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The Cactus Wren
“You can’t stop fire. You can’t control it because there’s just too many people,” says Barry Nerhus, conservation chair for the Orange County Society for Biological Conservation (OCSBC). “The biggest fear is that this bird is going to go extinct.”
But if the IRC and the Nature Reserve have any say, the cactus wren at least will have a fighting chance at survival. Habitat restoration in the central reserve began with the IRC's 2009
proposal to the California Department of Fish and Game under their Natural Community Conservation Planning program (NCCP). Populations were becoming dangerously low. The NCCP is a program created by the California Department of Fish and Game to preserve entire ecosystems in order to prevent the loss of single species within them. The program
is overseen in Orange County by the Nature Reserve of Orange County and
the IRC manages land for some participating landowners. The cactus restoration program begun in 2009 is taking place on lands largely formally owned by the Irvine Company, for example in the Portola Orchard at the end of Portola Road in Irvine and adjacent to the 241 freeway. Other sites being rehabilitated include areas in Limestone Canyon, Shoestring Ridge, and areas near the Siphon Reservoir.
The IRC called for volunteers in November of 2009, and forty of these sites in Orange County were planted with tiny prickly pear cactus cuttings. The cuttings come from healthy populations of Orange County cacti from areas where the plant is not in jeopardy. The method for transplanting, while effective, is not particularly scientific. “We take barbeque tongs, clamp down on the cactus, and twist,” explains Quinn with energetic hand motions. “We collect thousands at a time, three to four thousand a day.”
Once these pieces, called cactus pads, are collected from healthy cacti , they are carefully laid out on a bed of gravel so that the end that was severed from the mature cactus can recover from the shock of removal. The severed end is exposed and glistening with the moisture retained by the desert plant. Like a cut in human flesh, the cactus piece must heal itself by forming a scab over its wound before it can be transplanted in the habitat restoration sites. Once the cactus pads have completed the process of what Quinn calls “call using over,” they are planted in carefully selected burn areas, two per square meter. Now there is little to do but wait twenty years for the tiny leaves to reach a height that’s tall enough for the finicky cactus wren.
In the meantime, the IRC and the Nature Reserve are attempting to provide a temporary solution to the wren’s habitat problem. Prior to the fire in 2007, the IRC used a local research grant from the California Department of Fish and Game to build artificial nesting structures to see if they could serve as habitat for the cactus wren during the long wait for the real cactus to grow to a suitable height. It was determined last year that the birds were not willing to nest in these man-made cacti, and this year the IRC has set out wooden and wire boxes on meter-tall poles in which they’re hoping the wren s will want to build their own nests. Many of these nesting recommendations are suggested by Robb Hamilton, a biologist who conducts cactus wren population surveys in both the central and coastal reserves. According to Hamilton, the IRC’s main goal in the central reserve should be to expand existing cactus wren sites outward so that the young of the existing birds will have a place to migrate to. In the coastal reserve, it is more important to plant new sites in such a way that they close the gaps between existing sites. T he coastal reserve has plenty of unburned coastal sage scrub that is perfect for nesting, but the cactus wrens seem unable to find this land on their own.
With so much habitat to recover and so few resources, allocation is one of the project’s main concerns.
“Because it’s over such a large area, the first phase of our restoration program was to make sure that our efforts were in strategic locations that would most likely benefit existing cactus wren pairs,” says the IRC’s Megan Lulow, senior ecologist and head of the restoration project. Because the cactus wren is not a bird that likes to move around, restoration must occur within one kilometer of an identified cactus wren couple and within two hundred meters of a fairly intact existing habitat.
“Traveling over miles is something they don’t do,” says the OCSBC’s Nerhus. “They have stubby little wings. They can fly, but they’ll fly up to a tree, or they’ll kind of bounce up a slope.” When new habitats are put in place close to existing habitats, it means that the young of any current pairs will have an accessible place to go when its time for them to move out of the parental nest.
Quinn Sorenson has been working with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy and the transplanted cacti for more than three months, but he has never seen a cactus wren at the Portola Orchard. This is especially disappointing for him because this orchard is one of the surveyed sites that has numerous identified cactus wrens—around fifteen. The bird’s distinctive call has taunted Quinn on many occasions, but stealthy searches always prove to be fruitless.
“They’re pretty secretive,” Quinn says as his hiking shoes crunch in the dirt of the site, which is part of an avocado orchard owned by the Irvine Valencia Company. This is the site located at the very end of Portola Parkway in Irvine, just past the 241 freeway. Entrance is barred to all those without authorization, but Quinn ignores the imposing signs as he drives the IRC’s white Toyota pickup into what the staging area—something that turns out to be a locked gate at the entrance. As he drives, Quinn speaks a kind of gringo Spanish to Margarito and Abelino, two workers borrowed from the Irvine Valencia Growers. The three of them are headed up to the site for a day of weeding and hoeing.
After entering the orchard through the staging area, Quinn drives for about ten minutes to the actual site of the cacti, stopping along the way to unlock two chain-link gates. The day is uncharacteristically balmy and beautiful for February, but Quinn pays little attention to the weather as he drives with his head hanging out the open window. Suddenly a “Charcharchar” sounds from the scrubby bushes and cacti lining the side of the bumpy dirt road, and Quinn slams on the brakes so hard that all four of the truck’s passengers lurch in their seatbelts.
“Did you hear it?” he asks excitedly as he cranes out the window to see if he can spot the tiny cactus wren in a clump of coastal sage scrub. His face falls slightly when he fails, but he still has a hopeful air about him as he continues to drive.
Quinn parks the truck alongside a weathered fence that bars access to the adjacent hillside. The fence is dilapidated and rusty, and he and the two workers simply step over a spot where it is bent all the way down to the ground. Brown and scrubby green dominate the landscape, brush and rocks cover the dirt floor and the unforgiving sun bakes the hillside with its rays. Here and there the skeleton of a cactus sprawls across the ground, burned black and curled in on itself like the legs of a charred octopus. Quinn, Margarito, and Abelino climb to the top, hoes in hand. Once there, the three barely pause to look at the spectacular view. The cities of Irvine, Lake Forest, and Tustin stretch into the great expanse, their skyscrapers dotting the horizon. The sky is a cloudless, pale blue, empty except for the thin line of faint brown smog that hovers at the point where sky meets land. Catalina Island is a faraway bump. There is an absence of sound at the top of the hill, a kind of silence that dominates even the freeway rumblings from the adjacent 241 and the faint buzzing of the hill’s insect life. Down on the crude dirt road next to the truck, a deer picks her way along the path.
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