Section 1 of 3. Learn how land managers are increasing the resilience of native plant communities by restoring ecological functions, rehabilitating degraded lands, and applying adaptive management to guide restoration success.
SESSION CHAIRS Loralee Larios1, Cris Sarabia2,3
1University of California, Riverside, CA, United States. 2Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA, United States. 3California Native Plant Society South Coast Chapter, CA, United States.
Loralee Larios
University of California, Riverside
As an ecologist and associate professor, Loralee Larios leads a research group that seeks to understand the mechanisms that contribute to plant diversity and how those might be impacted by plant invasions and environmental change to aide management and restoration.
Cris Sarabia
Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy
Cris Sarabia is Conservation Director for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy in southwestern Los Angeles and oversees all conservation projects including land preservation, habitat restoration, endangered species protection, and management of the nature preserves and open spaces on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Cris has a wide history of involvement with ecological and social justice organizations including being the cofounder of the Long Beach cultural community center Flora y Tierra, as a leader within the California Native Plant Society, an ecologist with the Los Cerritos Wetland Stewards, an Explore the Coast grant Advisory Board Member, and an Advisory Board Member with the Conservation Corp of Long Beach. On his free time, Cris advocates for habitat restoration and multi-lingual nature based programs throughout the urban areas of Los Angeles.
13.1 Successful High Diversity Chaparral Restoration in 2002 Copper Fire Scar
Alyssa Walker, Stephanie Liu, Jack Smith, Katie Aymar
TreePeople, Studio City, CA, United States
Description Following the Copper Fire in 2002, some areas in San Francisquito Canyon never recovered giving way to fields of various invasive species including but not limited to: Hirschfeldia incana (shortpod mustard), Centeurea melitensis (Maltese star-thistle) and Carduus pycnocephalus (Italian thistle). TreePeople, funded by National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, CAL FIRE and others, have been able to pursue work in this fire scar. In 2018, TreePeople began a chaparral restoration project that aimed to assist degraded areas in returning to the ecosystem function prior to the fire with a community-based model involving volunteers and educational opportunities. Initially, the project focused on a plot just under two acres and TreePeople developed a system of high intensity care for plantings to garner higher survival rates. These methods include underground root protection, planting 1 inch below grade, building a dirt berm to better retain water, mulching, regular invasive species control and watering on a monthly schedule with each plant receiving a minimum of 2.5 gallons. Planting/care events had heavy educational and community-building aspects. These values have been carried on as the restoration project has expanded, now encompassing nearly 30 acres. Success has been measured largely through observation, with some data collection. Of the 30 acres of land being actively managed, TreePeople feels confident that most the oldest polygons (nearly 10 acres) have restored ecosystem function, requiring little or no care. In these polygons full seed cycles have been observed from plants installed in years prior as well as more native insect and animal activity.
Presenter Bios
Alyssa Walker
TreePeople
Alyssa Walker is the Associate Director of Conservation at TreePeople overseeing 14 active projects. These projects focus on restoration, invasive insect monitoring, conifer reforestation, and invasive plant remediation. Alyssa worked in retail, caregiving, art and physics education before beginning her career in conservation. She received her B.S. in Ecology and Evolution from Cal State Northridge, began working with TreePeople Forestry in 2019 and has continued volunteering with restoration projects throughout Southern and Central California.
Jack Smith
TreePeople
Jack is TreePeople's Urban Parks Manager, an ISA certified arborist, and has been doing habitat restoration work for 11 years. With the help of staff and volunteers, Jack turned the TreePeople nursery into an accredited phytosanitary facility and has managed several mountain forestry projects. This year, Jack earned wildland firefighter type 2 and sawyer certifications.
Katie Aymar
TreePeople
Katie Aymar is the Nursery & Restoration Specialist at TreePeople, where she manages an accredited phyto-sanitary space growing plants for habitat restoration sites around Southern California. She grew up in Los Angeles and Maui, where her love of conservation was first sparked. Katie earned an interdisciplinary B.A. in the humanities from the Evergreen State College and entered the field as an Outdoor Educator in 2014 before finding her current role at TreePeople.
13.2 Establishing a New Population of Coyote Ceanothus (Ceanothus ferrisiae) on Coyote Ridge: Assisted Colonization of an Endangered Chaparral Shrub
Janell M. Hillman1, Dr. Tedmund J. Swiecki2, Dr. Elizabeth A. Bernhardt2, Diana Benner3
1Santa Clara Valley Water District, San Jose, CA, United States. 2Phytosphere Research, Vacaville, CA, United States. 3The Watershed Nursery, Richmond, CA, United States
Description The endangered Coyote Ceanothus (Ceanothus ferrisiae, CEFE), a serpentine chaparral endemic, is known historically from only three extant occurrences in Santa Clara County, CA. Creation of a new population was required to mitigate impacts to the largest population of CEFE from a planned seismic retrofit of Anderson Dam. Plant installation by container stock and direct seed occurred annually from 2014-2022 at a selected introduction site on Coyote Ridge. Early project challenges included site selection and infrastructure development in a remote, harsh environment and contamination of planted first-year nursery stock by a Phytophthora pathogen with subsequent site remediation via solarization and custom-built solar ovens. Phytophthora-free plants from an Accreditation to Improve Restoration (AIR)- certified nursery were successfully grown and installed at the site from 2015-2022. Annual planting from locally collected seed encouraged the development of structural complexity and genetic diversity in the created occurrence, and in-fill planting of CEFE in different established vegetation communities at the site facilitated the development of a functional ecological community. Monitoring results for 2024 indicated a population size of over 1,200 plants of different age classes. Evidence of successful natural recruitment under maturing plants was first documented in 2023, with a total of 36 natural recruits in 2024 and 85 in 2025. This example illustrates the complexity of conducting translocation and recovery activities in sensitive habitats with endangered species in an age of increased awareness of inadvertent pathogen introductions into wildlands and the need for new considerations in how such projects are designed and implemented.
Presenter Bios
Janell M. Hillman
Santa Clara Valley Water District
Janell Hillman is a senior biologist and plant ecologist at the Santa Clara Valley Water District (Valley Water), where she has worked on rare plant conservation and land management for the past 27 years. Since 2015 she has managed Valley Water's plant pathogen prevention program. She is a co-leader of the Phytophthoras in Native Habitats Work Group (CalPhytos) and the CNPS Healthy Nurseries and Habitats Committee, and passionately believes in rare plant conservation and recovery using phytosanitary, pathogen-free practices.
13.3 Protecting the Hermes Copper Butterfly Through Collaboration, Education, Habitat Enhancement, and Research
Ann Baldridge1, Derrick Mathews2
1Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County, Lakeside, CA, United States. 2AECOM, San Diego, CA, United States
Description The Hermes Copper butterfly (Lycaena hermes) is a rare species that is endemic to San Diego County and Baja California, Mexico. This species is federally listed as threatened, and previous and current conservation efforts have focused on locating additional populations and investigating ways to protect and manage this species and its habitat. Unfortunately, within the last 20 years, several populations appear to have become extirpated by drought and wildfire. Our presentation will showcase a different approach to supporting this imperiled species. With funding from the Bureau of Land Management and support from local partners including San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, US Forest Service, and the San Diego Management and Monitoring Program, we are focusing on habitat enhancement using wild-collected host and nectar plant seed, and testing plant materials for secondary compounds to better understand the butterfly’s host plant preferences. Project partners also include the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, who are providing the opportunity to teach their youth and community members how to monitor this species on their lands. Join us to learn about our multipronged approach to preserving this species!
Presenter Bios
Ann Baldridge
Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County
Ann Baldridge is the Executive Director at the Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego. The RCD’s programs focus on climate smart agriculture, wildfire resilience and forest health, creating and enhancing pollinator habitat on natural and working lands, and education. In addition to her management role, Ann supports the RCD’s habitat-focus programs, including a restoration planning project in southern San Diego County, the Hermes Copper Habitat Restoration in Southeast San Diego County project, and the Working Lands for Pollinators program. In addition, she helped to form and facilitate the San Diego Pollinator Alliance and worked on a project to develop a San Diego source of narrowleaf milkweed. Ann has a BA in Psychology from UC Davis and a Master’s degree in Environmental Psychology from the University of Surrey (UK).
Derrick Mathews
AECOM
Derrick Mathews is a restoration ecologist specializing in botany with over fourteen years of experience throughout the United States. Mr. Mathews is also an ISA Certified Arborist. His expertise includes native seed collection and propagation, rare plant surveys, post wildfire restoration and mitigation, habitat assessment and classification, and non-native and invasive species removal. He is particularly knowledgeable in the wide range of habitats found throughout southern California including high desert scrub, oak woodland, coastal sage scrub, chapparal, grasslands, and riparian. His most recent work has focused on post-construction restoration of native habitat and mitigation efforts for reducing impacts to adjacent habitat during construction. During Mr. Mathews’ early career he served as an ecological technician with the Forest Service in Provo, UT and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Carson City, NV and Boise, ID field offices where he learned the different protocols for native seed collection and propagation and rare plant surveys on federal land throughout California, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho.
13.4 Preventing Native Vegetative Type Conversion Through Translocation
David A. Flores
California Coastal Commission, San Francisco, CA, United States
Description Project Grow is a non-profit, community-based habitat restoration and environmental education program located at the Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve in Newport Beach. We have served our community for over 20 years by providing hands-on experience in habitat restoration while also fulfilling grant-funded and mitigation projects. Our current project has been to establish riparian habitat in Newport Valley, which has three vital ecotones: freshwater marsh, riparian, and coastal sage scrub (CSS). We developed a plant palette and have continued to remove invasive species and manage the site as native plants establish themselves. Concurrently, there is a growing population of CSS presence within the riparian boundaries, which we are required to remove in order to preserve the riparian habitat and prevent vegetative type conversion to CSS. Our goal is to establish a project focused on the salvaging and translocation of CSS within the riparian boundaries. This is a practice that is traditionally reserved for protecting and conserving endemic, rare, and listed species. However, we are making the argument that translocation projects can and should be a more normalized process for habitat restoration regarding native California flora—especially those that make up a fragmented and critically threatened ecosystem that is rich in biodiversity and home to much wildlife, including the endangered California gnatcatcher. We would like to share why we feel that this project is important and how this work could influence the field, as well as the preliminary steps we have begun taking and the expected outcome.
Presenter Bios
David A. Flores
California Coastal Commission
David has been running Project Grow, a non-profit community-based habitat restoration and environmental education program, since 2023. He specializes in environmental education, habitat restoration, and California native plants, specifically in wetland and coastal upland habitats.
13.5 Advanced Propagation Techniques to Prevent Extinction: A Case Study from Catalina Island
Kevin Alison, Lexy Coons
Catalina Island Conservancy, Avalon, CA, United States
Description What do you do if traditional methods of propagating plants fail or are unreliable in the face of extinction? The answer is science, innovation, and community. This presentation will discuss advanced horticultural techniques used by conservationists on Catalina Island to overcome challenges in cultivating rare and difficult-to-grow plants. The subject focus on the critically endangered Catalina mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus traskiae), the endemic Catalina ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus ssp. floribundus), and the island oak (Quercus tomentella) using methods such as plant tissue culture, hydroponics, air-layering, and synthetic seeds.
Presenter Bios
Kevin Alison
Catalina Island Conservancy
Kevin serves as the Native Plant Manager for Catalina Island, where he leverages his expertise in conservation, restoration, and horticulture to safeguard the native biodiversity of plants and prevent extinction. He holds degrees in Natural Resource Management and Environmental Horticulture from College of the Desert, Coastal Resource and Watershed Management from the University of Hawaii, and a Master's in Conservation and Restoration Science from the University of California Irvine. Kevin specializes in advanced propagation techniques such as plant tissue culture to conserve rare, endangered, and challenging-to-grow plants.
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The mission of the California Native Plant Society is to protect California’s native plants and their natural habitats, today and into the future, through science, education, stewardship, gardening, and advocacy.
DateFriday, February 6
