Crystal Cove Conservancy

Educate:the conservancy's unique value proposition holds the critical importance of equipping young people for the environmental challenges of tomorrow at its core and acknowledges that the best way to learn science is by doing science: teaching students while they explore real world problems in real contexts alongside real scientists and engineers. Currently, the conservancy's stem (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education programs engage more than 10,000 k-12 students from 72 schools in 2 states in real conservation work that is helping further the understanding of how crystal cove and protected lands and water are being impacted by accelerating climate change and human impacts. More than 70% of participants come from title 1 schools. The conservancy's education programs leverage a close partnership with california state parks' natural resources team and university of california, irvine researchers and faculty to connect classroom learning to real-world ecological investigations.students who participate in our programs work alongside state park land managers and university scientists to analyze and solve real-world conservation problems. Conservancy programs, developed in alignment with next generation science standards, pair as many as 10 classroom lessons with field experience in the park. By working with multiple grade levels at the same schools, the conservancy's stem education programs have created a learning ladder that takes young scientists from their earliest school days through university internships and into careers in science. Recently, we've added additional rungs to our learning ladder with the development of a lower-elementary engineering program, the trouble with trash, which engages kindergarten, first, and second-graders in an exploration of the impacts of marine plastics and allows them to consider solutions to mitigate the problem. A high school-level fire ecology internship extends the ladder, adding a rung at the top that can launch students into successful college experiences in stem. The addition of a new paid natural resources internship for university students further supports the ambitions of young people looking to enter stem fields.

Protect:crystal cove state park is part of an interconnected landscape. While the boundaries that define it are invisible to the plants and animals that live here, how we manage the land within those boundaries has an impact far beyond its borders. The park is one of the last remaining undeveloped stretches along orange county's coastline and includes riparian and oak woodland habitats, as well as a rocky intertidal zone and a transient kelp forest in the offshore underwater park. These projected ecosystems are part of the larger south coast wilderness open space, which stretches to laguna coast wilderness park and city of irvine open space. Crystal cove state park is also designated as public conservation land on the orange county green vision map and is an enrolled property within the natural communities conservation plan/habitat conservation plan (nccp/hcp) for central coastal orange county. Crystal cove state park is a critically important place because it contains rare and endemic ecosystems that are not found in many other places on earth. Its backcountry is dominated by coastal sage scrub, a now-rare plant community whose range has been drastically reduced due to coastal development. Its bluffs, a rare island of protected natural space in a prime location for beachside homes and shopping centers, boast some of the last remaining coastal bluff scrub in orange county, including several extremely endangered species of rare plants. The park is also home to rare and endangered bird and animal species, including california gnatcatchers (a target species to conserve under orange county's natural communities conservation plan), coastal cactus wrens, orange-throated wiptail lizards, and the least bell's video. However, due to a long history of cattlegrazing, much of the backcountry and coastal terraces have been converted into annual grasslands dominated by invasive plants such as black mustard. Besides the damage done by ranching, the land is also being impacted by drought, climate change, and an ever-increasing number of daily visitors who worry they may be loving the park to death. These challenges are not unique to crystal cove state park. The park is part of a larger, contiguous open space, and many areas across orange county and up and down the coast have been drastically affected by these same challenges. The land has been left with stressed native plants and depleted seed banks struggling against hotter, drier weather, making it difficult to rebound on its own without intensive management - but developing and assessing the strategies that would work best takes a scientific tactic that state parks often don't have the resources to coordinate. Over the last year, the conservancy has stepped into a new role to support the park's natural resources team in developing a systematic approach to identifying optimal restoration strategies which will undoubtedly help other land managers throughout the larger south coast wilderness open space and beyond.