat has dwindled a lot. They're very uniquely adaptive to the climate that they live in. They have the longest tail of any feline and they use it to wrap around their face in the winter and cover their mouth and nose. [Film Clip] Danielle Fogel>> All zoos, to be accredited, you have to participate if you have an animal in the species survival plan and they're the ones that decide who gets to breed. They make the recommendations, this male, this female. They tell you, well, you get to breed this year or this year you don't get to breed, so they regulate it. When the babies are born, it's great and everyone is excited, but at some point, they have to find homes for them. They're seasonal breeders, so they only breed between November and about February, so you get one shot basically once a year. I think it's a hundred eighty-four days gestation. They're usually born about May. In the wild, I believe that they're still in the den. It's still pretty cold. I mean, they're from the Himalayas, so it doesn't get warm until pretty well into the summer up there. That's why they are seasonal breeders, so that when they're born, there's some game out. You know, mom can hunt and feed them pretty well. Most cats are loners, except for lions. They don't hunt in groups. The mother will hunt with her cubs and the males and females, during breeding season, will pair together and they may hunt together for a while, but in general, they live alone. They're the nicest of all cats, to me. If you ever met a tiger, it's very ferocious, grrr, I'm going to eat you kind of thing. These guys are a lot calmer. Their very calm, quiet mother, Gail, especially. She's a very nice cat. She's really good with her kittens. They're very independent as they've gotten a little bit older. They're very playful and they've brought out the playfulness in mom. She didn't use to run around and stalk as much as she does. Once they've been out here, she's teaching them. She'll run and stalk some imaginary something and they'll run after her and pounce. They play with her a lot and she entices the play in them too. It's great. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> Something remarkable is taking shape at Huntington Gardens in Pasadena, a huge Chinese Garden complete with a lake, rocks, bridges and fountains. It is by far the most challenging project The Huntington has ever taken on and, when it's finished, these twelve acres will be the largest classical Chinese Garden outside of China. We get a description of this remarkable garden in the making from Laurie Sowd, Operations Director at The Huntington. Laurie Sowd>> Most of the plant material that you see in your back yard and throughout southern California is Chinese in origin, so that prompted us to want to bring that into this beautiful landscape tradition. Chinese gardens are so heavily built, so plants are not always the first thing you notice in them, but they're incredibly important. Chinese gardens have five primary elements and you're seeing four of them here on site so far. You're seeing the water, the blood of the garden, and it's a very complicated process to engineer a lake that allows it to re-circulate itself and be just the right level of murkiness and pristineness. We don't want it to look like a swimming pool, obviously. Then you're seeing the bone, the skeleton of the garden, represented in the rocks. This beautiful, unusual looking rock that is all around the edges of the garden, of the lake, came from the Tai region near Suzhou, China. We imported it all. It's a very unusual rock. You don't see it typically here in the west and it is rich with visual symbolism. It's very sculptural in looks. The other thing that came from China which helped us to capture the authentic spirit of a Chinese garden is artisans. We've been working with teams in Suzhou, China since the very beginning, both on the design and construction of the garden. We brought over about twelve artisans this spring to put in place this amazing landscape rock with an aesthetic eye that is very different from ours in the west. It tends to be very uplifted and kind of precariously placed. They also put in place the third element of the garden, which is architecture of bridges. They hand-carved these solid granite bridges in China, in Suzhou, shipped them over to us and then came here and assembled and put them in place on the site. The fourth element we were just talking about is plants, and the fifth element of the garden is literature. That's an element you'll see ultimately when we put the pavilions in place in calligraphy and in the naming of pavilions and views with poetic beautiful names that conjure references to Chinese poetry, ancient Chinese tales in history. [Film Clip] Laurie Sowd>> Chinese gardens are heavily built. There will be a major courtyard consisting of several pavilions here at the south, including a tea house and a tea shop. Then several other pavilions around the site that are opportunities for viewing the scenery and that help to shape your view of the site and allow the garden to unfold to you as you walk along a zigzagging covered corridor, for example. [Film Clip] Laurie Sowd>> It's been an international collaborative project from the beginning, including the funding. We've gotten funding for this garden from Chinese and American communities locally, nationally and internationally. It's really been bringing together a very diverse group of Huntington participants. We've always welcomed many Chinese visitors, whether from abroad or from locally, but we're definitely seeing an increase and a huge amount of interest from those communities in this project. I think, thereby, they're experiencing the rest of The Huntington in a kind of richer manner as well. The Huntington is and always has been a place that brings together the humanities, art, literature, architecture, botany, and this garden is kind of a microcosm of those things coming together, those things that The Huntington has been doing for a hundred years. We're treating this garden really as what it is, a center of cultural memory and a center of rich, cultural interaction. [Film Clip] Val Zavala>> The Chinese Garden isn't finished yet, but it's still open to the public for a special preview now through January 2007. After that, they'll close it for further construction. If you'd like more details, you can go to their website at huntington.org. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education. And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg. Sponsored in part by:  | |
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