The Brief

In recent years, native plants — and the bees, birds and bugs that pollinate them — have notably declined across Southern California as pollution and development have grown.

But some groups are stepping in to help. LAist visited Irvine Ranch Conservancy (IRC), a nonprofit that works to restore Southern California’s native plant ecosystem and prevent habitat loss.

The conservancy works to protect biodiversity through a unique program in which they collect native plant seeds from the surrounding environment, grow more of the native plants at their farm, and redistribute these seeds throughout areas in which the native plant populations are in decline.

Biodiversity is important for the functioning and resilience of any ecosystem — and in order for an ecosystem to thrive, it needs to have a diverse population of native plants.

We took a tour of their farm to learn about the work they’re doing to protect native plants and pollinators.

Here’s a guide to understanding what’s on the decline in Southern California and how the native seed program is working to turn things around.

What species are on the decline and what’s causing the problems?

California has about 7,000 native plant species, and 4,000 of those are native to Southern California — that’s according to Bob Allen, an Orange County-based biologist.

Guides lead a tour at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Native plants provide shelter and food that simply cannot be provided by non-native plants; if they are not there, biodiversity will decrease.

A short supply of native plants affects the bees, birds, bats and bugs that pollinate them. Allen said that bird populations are down because there’s fewer insects to eat.

“I’ve been here my whole life, and insect numbers are way down,” Allen said.

The declines in plants and their pollinators are caused by a range of problems such as housing development, pollution, wildfires and an increase in invasive species such as black mustard and red brome plants.

Bumblebees have been especially hard-hit.

“Bumblebees have crashed recently, like [in] the last five years,” Allen said. Of the 26 bumblebee species that are native to California, one species, Franklin’s bumblebee, has likely gone extinct (it was last seen in Mount Ashland, Ore., in 2006). Another, Crotch's bumblebee, is nearly extinct, and others are doing badly — in short, none of them are doing well, Allen said.

A guide with Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm identifies woollypod milkweed.

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Bumble bee declines affect other species. Allen said bumblebees are one of the primary pollinators of tomatoes, and the number-one pollinator of the California native plant white sage (one of the most abundant plants in several California plant communities). The loss of native pollinators and native plants is a vicious cycle that ends in the demise of both species.

How does the Irvine Ranch Conservancy try to increase biodiversity? 

The Irvine Ranch Conservancy works to protect and restore 25 sites known as Irvine Ranch Natural Landmarks spread over 40,000 acres throughout Southern California.

To increase the amount and diversity of native plants in the ecosystem, employees and volunteers collect native plant seeds from plant populations in their natural habitat, grow more of them at their farm and nursery, collect the seeds from these plants, and spread them across the various sites.

Inside a refrigerated container containing various seeds, Sunny Saroa, the Plant Material Development Project Manager at Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm, opens a bag of California poppy seeds.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Plant Material Development Project Manager Sunny Saroa sifts through California golden poppy seeds.

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Brian Feinzimer

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IRC’s plant materials program works to help restore about 10 acres a year. The process involves taking a diverse collection of native seeds from the wild and “amplifying" them for re-distribution at the farm.

Sunny Saroa, a project manager at IRC, explained the process like this: “Collect the seed, clean them up, put them in storage, and when it's time for us to put them out in the wild, our team will come out here, mix the seed into a mix, and then use that equipment to put them out on the land.”

IRC volunteers and staff collect plants from a variety of locations including Crystal Cove State Park, Arroyo Trabuco, Chino Hills, O’Neill Regional Park, Limestone Canyon and Bomber Canyon. Their goal is to always collect as much seed as possible while avoiding over harvesting through techniques such as pulling the seeds by hand, smacking them into a bucket or cutting the whole stock off.

Guides lead a tour at the Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm.

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Brian Feinzimer

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At the farm, the seeds are planted and grown using traditional agricultural and nursery techniques.

Annuals (plants that live for one season) are sown in lines, and perennials (plants that sprout every spring) are grown in containers and then planted. Once the seeds are ready to be harvested, they are collected and stored in seed storage containers, which are basically giant, walk-in fridges. The containers are filled with yellow bags of different types of seeds, and smell amazing, sort of like iced tea — a great place to be on a hot day.

Saroa explained that the containers hold most of the farm-grown seed.

“Between both containers we have about, I think 80 to 90 different species, and a total of this year, I think about 3,500 pounds of seed,” Saroa said.

Before being distributed, the seeds are cleaned using air screen cleaners. Then, IRC’s restoration enhancement team comes out to measure the seeds, mix them, load them into their truck and re-distribute them to IRC’s restoration areas.

At the moment, IRC is working on a few specific restoration projects. These include a butterfly restoration project in Limestone Canyon where they are planting islands of native plants; a monarch butterfly restoration where they are planting native milkweed; and several in which they are restoring coastal sage scrub habitats for an adorable bird called the California gnatcatcher.

Irvine Ranch Conservancy Native Seed Farm

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Are these efforts to increase biodiversity working?

When IRC removes non-native species and plants native ones, it re-established the foundations for a healthy habitat.

“You know, a lot of times how we like to think about it is we’re kind of tipping the scales in the favor of the native plant communities,” said Scott Graves, a communications manager for IRC.

Graves elaborated that when they do this, oftentimes, native animal species that have been unseen in the area for some time return. By providing the area with native, biodiverse plants, conservationists are giving these species the tools they need to survive. Thanks to these efforts, there has already been a rebound in the population of coastal cactus wrens and the California gnatcatchers.

But, protecting biodiversity isn’t just about creating a habitat where native animals can thrive. For these conservationists, there’s also a level of attachment to the dwindling native plant populations in Southern California.

“There are some plants that are so endemic to areas that if that population is wiped out, it’s not coming back,” said Jesse Potter, the program coordinator at IRC’s farm. "And it's just sort of like the sentimentality of losing something forever is, it would just be a shame."

Hopes for the future

Potter, Graves, and Saroa all agreed that one of their biggest hopes for the future is that IRC become a community resource for Orange County residents — a place where they can come to learn about native plants and their local wildlands.

When asked what the residents of L.A. and Orange counties can do to help IRC’s efforts, Sunny’s answer was quick: “Get involved.”

You can sign up to participate in community activities (volunteer, go on a hike, learn more about native plants) at IRC's website.

A hoverfly pollenates a common goldfield.

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A White-lined sphinx caterpillar.

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Another small but important step you can take to increase biodiversity in your area is to plant native plants in your own yard, or even in little containers if you only have a patio.

“So much of Orange County and L.A. County is on that urban wildlife interface where you do see a lot of loss of biodiversity,” Potter said. So by harvesting native plants of your own, you can make an even bigger positive impact than you might realize.

Graves said he wants IRC to grow and continue to be a place where Southern California's native species can thrive.

“I hope over time we can restore a lot of these degraded areas and keep the healthy areas intact so that the wildlands in Orange County become like a safe haven for all these different species that are finding their habitats slowly kind of fading away,” he said.

The Long Beach Unified School District is looking for a new operator to handle a major after-school program following the city of Long Beach’s decision not to participate in an attempt to save money.

Since 2002, the city’s Parks Department has helped anchor the initiative, known to families as WRAP. It provides free programming for hundreds of transitional-kindergarten through eighth-grade students across seven local campuses: Garfield, Edison, King, Grant, Lafayette, Burbank and Herrera.

Long Beach Unified officials stress that the vital student services will continue under a new operator this fall. It’s not clear yet who it will be and what, if any, changes they’ll make.

The city’s quiet retreat from the program has sparked deep anxiety among three full-time and 80 part-time municipal workers who now face potential layoffs.

Workers say they were first notified of the decision during a June 15 staff meeting with a city superintendent, where they were told their employment with the program would conclude on Aug. 15.

“Everybody was kind of caught off guard,” said one 13-year city employee based at an elementary school, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her position. “I mean, again, I’ve been doing this for 13 years; we had people there that had been doing it over 20 years that had never moved sites.”

Today, the before- and after-school services are paid for primarily through the state-funded Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP), a combination of California’s After School Education and Safety (ASES) grant and specific ELOP apportionments.

Historically, the city was granted this funding by the school district without a formal bidding process, typically receiving roughly $15 per student plus administrative fees, which it supplemented with allocations from its own general fund.

This year, however, the school district was forced to overhaul its grant-funding process and consider bids to meet tightening state mandates for the program’s ELOP funding.

Shortly after, the city informed the school district it would not bid on the program.

City spokesperson Jennifer De Prez said the decision “was made so that the department can focus its limited financial resources” on other programs it runs.

The city is facing an estimated $61 million budget shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year — a deficit that top administrators warn makes citywide reductions inevitable.

The city could not immediately provide numbers on how much money it expected to save by ending its participation in the WRAP program. Last year, the city provided $193,254 of in-kind-services at its own expense on top of the program’s grant-funded budget, according to documents provided by De Prez.

Meanwhile, the school district went ahead with a bid application for a replacement operator on May 22. Proposals were due June 12 and are scheduled to go before the Board of Education for consideration at its July 15 meeting.

District officials emphasized that the state funding remains fully intact and that student services will continue without interruption.

The district and the city are also working on a joint letter to families detailing the transition, which is scheduled to be sent out soon.

But for the frontline staff, the transition has been destabilizing and abrupt.

These part-time employees, who work between 20 and 30 hours per week depending on the season, rotate through campuses where individual site enrollment ranges from 85 to 160 students.

The employee who spoke with the Post said that despite directives from supervisors to keep the changes quiet until future plans solidified, she chose to notify parents so they would have time to prepare.

“As a parent, I would want to know if it’s not the same people that I’ve trusted my kids with for years,” she said.

The long-term fate of the workforce remains unresolved, forcing many to look for employment elsewhere.

“As far as employment opportunities, they didn’t lay us off, they didn’t fire us, they just basically told us the contract with the schools will be done August 15,” the anonymous employee said. “Past that, we have no idea what’s going to happen.”

City officials say they will soon meet with representatives of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union to discuss the workers’ future.

“We are committed to ensuring this process is transparent, informed by complete information, and focused on protecting both employees and the quality and continuity of the vital services the WRAP program provides to the Long Beach community,” said Sashi Muralidharan, a spokesperson with IAM 947.

Editor’s note: This story was updated with more information about the program’s cost to the city.

A community organization in Los Angeles is criticizing how the FBI enforced a strict no-drone policy around World Cup venues after federal agents disrupted a community gardening event in South L.A.

The incident took place the first Sunday of the tournament, while crowds were watching matches at the FIFA Fan Festival at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Nearby, the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust was hosting a celebration for teenagers who had created a native plant garden on a patch of land that used to be an oil drilling site.

Then someone flew a drone to photograph the moment. Minutes later, Department of Homeland Security agents and Los Angeles police officers were on the scene, according to Bz Zhang, a project manager who was helping run the event. Soon the FBI arrived. They confiscated the drone and fined the person operating it.

The Neighborhood Land Trust was hosting a celebration for teenagers who had created a native plant garden on a patch of land that used to be an oil drilling site when authorities arrived.

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Wendy Salvador

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" We were unknowingly in violation of federal airspace, and we were told that we were a threat to national security," said Zhang, who witnessed the encounter.

The drone had violated temporary flight restrictions implemented for the World Cup. The Federal Aviation Authority has banned unauthorized drones within "3-nautical-mile radius and up to 3,000 feet above ground level" around stadiums on match days and also prohibited them around certain fan events, like the one at the Coliseum.

Since the tournament started in L.A., federal authorities have seized dozens of drones near SoFi Stadium and the Coliseum, according to the FBI. In total, more than 600 drones have been confiscated across the country.

The crackdown is part of an effort across all 11 U.S. host cities to identify and remove unauthorized drones from the skies around World Cup venues and fan events. Ahead of the tournament, FEMA awarded host cities $250 million specifically to combat drone usage.

"We knew we needed to act quickly to keep the World Cup safe from the rising threat of unmanned aircraft systems and that’s exactly what we did,” said Karen Evans, FEMA's acting cdministrator, in a statement announcing those funds.

But Zhang said that the incident at the garden represented the unintended consequences of hosting mega-events like the World Cup for ordinary community members.

" It's one thing to be aware of construction. … It's another to be expected as residents to know, to the 10th of a mile, that I'm in a particular zone and that, to the hour, I need to be in compliance," Zhang said.

Laura Eimiller, FBI spokesperson, disagreed. She said drone operators are responsible for knowing the rules and that every person in L.A. who had a drone confiscated during the World Cup also received a fine.

"There's been a zero-tolerance approach," Eimiller said.

Hiding out among the luxury beachfront condos in the Newport Beach neighborhood of Corona Del Mar is an outpost where scientists have been conducting important marine research for nearly a century.

And you can go check the place out for yourself.

A ‘magical’ marine station 

With its Spanish style architecture that includes a central tower and red-tiled roof, Caltech’s Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory looks like it’s been teleported in from another time and place.

Originally built as a boat and club house, it was purchased by Caltech in 1929 for use as a beachfront science outpost.

Victoria Orphan, James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science at Caltech and director of the Kerckhoff Marine Lab, said the place is one of the oldest running marine labs on the West Coast.

“There’s something just really magical about marine stations. They’re rustic, so it’s not like you’re going into a fully polished clean room. But that’s part of the charm and you really feel the history,” Orphan said.

One of her favorite spots? The tower. That’s where Orphan said some famous papers were written.

“Sometimes when I have writer’s block, I’ll go and sit in the tower and try to channel the scientists of old,” she told LAist.

That would include the work of Wheeler North, one of Orphan’s heroes. From 1962 to 2002, he conducted pioneering research on the ecology of kelp forests. Orphan said North’s work was instrumental for learning how an imbalance in the sea urchin population can decimate kelp forests.

These days that important research continues, with scientists at the lab looking at how microbes can capture carbon dioxide, mitigating global warming. They even have a 4-foot, bright yellow autonomous vehicle that scans the seafloor so scientists can learn more about seagrasses, which are important for oxygen creation and carbon capture, serve as fish nurseries and help protect the coastline from storm surge.

Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar

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“In areas where you have seagrass, you get less sediment erosion [and] a little more protection of the property on land, which people who live on the coast care about,” Orphan explained.

Engineers from Jet Propulsion Laboratory are also interested in using autonomous vehicles in cooperation with the lab to see how they can help study the deep ocean right outside the harbor.

You can visit the lab to learn about all of the science going on there, with free open houses on Tuesdays and monthly ‘Science and Sunsets’ events that include dinner and cocktails at the historic outpost.

A pop-up book that’s seeking to break the world record for size has unfolded at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.

The art piece is 31 feet wide, more than 11 feet tall, and weighs in at 1,800 pounds.

Luceros y Penumbras, which roughly translates to “starlight and shadows,” is rooted in L.A. artist Daniel González’s experience visiting the library and his family in Mexico as a child.

“It's a knowledge tree that's been shaped by all these different things that I've learned at the library, about myself, about the city I grew up in, [and] about the town where my family's from,” González said.

The nonprofit Library Foundation of Los Angeles collaborated with the library to commission the piece as part of the Central Library’s centennial celebration.

The project is inspired, in part, by the library’s Toy Movable collection, an archive of more than 2,000 pop-up books.

“Normal pop-up books … they seem so simple, but something amazing pops out when you open the page,” said Todd Lerew, the foundation’s director of special projects. “That sort of childlike wonder that you feel that's persistent, even as an adult, is something that was really important to capture and dial up to 11 with this project.”

The origin of 'Luceros'

The foundation asked González in June 2025 to create a book that told the story of his personal relationship with the library. As González pondered questions including  ”What did the library do for me as a young person?" and "Why was I so attracted to it?" he thought about how knowledge was passed down in his family through the generations.

His grandmother told him stories about the stars above her farm near Teúl, Zacatecas, in Mexico. She said those that emerged at dawn — luceros — were among the most special because they signaled the start of a new day.

“ I looked at those stars … and the histories that my grandparents were sharing with me as these guiding lights,” González said. “Just like the library is a guiding light for many people.”

Daniel González's maternal grandmother, Isabel Gómez, told him stories about the creatures that lived near her farm, including owls, that could teach healing.

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Courtesy Daniel González

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González grew up blocks away from the Benjamin Franklin Library in Boyle Heights.

“ I spent summers there because it was literally the coolest place to be,” González said. “It just gave me the opportunity to explore anything that I had an interest in.”

Daniel González, as a child, after an unsuccessful attempt to make a kite after a trip to the library.  "My dad's like, 'I'm gonna take a picture of you so you can see what you look like when you get grumpy,'" he said.

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Later, he’d visit the Central Library during a middle school field trip and return on the bus to wander the stacks and ask the staff questions.

“ I'm really lucky that I met the people that nurtured that curiosity,” González said.

From sketches to ‘paper engineering’

First, González sketched the images, carved them into linoleum, printed them with ink and digitized them to add color and other details.

A few of Daniel González's tools. In the future, he plans to sell prints related to "Luceros y Penumbras."

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Matthew Reinhart, children’s book author, illustrator and “paper engineer,” was tasked with translating the images into three dimensions.

“ My job is really making mistakes,” Reinhart said. “Making mistakes, figuring out where they are and solving them and — of course — making them look good.”

The construction and the fabrication of the book took the work of more than 30 people over a series of months. At least a dozen people using giant poles capped with cushions turn the pages.

Luceros y Penumbras is four pages that open to create two scenes — one of the Central Library building and another of a sprawling tree with an I Spy-like collection of creatures and images throughout. The featured pages will change throughout the exhibition, which is open until mid-November.

There are at least a dozen different symbols throughout “Luceros y Penumbras."

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The sea turtle at the base of the tree is a reference both to the creatures that live in the San Gabriel River and to the original inhabitants of the L.A. basin. The Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe tells a story that connects the region’s earthquakes to the turtles.

“When we think of sea turtles, we think of these faraway places where they live, like tropical places,” González said. “But they exist here and they've had to adapt to a changing climate, a changing environment, and find places to call home, just as people do.”

Other images include:

• A star resting in an outstretched hand in honor of Octavia E. Butler, the science fiction writer who also spent time in the library. 
•  Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent Aztec deity and a frequent motif in East L.A.’s murals. 
• An owl, a symbol of knowledge associated with the Greek goddess Athena and the Roman goddess Minerva. 

González said the goal is for viewers to create their own narrative about what they see.

“ I just hope that people carry with them a sense of curiosity to further explore the things that I present, but also maybe something within them,” González said.

Visit the pop-up book

Central Library Centennial Festival

On display