Tours of Habitat Improvement Areas:I

Tours of Habitat Improvement Areas

It probably won’t budge the hardcore anti-roads enviros an inch, but it may help win over moderates – publicity for good habitat restoration. Road operators spend tens of millions of dollars on restoring habitat, often as part of ‘mitigation’ schemes to offset the ‘take’ of wetlands or endangered species lands in the road right-of-way itself – even though the right-of-way in the medians, edge strips and interchanges often supports a rich assortment of self-selected, unplanned wildlife.

Southern Calif’s TCA looks after four planned habitat restoration sites totaling 1,467 acres and it is now offering 3-hour public tours of each of them to show them off. In each case consultant biologists and ecologists, proud of what they have accomplished, are conducting the tours.

The toll roads in Orange Co bought up an old gravel mine, a former citrus orchard, and plain unfriendly-to-wildlife rundown areas of land, and made four beautiful rich and full-of-life wilderness areas out of them by restoring naturalistic watercourses and wetlands, revegetating native plant species and nurturing animal, bird and water creatures. Motorists pay for this in tolls, and it deserves the widest publicity. (Contact 949 754 3405 or www.thetollroads.com Be sure or type in the ‘the’ or you’ll get a certain newsletter’s shamefully neglected website.)