Shorebirds work the surfline at Santa Monica Beach : Photo: Jason Goldman
In the early 1900s, L.A. County beaches were not yet the tourist destination they would one day become. The pier in Santa Monica was completed in 1909, but it wasn’t for another few decades that the beach itself would itself become a destination. "At that time, Miami was the place to be, and this beach did not look like Miami," says ecologist Tom Ford, Executive Director of the Santa Monica-based research and restoration nonprofit The Bay Foundation.
To draw more tourists to the area, local municipalities wanted the beaches of the Santa Monica Bay to mimic those on the nation’s opposite coast: bigger, flatter, wider. Beach managers of the time decided to bend the area’s geology to their will, making Southern California beaches take on a more Floridian aesthetic. A century later, Ford and his colleagues are working to fix those managers’ work. Walking along the beach north of the pier, behind the Annenberg Community Beach House, Ford explains that Santa Monica’s three mile long beach – along with those […]
Full article: Rewilding Santa Monica’s Thoroughly Artificial Beach
Seabirds Return to Desecheo Island One Year After Restoration
River Revives After Largest Dam Removal in USA History
Meet the visionary who restored 5,500 acres of wrecked Texas land to paradise
What’s at Stake — Why Coastal Louisiana Matters
Oyster Reefs of the Past Hold Lessons for Future Coastal Restoration
The Inspector General of the Department of Defense released some scathing reports Thursday over the…
Photo: Morgan Boone, a volunteer with Crop Swap LA, harvested lettuce at the La Salle…
Los Angeles residents at a section of the Los Angeles River cleanup in Los Angeles,…
Over the past decade, about 67 million gallons of fire retardant have been dropped on…
Photo: Golden Trout Wilderness Seeking blue, seeing gold The Kern Plateau features a chain of…
For the first time in more than a century, a salmon was observed swimming through Klamath…