The trouble with plovers

Abstract

This chapter concerns a little bird, the western snowy plover, and the impact it has had on the public perception of the environment along the central coast of California, from Monterey in the north to Ventura in the south (Fig. 6.1). I will talk about the value of animals and how they contribute to the value and meaning of a landscape. The relationships between the snowy plovers and the humans who share California beaches with them are not simple or straightforward, although both conservationists and their opponents portray them in this way. This essay will address two questions in particular: does an environment constructed and managed by humans for the sake of conservation cease to be natural or authentic? Does conservation and restoration of non-human species require that humans be absent from the scene? I will focus on one area, known by the unlovely name of Coal Oil Point, but use other parts of the coast for illustration. This chapter springs from a larger collaborative project on the ecological history of this coastal area, which will assemble the ecological and cultural history with the goal of developing a model approach for informing restoration efforts. The coastline offers a wide variety of habitats including sandy beaches, dunes, rocky tidepools, cliffs, a saltwater slough, coastal mesas, and freshwater marshes and pools. The setting is on the edge of a highly urbanized and quickly developing area, a liminal space that is a borderland both literally and symbolically. The human history of Coal Oil Point dates back at least 8500 years, and the ecology of this dynamic coastal landscape has undergone many changes over time. The history of the area includes early human occupation, ranching by Spanish and American settlers and, in the twentieth century, a large estate and a private school. This area is part of a major land-use agreement that is being drawn up between Santa Barbara County, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the young city of Goleta, and private developers. Known as the Ellwood-Devereux plan, this agreement would leave much of the coastal area free of new development in exchange for development rights farther inland. Ecological restoration of the coastal area is part of this plan and is also a major objective of the Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve, part of the University of Californias Natural Reserve System (Ellwood- Devereux Plan, 2004; Dugan & Guerrini, in press).