Malibu Bluffs Ark

 Image: Jan Brueghel, Paradise Landscape with Noah's Ark, from the collection of the Getty Museum.

No, the title of this post is not a typo. Ever since the City of Malibu swapped Charmlee Wilderness Park to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in exchange for Bluffs Park Open Space in 2014, controversy has raged around the park's future. The five-year swap between the city and the SMMC was intended to allow both parties to examine how the swapped properties could be used. At Bluffs, the city's goal was to use the time to explore building sports facilities in the open space park. The key word is explore. The swap didn't come with any guarantees that development would be feasible.

A wish list for Bluffs Park at a workshop at Malibu City Hall, © 2017 S. Guldimann

The City of Malibu hired a consultant to develop a plan that included a wish list of recreation facilities. However, as Malibu city staff began meeting with California Coastal Commission staff to discuss the plan, they were made aware of the extent of the constraints on the site. The city's plans for the park went from this:

To this:

Critics of the athletic facility expansion argue that even the revised project has too great an impact on environmental resources and does not adequately meet the city's environmentally sensitive habitat area setback requirements.

Proponents of the plan are upset by the prospect of downscaling or relocate some of the desired facilities elsewhere. In a recent editorial, the publisher of the Malibu Times argued that every potential site in Malibu has issues:

"Every site they choose has its problems: construction problems, size problems, noise problems, neighbor problems, access problems, parking problems and so on, and there will always be a reason not to do it."

That's certainly true, but not every site is also mapped Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area, home to as many as eight California special concern species, and a foraging area for a species of raptor with special protections. 

Not every site was originally purchased with taxpayer-funded bond money to be open space as part of the Coastal Commission's first priority acquisitions list under the Coastal Act. 

And while we're at it, not many sites have as many geological issues, including active landslides and the section of the Malibu Coast Earthquake Fault that prevented this parcel from being developed in the first place. 

Geology isn't our focus with this post, but it's worth spending a moment reflecting on it. The bluffs that give this park its name are still eroding due to active landslide zones. Here's the view from the top:

Bluffs Park erosion, © 2107 S. Guldimann

Here's the view from Malibu Road, where a landslide has been reactivated by the past winter's rains. There are six landslide faults along Malibu Road in Bluffs Park.

Malibu Road landslide, winter 2017. © S. Guldimann

The yellow dotted lines on the geology map, below, indicate the landslide zones in Bluffs Park, the arrows show the direction of the slide. That big black dotted line running through the middle of the park is the Malibu Coast Fault, an offshoot of the San Andreas Fault, and one of the reasons the Santa Monica Mountains—and Malibu—run east-west, instead of north-south.

The geology that prevented this site from being developed first as a General Motors facility that would have been similar in scope to the Hughes lab up the hill, and then as a housing tract like the one next to Pepperdine, is part of what makes this small pocket of open space unusual. The deep ravines and sloping coastal terraces, volcanic intrusions and alluvial soils are critical habitat for species that can't survive elsewhere, and that is the main point of this post. 

At a recent Malibu Parks and Recreation Commission meeting, the majority of the commissioners weren't aware of one of the main issues with the park plan: not the geology, but the presence of special concern species in the area proposed for development. If they weren't aware of this, then most Malibu residents probably aren't, either. 

Four California Special Concern Species were identified at Bluffs Park in 2010 during a biology survey for the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy's camping plan environmental impact report:

1. Catalina Mariposa Lily. This etherial flower landed on the California Species of Special Concern list because of habitat loss. It grows from a bulb deep in the earth and can remain dormant for long periods when conditions aren't right. In a good year, hundreds bloom in Bluffs Park.

Bluffs Park Mariposa Lilies © 2017 S. Guldimann

2. Blainville Coast Horned Lizard. In more than a decade as as environmental journalist and photographer I've built a fairly substantial library of plant and animal photos. The horned lizard isn't in that collection, because I haven't seen one in years, despite the fact that this small lizard was still fairly common when I was a child. It is plummeting towards extinction throughout its range at a frightening rate due to loss of habitat and the introduction of a highly aggressive and invasive ant species that drives out the native ants that are this lizard's only source of food.

 

Image: USGS

3. Yellow-breasted Chat. You are more likely to hear the chat than see it, despite its bright yellow breast. This is a shy scrub dweller that likes the safety of the willows and laurel sumacs in Bluff Park's riparian area. It is on the special concern list primarily due to habitat loss.

Image: wikipedia

4. California Yellow Warbler. The tiny yellow warbler depends on the same kind of riparian woodland the chat requires, and like the chat its numbers have plummeted in California due to (surprise!) habitat loss.

Image: Wikipedia

There are the two additional California special concern plant species documented on site by the California Native Plant Society in the past year, according to a report they submitted to the city:

5. Dudleya Cymosa, spp ovatifolia. There are several dudleya species at Bluffs. This one may be the smallest, but it is also the rarest. Also known as Santa Monica Mountains dudleya, it grows only in the coast ranges from Ventura to Orange County, with the highest concentrations right here in and around the Malibu area. This dudleya is on the rare plant list because of its limited distribution and, yes, loss of habitat.

Image: NPS

6. Plummer's Baccharis. This rare plant is also limited to the south coast ranges, although it occurs on some of the Channel Islands. Like the dudleya, it is on the special concern list due to its limited distribution and habitat loss. Plants like this can only grow in highly specific conditions, putting them at increased risk not only from habitat loss but also climate change.

Image: Anthony Valois,  NPS

The presence of these six specially listed species at Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space is fully documented by qualified experts. Their presence in the park is scientific fact. 

Reliable witnesses have added the Coastal whiptail lizard and the loggerhead shrike to the park's menagerie of protected species, giving us a total of eight California Special Concern Species in Bluffs Park.

The shy and retiring coastal whiptail lizard is rarely seen except in spring during mating season. This beautiful  and amazing lizard was missed by the SMMC's EIR, but has reportedly been spotted at the park by a recent observer. Habitat loss has pushed this once-common species almost entirely out of the Malibu coastal zone. When the last remaining viable habitat is developed or fragmented it will have nowhere to go. The only voice it has is our voice. Photo @ 2017 S. Guldimann

I photographed this loggerhead shrike not at Bluffs, but at the city's recently acquired Trancas Fields Park—the other potential site for ballfields. The birds were spotted this winter at both parks. Like the other special concern species, this fierce little bird, which preys on snakes and lizards nearly its own size, is increasingly at risk from habitat loss. It's not adaptable. When it is pushed out of the only kind of habitat it can survive in, it can't move on. It simply dies out. Photo © 2017 S. Guldimann

The survey conducted by biologist Kathleen Dayton on April 26–28, 2010, for the Conservancy's EIR, also noted that another listed species of plant, Coulter’s saltbrush, had previously been observed at the site, and that another rare bird, the coastal California gnatcatcher, “cannot be ruled out,” although neither species was observed during her survey. 

There's another species  with special protections who is regularly seen foraging in the fields at Bluffs Park Open Space: the white-tailed kite. 

Every year, white-tailed kites winter at Bluffs Park, using the now-dead eucalyptus trees as a lookout and foraging in the open space park's fields for their prey. Photo © 2017 S. Guldimann

At its August 10 meeting at King Gillette Ranch, right here in the Santa Monica Mountains, the California Coastal Commission unanimously supported special protections for white-tailed kite foraging areas in an amendment to Santa Barbara County's Local Costal Program. South Coast Director Steve Hudson described the birds as rare and special, and made a point of stating that their foraging areas require protection from development.

Bluffs Park is home to an amazing number of threatened, protected, and rare species in a small area and there may still be more that have not been identified—species that have returned or recovered following the 2007 fire, but there's another major environmental obstacle for development in the park. Here's a photo of city officials standing in the middle of it right after the swap took place:

First Official City of Malibu Bluffs Park Tour, 2014, Image © S. Guldimann

The group shown above, which included former City Manager Jim Thorsen and two Malibu City Council members, was standing in the center of fields of native needle grass, talking  about plans for ballfields, oblivious to the rare habitat under their feet. 

In a 2003 memorandum to Coastal Commission Staff on ESHA in the Santa Monica Mountains, ecologist John Dixon stated: “Native perennial grasslands are now exceedingly rare. In California, native grasslands once covered nearly 20 percent of the land area, but today are reduced to less than 0.1 percent. The California Natural Diversity Database lists purple needle grass habitat as a community needing priority monitoring and restoration.”

Native needle grass may not look impressive, but its presence at Bluffs is important.

Purple Needlegrass, Image © 2017 S. Guldimann

According to the California Coastal Commission document, “grasslands with 10 percent or more cover by needle grass [are] significant. The memo recommends that this habitat be protected as "remnants of original California prairie," and concludes that "patches of this sensitive habitat occur throughout the Santa Monica Mountains.”

Purple Needlegrass at Bluffs Park © 2017 S. Guldimann

Needlegrass was lush and abundant at Bluffs Park this spring. This whole meadow of it is right where a parking lot is proposed, and there appears to be a much higher concentration of it than just 10 percent. Recent surveys conducted by the California Native Plant Society indicate that the Malibu Bluffs Park wildfire burn area, which was damaged in 2007 and contained extensive areas of native grassland as well as coastal sage scrub, is making a strong recovery. Species that weren't observed during the 2010 SMMC EIR study due to the fire, are reportedly making a comeback. 

We spend a lot of time talking about ESHA in Malibu, but there are some strange misconceptions about it. A former local politician who really ought to have known better recently argued that disturbed ESHA is no longer ESHA, and that the part of the park damaged during the 2007 fire ought to be fair game for development. That's not how it works. 

The City of Malibu's Coastal Land Use Plan defines ESHA as:

1. Areas in which plant or animal life or their habitats are either rare or especially valuable because of their special nature or role in an ecosystem and which could be easily disturbed or degraded by human activities and developments are Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas (ESHAs) and are generally shown on the LUP ESHA Map. 
   
   The LUP also states: 
   
   
   4. 3.4  Any area not designated on the LUP ESHA Map that meets the ESHA criteria is ESHA and shall be accorded all the protection provided for ESHA in the LCP. The following areas shall be considered ESHA, unless there is compelling site-specific evidence to the contrary:
      
      • Any habitat area that is rare or especially valuable from a local, regional, or statewide basis.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of plant or animal species designated as rare, threatened, or endangered under State or Federal law.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of species designated as Fully Protected or Species of Special Concern under State law or regulations.
        
      • Areas that contribute to the viability of plant species for which there is compelling evidence of rarity, for example, those designated 1b (Rare or endangered in California and elsewhere) or 2 (rare, threatened or endangered in California but more common elsewhere) by the California Native Plant Society.
        
        
   5. And also:
      
      
   6. 3.6  Any area mapped as ESHA shall not be deprived of protection as ESHA, as required by the policies and provisions of the LCP, on the basis that habitat has been illegally removed, degraded, or species that are rare or especially valuable because of their nature or role in an ecosystem have been eliminated. 
      
      
      
      
      

Almost the entire Bluffs Park, including the area where new ballfields and parking lots are proposed, is designated ESHA on the city's official map. It's the green area under the word "coast" in the map, above. 

The presence of all of this ESHA at Bluffs Park and the threatened species that depend on it for existence raise some interesting ethical questions. It's a kind of microcosm of the political perspective that takes the position that human desires deserve to take precedence over environmental concerns, that the reward now will be greater than the price we may pay later. 

Here in California we are constantly reminded of what is at stake. It's right there on our state flag:

The last documented native California grizzly bear was killed in August of 1922, less than a hundred years ago.  Today, this species lives on only as a symbol of what was lost, but hopefully also as a reminder of what we still stand to lose. 

My dad worked hard to save the Point Dume headlands from becoming first a hotel, and then a California State Parks beach parking lot. He was part of the effort to put both Point Dume and the Bluffs on the Coastal Commission's first priority acquisitions list. No one today would think a parking lot was a good use for what is now the Point Dume Nature Preserve. 

In the 1970s, the county thought it would be a good idea to bulldoze what is now the Point Dume Preserve and turn it into a large paved parking lot. It didn't happen because activists with clearer vision prevailed. @ 2017 S. Guldimann

The Adamson House was also scheduled to become a beach parking lot. The fight to save it was led by Judge John Merrick. It's a landmark, a museum, a priceless cultural resource today, but it also almost ended up being a parking lot, not because State Parks is evil—it's not—but because a decision was made somewhere on paper, without actually looking at and understanding what was at stake. That forgotten and ignominious planner was right, we do need more beach parking, but not at the expense of something that can't be replaced once lost.

The Adamson House, once destined to be torn down for a parking lot. © 2017 S. Guldimann

We've created a world where nature is increasing forced into islands of parkland, arks as much as parks that contain the remnants of a vanishing world. However, as natural resources continue to diminish, we seem to be increasingly looking towards the places we set aside with different goals in mind. The new fight to save the national monuments and parks from oil exploration and mining is the big example, but even a tiny park like Malibu Bluffs Park can highlight this dichotomy. 

Malibu's mission statement, General Plan, and Local Coastal Plan all place an emphasis on protecting environmentally sensitive habitat area. It's a key element of the Coastal Act. Either something is ESHA or it isn't. If it is, it needs to be protected from all development, not just from development we don't want. Otherwise, what's the point? 

This isn't just an argument over maps with red and purple lines, it's about the environmental impacts of replacing this:

Bluffs Park Meadow © 2017 S. Guldimann

With this:

Bluffs Park Ballfields © 2017 S. Guldimann

Whether or not that change is compatible in any realistic way with the continued survival of the special concern species that have been documented on the site remains to be seen, but it's unrealistic to claim that there will be no impact. Coastal Commission staff have already made it clear that there are substantial issues. Ultimately, ESHA will be the deciding factor in the debate over Bluffs. 

Bluffs Park Path © 2017 S. Guldimann

Malibu Bluffs Park Open Space is an island in a rapidly changing landscape, an ark that carries a fragile living cargo. Maybe the fate of a small lizard or a rare flower doesn't matter equally to everyone, but these animals and plants have special protections at the state level and that's because they are balanced on the edge of extinction. And this time it isn't some soulless corporation or profit-obsessed developer who is conspiring to help shove them over, it's us—the people of Malibu who have always worked together to combat pollution, protect resources and open space, and fight for environmental justice, except, I guess, when there's something we want badly enough to look the other way. 

What happens to Bluffs Park Open Space has serious consequences that go far beyond local wants or desires. We all need to rise above politics-as-usual and work together to find a viable solution that provides athletic facilities without sacrificing environmental resources. To do that fairly and thoroughly those resources—lizard, bird, flower and leaf of grass—have to be a major part of the discussion, otherwise all that talk about stewardship and environmental responsibility is just talk.

Bluffs Park Open Space Park © 2017 S. Guldimann

Overkill

A pocket gopher, blissfully unaware that it is the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District's Undesirable No. 1 and will be gassed out of existence using the WW I-style warfare overkill approach to pest management.

You might think that the City of Malibu's resolution opposing the use of dangerous and deadly rodenticides and the fact the municipality is in the process of developing a citywide rodenticide ban like the one recently approved for the Santa Monica Mountains in unincorporated Los Angeles County would be enough to convince the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District that the pest management version of carpet bombing might not be the best approach for its schools, but it wasn't.

The same school district that has been in hot water over its attempt to sweep epic levels of PCB contamination at Malibu High School under the rug, decided to use Fumitoxin—pellets of aluminum phosphide that combine with moisture to release deadly phosphine gas, to kill a few gophers. 

This pesticide was applied just days before students and teachers arrived on campus for the fall semester. It's a blanket nuke-everything approach, instead of the targeted pest management plan the district is suppose to be responsible for developing and following.

I wrote the following for a 2011 article in the Malibu Surfside News on pesticide use at Malibu High School, it's  discouraging to have to quote it again, four years later:

The EPA has placed [Aluminum phosphide] in its highest toxicity category. As a restricted use pesticide, it can be used by certified personnel only. According to the manufacturer’s description, the compound converts to a deadly phosphine gas when it comes in contact with moisture, eventually degrading into inorganic phosphate, which is not toxic to humans but is a groundwater contaminant and contributes to ocean water quality degradation.

According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report published in 1997, aluminum phosphate has been found to eliminate certain species of ground squirrel, but that “burrowing fumigants will kill animals residing in treated burrows, so it is important to verify that burrows are occupied by target animals. Animals potentially affected by primary poisoning include nontarget rodents, burrowing owls, reptiles and amphibians, rabbits, raccoons, fox, weasel and skunk.”

The EPA lists all organophosphates, including aluminum phosphide, as “acutely toxic to bees, wildlife, and humans.” Recent studies suggest a possible link to adverse effects in the neurobehavioral development of fetuses and children, even at low levels of exposure.

In 2010, Fumitoxin caused the death of a four-year-old girl and her 15-month-old sister in Utah, after the fumigant leaked into the basement of the girls’ home. The rodenticide was applied by an exterminator to treat the family’s lawn for gophers. The toxic fumes were spread throughout the house by the air conditioning.

A letter sent to Malibu parents indicates that the district also authorized the use of strychnine, a poison that has no antidote—which is why it's popular with mystery writers and real life murderers—and a reputation for decimating wildlife. It is a well-documented frequent cause of secondary poisoning in cats and dogs, and species like coyotes and bobcats.

Parents, community members, and activists—including volunteers from Poison Free Malibu, rushed to protest. The district successfully headed off the opposition by arranging for the pesticides to be applied two hours before the stated time.

Then, in the words of the Malibu Times, "the firestorm began."

The article quotes a letter from Malibu Mayor John Sibert:

“As you well know, the City Council unanimously supported a statement against the use of rodenticides and other poisons for pest control in the city,” reads an email sent last week from Malibu Mayor John Sibert to [SMMUSD Superintendent Sandra Lyon] and shared with The Malibu Times.

“To have the school district ignore these efforts and plan an extensive fumigation and poison program on the MHS fields, particularly during the school year when they are in use, is extremely disturbing,” the letter continued. “I hope you would hold off on this and consider other alternatives. The city and, I’m sure, Poison Free Malibu is willing to help. Let me know if you are willing to consider other options.”

Apparently, the district wasn't willing.

The only Malibu resident on the SMMUSD board, Craig Foster,  "tried to find compromise among parents and the district," according to The Malibu Times. Here's a quote:

“I expect that all of us share two beliefs. First, we believe that our children should be free to play on our schools’ fields, safe from pest-related injury. Second, we believe that our pest management should be mindful and honor the delicate nature of our shared ecosystem. I am not happy that the treatment is going ahead and I know I am far from alone in my upset. However, given where we are right now, I believe this is the choice that best meets all of our responsibilities.

His words might have carried more weight if the photo below wasn't the example of the risk of "pest-related injury" that the district provided for the article:

There it is, dear reader, the SMMUSD's justification for poisoning a large section of the Malibu High School campus: a pair of gopher holes. Oh, the horror! Here at the Malibu Post we're at a loss to know why a couple of traps and a shovel weren't used to deal with the problem. Photo: SMMUSD via The Malibu Times

We aren't living in that happy delusional mid-century era when the schools were built and Du Pont promised us "better living through modern chemistry."

In 2015, no one would consider covering their child's room with DDT-treated wallpaper. We know now about the catastrophic impact of this pesticide, but the "nature is the enemy" attitude that was a key component of the mid-century modern mindset is slow to change, especially at the institutional level, even though we know that chemicals like Aluminum phosphide are also deadly.

We're living in the aftermath of that giant chemistry experiment. There is growing evidence that many pesticides impact human health, and no one is more vulnerable than children. We also have an ever-increasing body of data that provides incontrovertible evidence that pesticide use is devastating wildlife, and more specifically, extensive evidence sponsored by the National Park Service, collected and analyzed by top ecologists, and published, and peer-reviewed, that key species in the Santa Monica Monica Mountains and Malibu are being decimated by rodenticides.  

Malibu High School, and all of Malibu, is located within the boundaries of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. National Park Service parkland is located less than a mile away from the campus. This school is also right next to a Marine Protected Area and an area of special biological significance. 

Let's meet some of the potential victims of the SMMUSD's poisoning program, shall we?

Here's one of the gopher's main natural predators, the gopher snake. Unfortunately, snakes like these are frequent victims of rodenticide. They die from eating poisoned prey, but also from rodenticides like Fumitoxin, because they occupy the tunnels made by the gophers. 

We tend to think of egrets and herons as water birds, but they are equally at home in fields and meadows, where they hunt for reptiles and rodents. This places them at risk from secondary rodenticide poisoning. Many bird species depend on rodents as a food source.

This is the California ground squirrel, another frequent target of the school's war on wildlife. They're a primary food source for many predators, including owls, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, badgers, weasels, raccoons and rattlesnakes. They're also intelligent, gregarious animals that communicate with an extensive vocabulary of squeaks and whistles and have developed a series of clever strategies to avoid ending up on the dinner menu. According to observations made by Barbara Clucas, a graduate student in animal behavior at UC Davis, ground squirrels and rock squirrels mask their scent by picking up pieces of shed snakeskin, chewing it and then licking their fur. According to the research published in Science Daily in 2007, "adult female squirrels and juveniles apply snake scent more often than adult males, which are less vulnerable to predation by snakes, Clucas said. The scent probably helps to mask the squirrel's own scent, especially when the animals are asleep in their burrows at night, or to persuade a snake that another snake is in the burrow." 

The side-blotched lizard, and its cousin the fence lizard, often shelter in gopher burrows. Pesticides like Fumitoxin don't differentiate between target species and non-target species. 

This white-tailed kite is one of numerous raptor species that are present on the Malibu High School campus. This is a species that came close to extinction during the DDT era and still has numerous protections, but nothing can protect it from secondary poisoning.

Here's someone else who can be impacted by irresponsible pesticide overuse. According to the EPA, aluminum phosphide can contribute to ocean water degradation. These sea lions got a second chance at life at the California Wildlife Center during the recent sea lion mortality event. Marine mammals like these face enough challenges without having to deal with the SMMUSD's toxins entering the water at Zuma, which is a Marine Protected Area.  Enough is enough. 

Rachel Carson famously wrote:

 “We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road — the one less traveled by — offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth.” 

It may be the road less traveled, but it doesn't mean we have to walk it alone. The school district is being offered every kind of assistance and support to make the transition to a less toxic lifestyle for our teachers, our children, and our community. The mayor, the Malibu City Council, and city staff are willing to help, so is Poison Free Malibu. There are no excuses left for not owning up to the challenge and becoming responsible Malibu residents like the rest of us try to be.

The attitude that Malibu is some sort of rebel colony that has to be run with an iron hand is just as antiquated as the district's pesticide policy. It's time for both attitudes to be revised, and it would be nice if one of the things the people in charge of our children's education could learn is compassion for all life. A little environmental science wouldn't hurt either. It isn't 1950 any more. 

“If, having endured much, we have at last asserted out "right to know," and if by knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals; we should look about and see what other course is open to us.”

—Rachel Carson, Silent Spring