The Brief

Gliding through just a few feet of murky water, a green sea turtle dodges beer cans, plastic bags and shopping carts in the concrete-lined San Gabriel River.

A scene that feels very turtle out of water.

A green sea turtle pops its head out of the water while swimming up the channelized San Gabriel River in Long Beach.

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Here's this animal that we most often see in photos of people snorkeling during a tropical vacation. It's munching on algae in fetid suburban runoff, with cars zipping by on the 605 Freeway a few hundred yards away.

Seeing any nature thrive here is a remarkable sight in and of itself. But the turtle's presence is even more awe-inspiring when you think about the epic journey it likely went through to get here.

Beating the odds

Odds are, the turtle barely made it off some beach 1,000-plus miles away, then managed to navigate the ocean for years, avoiding predation, fishermen who might accidentally catch it and speeding boats that might strike it — all to end up next to mattresses in a river just south of L.A.

Green sea turtles have made their way up the San Gabriel River, swimming under the 405 Freeway in Long Beach.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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A green sea turtle swims in the San Gabriel River near the 405 freeway.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Once on the path to extinction, these East Pacific green sea turtles are making such a strong comeback that they’re now taking up residence in the San Gabriel River in large numbers, far beyond their typical spots in places like Baja, California and the southern San Diego Bay.

“I think it's only recently that we've really realized that green sea turtles are coming this far up the river,” said Tina Fahy, West Coast Sea Turtle Recovery Coordinator with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

She, along with Justin Greenman, who leads efforts to save stranded animals, took me to a spot in the river where the vegetation ends and the vast expanse of the San Gabriel’s bare concrete begins. We had to make sure that we got there during high tide, because the turtles use the rising water to make it farther up the river channel.

Tina Fahy, NOAA's West Coast Sea Turtle Recovery Coordinator, looks out at the San Gabriel River in Long Beach, which has one of the largest gatherings of green sea turtles in Southern California.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Tina Fahy, NOAA's West Coast Sea Turtle Recovery Coordinator, wears a turtle earring.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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“We didn't really know until we started having some stranded high and dry turtles ... and people thought that they were in trouble,” Fahy said. “They can survive without being in water constantly.”

While these turtles have long been documented hanging out in the warm effluent of power plants downstream, swimming through the Los Cerritos wetlands and at nearby Seal Beach, their presence farther upstream is one of the signs they're on the move as their populations boom and waters continue to warm.

“Whereas 20 years ago, we had very few numbers of turtles in our local waters, now we're seeing turtles in nooks and crannies, in areas that we've never seen them before,” said Jeffrey Seminoff, who leads the Marine Turtle Ecology and Assessment Program at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

"It's really only been in about the last decade that we've seen such a large number of animals," he said. "I believe the San Gabriel River is the most dense green turtle population that we have here in Southern California." 

A harrowing journey to and from L.A.

Green sea turtles can be found all around the world, but there are distinct populations. Ours are known as Eastern Pacific green sea turtles.

Nesting season begins in October, but the turtles don’t lay their eggs here in L.A. They leave the confines of the San Gabriel, head out into the open ocean and slowly swim more than 1,000 miles south to warm beaches like Playa Colola in Michoacán, Mexico.

The turtles mate offshore and the females head in to the beach to bury their eggs in the sand.

Emaciated and exhausted, they then turn around and limp back up to their homes all across Baja and Southern California. The journey is so harrowing that it can take a few years for a female to recover before she’s ready to lay eggs again.

After about 55 days, their babies emerge and steadily get picked off by predators like birds, crabs and raccoons along the beaches. The survivors make their way into the open ocean where they’ll spend the next four years or so passively floating. With yet more predators prowling the seas, the best estimate is that only about 1% of them make it to adulthood.

Around age 6, the turtles swim inland and settle in coastal habitats like the San Gabriel River for the next 15 years. There, they can forage and grow until they're full-fledged adults ready to follow the Earth’s magnetic field back down south to mate and lay eggs, like their parents before them.

The best estimates say that they can live longer than 80 years and grow to over 400 pounds.

The ones observed in the San Gabriel River seem to be adolescents.

We almost lost the turtles

About 50 years ago, green sea turtle populations, including those in the Eastern Pacific, absolutely cratered.

Habitat loss, ship strikes and being accidentally caught by fishermen all jeopardized their survival, as did the fact that they were being hunted for their meat and eggs in Mexico.

They were put on the U.S. federal endangered species list in the 1970s. And by the 1990s, Mexico had taken steps to both protect nesting sites and foraging populations, and ban the sale and use of turtle products.

Since then, the turtles have been steadily recovering.

Back in the 1980s, roughly 250 turtles were spotted on Playa Colola in Michoacán over the six-month-long nesting season. In 2015, more than 1,000 were spotted in one night, Seminoff said.

In April 2016, their status was changed from endangered to threatened, and over the past five years their populations here have exploded.

Tina Fahy, NOAA's West Coast Sea Turtle Recovery Coordinator, looks out at the San Gabriel River in Long Beach, which has one of the largest gatherings of green sea turtles in Southern California.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Now, they're showing up in surprising numbers, farther up the San Gabriel River than was previously observed.

“Part of why I think we're seeing turtles in these different habitats where we've never seen them before, is simply a function of crowding,” said Seminoff. “There are sites like the San Gabriel River, for example, where we might be at what we call ‘capacity.’ There's just so many turtles that there's a limitation of food. And if that's happening more and more in different spots throughout Southern California, that's going to force turtles to find new spots that have abundant food supplies so that they can set up shop and live there for years at a time.”

Why do the turtles like the San Gabriel River?

When it comes to comfort, turtles are looking for warm water, food and safety, and the San Gabriel River seems to meet those requirements.

Green sea turtles have made their way up the San Gabriel River swimming under the 405 Freeway in Long Beach.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Ducks on the San Gabriel River co-exist with green sea turtles that gather in the area.

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All the bridge pilings may be a great place for them to rest, as they can protect the turtles from getting jostled around by the tides.

There are plenty of rock piles for algae to grow and mud for invertebrates to flourish in, both of which are critical sources of food.

Boat strikes and getting accidentally caught aren't a concern because the river is protected.

Justin Greenman, the California Assistant Stranding Coordinator at NOAA.

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On top of all that, its waters are being warmed by the effluent from power plants downstream. Moving upstream, giant concrete walls absorb the sun’s energy during the day and radiate it out at night, likely keeping resulting in temperatures a bit more habitable for reptiles that prefer tropical and subtropical locations.

Speaking of which, as waters warm due to climate change, habitats farther to the north will likely open up as well.

“I expect that we'll see turtles move farther and farther north along the coast of California," Seminoff said. "We're seeing green turtles in places like Monterey Bay with greater frequency these days. It's not normal by any sense of the word."

The concrete walls of the San Gabriel River absorb the sun's heat likely resulting in warmer temperatures.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Rock piles in the San Gabriel River allow algae to grow for the green sea turtles to eat.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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In July, the National Marine Fisheries Service and NOAA proposed designating turtle hotspots across Southern California, marine-critical habitats, which would afford the turtles additional protections. Essentially, the designation is meant to mitigate impacts on the turtles from activities like construction, and requires federal agencies consult with NOAA during the process.

It's truly a period of discovery, and there are a ton of questions that NOAA and others want to answer about turtle habits and movement, particularly in the San Gabriel River.

That’s where you come in.

Scientists need your help studying them

For the past decade or so, scientists have been actively gathering information about turtles in the lower part of the river, but are looking to expand their studies farther upstream given the population boom.

If you’d like to volunteer to help, The Aquarium of the Pacific has been running a turtle spotting program since 2012. Participants get together every first Saturday of the month and spend about 30 minutes out in the field counting turtles. The data they gather is made available to NOAA and the Los Cerritos Wetlands authority, in an effort to track turtle activity.

If you want to go out on your own and provide information about turtles directly to NOAA, you can head to the spot on the map above, and submit whatever you gather here.

Make sure to include a picture of the turtle if possible, as each has a unique set of markings on its head, which can help scientists better track turtle movement over time.

Oh, and if you see a turtle stranded, call NOAA's California stranding network hotline at (562) 506-4315.

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”

As the Palisades Fire roared to life a year ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was nowhere to be found in the city.

She was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana, the guest of the Biden Administration, when the wind-whipped flames swept into the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025. After her return to Los Angeles the next day, she stared stone faced and silent when a reporter from the British outlet Sky News quizzed her at LAX about why she had left the city amid warnings of historic winds and fire danger.

Later, she said the fire chief, whom she terminated six weeks after the fire, did not properly warn her of the impending extreme and dangerous conditions. Bass later called it a “mistake” to have left the city.

From day one of the Palisades Fire, which burned nearly 7,000 homes and killed 12 people, Bass has been under intense scrutiny for her response to the disaster.

And it will likely be a big issue in her reelection campaign this year.

The mayor is politically vulnerable when it comes to fire response, said Fernando Guerra, who directs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

“The fires are the major issue in this election,” Guerra said.

Among the criticisms: The mayor introduced a plan to waive new building permit fees for Palisades residents, an effort to help fast-track rebuilding, but it is languishing in the City Council. Some residents say the rebuilding process has gone to slow and blame the mayor.

Additionally, The Los Angeles Times reported last month that an after-action report by the L.A. Fire Department, which the mayor oversees, was toned down to avoid being too critical of the agency’s response. The Times reviewed multiple drafts of the report and learned that the revisions amounted to “an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership.”

The fumbles have left many in the Palisades frustrated. Some in the Palisades have called on her to resign.

Larry Vein of Pali Strong, a fire survivors group, acknowledges the anger some in the Palisades have expressed toward Bass, but he is careful about criticizing the mayor.

“I have a saying which is I don’t do politics, I do Palisades,” he said. “ But “certainly mistakes were made.”

“As of today, there is a lot of anger and there is a lot of upset at the mayor, thinking that she should have done more,” he continued. “She has been making strides with trying to get the rebuild done, but there have been the standard hurdles that happen in any bureaucracy.”

The mayor has defended her administration’s response to the fire, saying debris cleanup and the issuing of permits to rebuild have happened at “lightning speed” and that thousands of people have used the city’s one-stop centers that provide relief. She has urged banks to extend forbearance of mortgage payments to residents who lost their homes, and banned projects that split lots zoned for single-family homes — an effort to retain community character in the Palisades.

In an interview with LAist, Bass acknowledged the criticism.

“You certainly have Palisadians who say that it's going too slow. But it's going too slow for a variety of reasons,” she said. “It might be financial, it might be insurance. If it's the city process — and it might be — and we find out about it, we jump on it and move whatever obstacle that’s in the way out of the way.

“We have a long ways to go, but I am hoping that progress will even speed up more, and more homes will be under construction,” Bass said.

Fire Department report criticized

Much the criticism has focused on the fire department, which Bass oversees.

The Times has reported the department downplayed some of the problems in the response, including the agency’s failure to fully extinguish the Lachman Fire a week before the Palisades Fire. It is believed that high winds reignited the Lachman Fire and caused the Palisades Fire.

“There was an effort to minimize errors in judgment that were made,” City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez told LAist.

Maryam Zar, founder of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, echoed the sentiment.

“The lack of accountability, the lack of ability to say, ‘Hey Pacific Palisades we really got this wrong’...that leads to this community’s inability to let go,” Zar added.

Bass wouldn’t say if there was a cover-up by the fire department. She said another report ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom is due out later this month.

“That is an independent report,” she said. “ It had nothing to do with the Fire Department. And you can judge at that point.”

According to the Mayor’s Office, more than 1,400 construction permits have been issued for more than 680 addresses in the Palisades as of this week. At least 417 projects are confirmed to have started construction

The office says Palisades rebuilding plans are being approved in half the time compared to single-family home projects citywide before the wildfires.

In April, Bass introduced a proposal to waive construction permit fees for people who wanted to rebuild in the Palisades. But the proposal needs approval from the City Council, which has delayed any action citing concerns about the effect it would have on the cash-strapped city.

The cost will run into the tens of millions of dollars. The council approved a $13 billion budget in June that included little wiggle room for additional spending.

The council is scheduled to take up the issue again this month.

Some blame Bass for not pushing the council hard enough.

“We think she’s lost that sense of urgency — that this is an important part of L.A. city that has burned down and been completely devastated,” said Zar, from the Palisades Recovery Coalition.

Vein, from the fire survivors group, said knowing whether the city will waive potentially tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees per home is important because many residents are still on the fence about whether to rebuild.

And the delays have been frustrating to many.

“A year later, we’re still waiting on permit fee waivers,” said Jessica Rogers, vice chair of the Palisades Long Term Recovery Group.

Back to square one

The city also still has no overall plan to rebuild city infrastructure. The mayor hired one firm to develop a plan then switched to another, AECOM, which is conducting listening sessions with residents, according to Zar.

“We think there’s been enough of a listening tour and too little output,” said Zar. “Over and over again we feel like we’re back to square one.”

Rodriguez said it's important to move things faster for the residents of the Palisades.

“With every false start, you’re delaying a plan for the families that were affected to be able to recover,” the council member said.

At the same time, Zar said she thinks some of the criticism of the mayor has been overblown. Zar said she isn’t convinced it’s such a big deal that Bass was out of town the day the fire started.

“The mayor being in town would not have meant that she would have shown up with a hose in her hand,” she said.

Some in the Palisades say any mayor would have struggled to respond to such a large-scale wildfire.

“For a disaster of our size, it would be hard for anybody to do a very good job at assisting with recovery,” Rogers said.

Bass faces reelection bid

Bass announced her reelection bid Dec.13, touting on her website that L.A.’s fire cleanup was the fastest in U.S. history.

Former Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent and investment banker Austin Beutner is among those challenging her. He’s also a Palisades resident whose home was badly damaged by smoke.

“She keeps announcing recovery strategies only for them to get bogged down in details or abandoned altogether,” Beutner said.

Guerra, from Loyola Marymount, said many voters perceived that Bass had “underperformed” during and after the fires.

“I think we’re picking that up not only in the public narrative but also in public opinion polls,” he said.

According to a UCLA/Luskin School Quality of Life Index survey conducted in February and March of last year, her total unfavorable rating was 49% compared to 23% during her first year in office.

Still, she commands a strong coalition that includes labor unions and business groups like the Valley Industry Commerce Association, said Guerra. He predicted Bass would “probably win in the June primary.”

Guerra said Bass will be tough to topple, despite her missteps on fire recovery.

One of the outstanding questions is whether billionaire businessman Rick Caruso will enter the race. Caruso, who ran against Bass in 2022, has been a sharp critic of the mayor’s recovery response.

He spent more than $100 million trying to defeat Bass the first time.

Caruso won’t say whether he plans to mount a challenge to Bass.

The filing deadline is Feb. 7.

The U.S. took the unprecedented step Monday of dropping the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — cutting protection against a half-dozen diseases in a move slammed by the nation’s pediatricians.

The overhaul is effective immediately, meaning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend vaccines against 11 diseases. What’s no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high-risk, or if their doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared decision-making.”

Trump administration officials said the overhaul, a move long sought by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., won’t result in families who want the vaccines losing access to them, and said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the move increases confusion for parents and could increase preventable diseases.

The change came after President Donald Trump in December asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising its guidance to align with theirs.

HHS said its comparison to 20 peer nations found that the U.S. was an “outlier” in both the number of vaccinations and the number of doses it recommended to all children. Officials with the agency framed the change as a way to increase public trust by recommending only the most important vaccinations for children to receive.

Among those left on the recommended-for-everyone list are measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chickenpox and HPV.

“This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday.

Medical experts disagreed, saying the change without public discussion or a transparent review of the data would put children at risk.

Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said countries carefully consider vaccine recommendations based on levels of disease in their populations and their health systems.

“You can’t just copy and paste public health and that’s what they seem to be doing here,” said O’Leary. “Literally children’s health and children’s lives are at stake.”

The new guidance also reduces the number of recommended vaccine doses against human papillomavirus from two or three shots to one for most children, depending on age.

The decision was made without input from an advisory committee that typically consults on the vaccine schedule, said senior officials at HHS. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the changes publicly.

“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis and rotavirus, and changing the recommendation for HPV without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits, will lead to more hospitalizations and preventable deaths among American children,” said Michael Osterholm of the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota.