The Habitat Restoration Committee’s Recent Work

By Bob Byrnes and Arne Johanson, Habitat Restoration Committee Chairs

The Habitat Restoration Committee is working under quarantine restrictions imposed on the population by government at all levels. We certainly take this situation very seriously, realizing the potential harm to ourselves and to the broader community. Here are our reasons for doing so.

The first is that fire mitigation is an exempted, essential activity in Governor Newsom’s order (https://covid19.ca.gov/img/EssentialCriticalInfrastructureWorkers.pdf). The statement heading that section of this document is quite clear:

“The Emergency Services Sector (ESS) is a community of highly-skilled, trained personnel, along with the physical and cyber resources, that provide a wide range of prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery services during both day-to-day operations and incident response. The ESS includes geographically distributed facilities and equipment in both paid and volunteer capacities (emphasis added) organized primarily at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial levels of government…”

All our current projects have the dual purpose of habitat recovery along with fire prevention and mitigation. We are working in the same areas where we have worked for several years, using the Bradley method. We remove invasive plants and encourage native plants in their place. Many or most of these invasive plants contribute to wildfire propagation. They are being replaced by plants that are often less woody, shorter, and considerably more resistant to flames and to generation of airborne embers.

Second, here is a quote from Justin Daniel, our chapter president, summarizing the position of CNPS: “Certain types of activities are still capable of happening as long as they are independent. No event with public engagement should be occurring at all.”

Very few members of the Habitat Restoration Committee are meeting at any one time. We work in isolated areas. We work independently. The nature of our tasks has us working in a common area yet separate. We do not engage the public. Even when we talk to one another we keep our distance. We share supplies and equipment. We have implemented the practice of sanitizing these with alcohol before and after each handling. Any member who shows signs of illness or who has been exposed to anyone who is ill is prohibited from working.

With all this said, we have been enjoying the usual colors and sounds of springtime in San Diego during these otherwise trying times.