Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration

The Cheadle Center at UCSB manages the North Campus Open Space (NCOS), which is a project that has restored 136 acres of upland and wetland habitats that existed before the area was converted into the Ocean Meadows Golf Course in the 1960s. The NCOS restoration project began in 2017 with a fine-scale grading of the site in order to recreate the salt marsh and use the excavated soil to rebuild the upland habitats to the southwest, which are now called the NCOS Mesa. In addition to re-establishing native biodiversity, a key goal of the restoration is to utilize the site as an educational, scientific, and recreational resource. This archived version of the September 2022 newsletter includes updates on irrigation removal, self-guided walking tours, pollinators visiting the native wildflowers, an annual tidewater goby (Eucyclogobius newberryi) survey, camera trap wildlife sightings at Whittier Pond, and the next phase of the NCOS project. The feature story focuses on efforts to catalogue the plants of NCOS as herbarium specimens. Community photos include Wilson’s and Orange-crowned Warblers (Cardellina pusilla and Leiothlypis celata), Black Phoebe (Sayornis nigricans), and Blue-eyed Darner (Rhionaeshna multicolor).