Who Pays for CIR Programs?

Although CIR staff and volunteer board members spend countless hours writing grants to many different funding agencies, much of the work that we do is completely unfunded by any agency.  In these cases, CIR relies on individual contributions to help carry out these important projects.  As an example, CIR board members and other individual donors raised a big portion of the funding needed to purchase and construct a shade house on Anacapa Island as part of the nursery project there.  Although we are glad to work with our partners in the Park Service and Patagonia to help fund the nursery, individual donors helped make that project possible.  Also, CIR regularly contributes staff time (and the associated wages) so that adults can volunteer on the Channel islands.  Contributions from CIR supporters help fund these types of projects. 

Funding is often available for targeted schools to work with us on the Channel Islands, but many other schools must raise the money for the boat and other costs.  In those cases, CIR often donates the pay for our staff person to join the group and lead them in a restoration project.

Although CIR is a non-profit organization, we still need to pay the costs of doing "business" like for-profit companies.  The difference is, we operate on a near break-even basis, and we work on many projects because of their ecological or educational value and not their monetary value. 

CIR is required to pay considerable overhead expenses in order to work on our restoration projects.  These include workers compensation and liability insurance, accounting fees, rent for equipment storage and an administrative office, equipment purchases and maintenance, and staff time to administer a wide-ranging and busy organization.  As a percentage of our budget, these expenses are relatively low, but there is no funding available to pay for these costs other than contributions from our supporters.

We are always proud to announce that we have received grants from foundations or other agencies, but it is important to remember that CIR must raise a great deal of our funding from individuals to keep operating.    That is why we ask for contributions, and we hope that people who support our work will also support us financially.  Please join CIR today! 

CIR Builds Nursery on San Nicolas Island, grows 1,100 Plants

Channel Islands Restoration staff and volunteers teamed up with the United States Navy in April on San Nicholas Island to completely rebuild and expand an old native plant nursery.  More than 1,100 plants have been grown so far, and CIR staff and volunteers recently planted most of these at a restoration site on the island.

The nursery, which consisted of a shed and small planting benches, had fallen into disrepair over nearly two decades.  CIR built new benches, erected a shade structure and installed an irrigation system.  The three benches (each forty feet long and six feet wide) include custom designed “biosecurity” measures that prevent introduced pests like Argentine ants from infesting the plant pots.  The nursery shed required major cleaning, and it will soon receive repairs to its roof and doors.  Funding to build the new nursery and to grow the plants has been provided by the Navy.  The nursery has an automated irrigation system, so CIR staff only needs to visit the island approximately once per week. 

The plants were installed at a restoration site on the eastern side of the island to help prevent erosion along roadside dune habitat.  More plants will be grown in the nursery to revegetate sites impacted by upcoming construction projects on the island.   CIR Board Member Gordon Hart designed the nursery and led the construction project along with volunteers Dave Edwards (also a Board Member) Don Mills and John Reyes.  The plants were grown by Norma Hogan, who recently joined the CIR team.

CIR has been working on the island for several years eradicating Sahara mustard from habitat of the threatened Cryptantha traskiae (a threatened plant in the Borage family).  Sahara mustard is a highly invasive plant that has caused great ecological damage in the deserts.  It has spread quickly on San Nicolas Island, and the Navy staff is committed to eradicating it from the island.  CIR has donated the staff time on this project for several years, but the Navy has recently contracted with CIR to perform this service.  Our staff and volunteers are trusted to work around these sensitive plants and around protected archeological sites.  CIR greatly values our relationship with Naval Base Ventura County and the U.S. Navy as a whole. 

CIR Leads Twenty Seven School Fieldtrips to the Islands in 2011

Over 930 students and adult chaperones joined CIR on 27 school fieldtrips to the Channel Islands so far this year, with funding raised primarily by our staff and board members.   Most of these students are from low-income districts that cannot afford the costs for this type of fieldtrip, and our program gives cash-strapped schools a chance to visit the Channel Islands and students a chance to participate in important restoration projects.

Our program this year targeted primarily 5^th grade classes from Ventura County districts, but schools from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara also participated.  The trips were to Anacapa Island and Santa Cruz Island where the students helped CIR with invasive plant removal and helped propagate native plants.  Some of the schools paid the cost of the boat and transportation, but the vast majority benefited from grant funding that CIR staff and board members raised from Federal, State and private sources.

Students from Ventura pose by their handiwork on Anacapa

CIR staff visited most of the schools before the trips to provide comprehensive PowerPoint presentations highlighting the special nature of the Channel Islands and the Marine Sanctuary and background on the restoration projects.  Special effort was made to highlight the connection between mainland watersheds and the health of the marine ecosystem.  This included examples of what happens to storm water runoff and how pollution in city streets can end up in the ocean.  For the 5^th grade classes, this instruction was specifically designed to address elements in the school curriculum.  As a requirement of some of the grant funding, the students were tested before and after the trip to gauge how much they had learned about the islands, marine sanctuary and conservation issues. 

Holy Cross School students receive instruction on Santa Cruz Island

All of the grant funding targeted low-income school districts, and few of the students had ever visited the Channel Islands or even ever been on a boat before.  The boat and bus transportation, plus modest staff costs for an average size class, cost around $2,400, so a great deal of grant funding is needed to fund so many trips.  Funding for this type of program is highly competitive and the grants are difficult to administer, but the results are more than worth it.  The kids are always eager to help with the restoration project, and they make a valuable contribution to our work. 

This is the fifth year of the CIR school program, and our busiest yet!  CIR staff worked hard to arrange dates with the schools, book the transportation, and organize the complicated paperwork required for a trip of this kind.  These trips would not have been possible without a great deal of logistical support from the Park Service and a discounted rate from Island Packers.  CIR plans to raise additional funding from private sources for the 2012 school year.

 

Schools/youth groups participating in CIR island trips:
Caesar Chavez Elementary, Oxnard (6 trips)
EP Foster Elementary, Ventura (2 trips)
Holly Cross School, Ventura (2 trips)
Meiners Oaks  Elementary, Meiners Oaks (3 trips)
Mira Monte Elementary, Ojai (1 trip)
Oak Grove School, Ojai (1 trip)
San Antonio School, Ojai (1 trip)
Santa Barbara Charter School, Santa Barbara (1 trip)
Sheridan Way Elementary, Ventura (1 trip)
Sun Valley High School, Los Angeles (1 trip)
Sunset Elementary, Oak View (3 trips)
Topa Topa Elementary, Ojai (2 trips)
Unitarian Society Teen Group, Santa Barbara (1 trip)
Ventura Charter School, Ventura (2 trips)

CIR Completes Successful Restoration Trip to San Clemente Island

Twenty CIR volunteers and staff volunteered for five days on San Clemente Island last week helping the Navy remove non-native iceplant from sensitive habitat of the San Clemente Island sage sparrow, a threatened bird that is endemic to the island.  Our first ever volunteer trip was an unqualified success, as we cleared an estimated 41 acres of hundreds of small patches of iceplant.   

The iceplant crowds out native plants, including species of boxthorn (Lycium sp.) that the sparrows nest in.  CIR volunteers kept up a rigorous and steady pace in order to accomplish such a large scale iceplant removal.

San Clemente Island is owned by the U.S. Navy, and staff from the Navy and from San Diego State University worked with CIR to arrange the trip.  The logistics of such a trip are almost as daunting as eradicating the iceplant, but the results were well worth the effort.  CIR donated all staff time for the trip, and volunteers paid for their own housing and meals.

San Clemente Island is an important base for the Navy, and several hundred duty personnel and civilian workers are regularly posted to the island.  The island provides an important auxiliary landing field for the Navy, and it is used extensively for training.  Navy Seals train on San Clemente, and the southern part of the island is used for air bombardment and ship board gunnery practice.  San Clemente has 14 plants that are unique to the island, plus several species of endemic animals.  The Navy funds a large restoration program for many of these species.  The primary restoration staff are from the Soil Ecology & Restoration Group at San Diego State University.

A harbor on the south west end of San Clemente Island (April 2011)

The group of volunteers first traveled to San Diego (most staying the first evening at the same motel) before departing for the island by plane from the North Island Naval Air Station on Coronado Island.    The Navy contracts with a civilian airline to transport personnel to the island, so the flights were free for the volunteers.  Once on the island, the group checked in at one of the base guest housing complexes, which is reminiscent of a Motel 6.   Low-cost meals were provided at the base commissary.

The CIR volunteers then traveled by van to the western side of the island to begin work.  For the next several days every volunteer worked hard hand-pulling the iceplant and placing it in large piles.  This technique is usually quite successful at eradicating iceplant with only minimal re-sprouting, but some follow up work will be needed.  The restoration site is 55 acres in size, and the volunteers cleared about three-quarters of the site.  At lunch time island personnel took the volunteers to interesting view spots and even lead the group on a hike featuring endemic plants!

The restoration site on the west side of San Clemente Island

Volunteers take a hike during a lunch break

We are very proud of our first volunteer trip to the San Clemente Island, and we hope to follow up with more trips, perhaps starting this spring.  CIR is also working with the Navy on San Nicolas Island, and we are glad to be working on both of these islands that are not normally accessible to the general public.

Check out photos from our latest trip:  https://picasaweb.google.com/112400012955619504088/20111013_SanClemente

Check out photos from a previous trip to the island by Ken Owen (CIR Executive Director): https://picasaweb.google.com/112400012955619504088/20110407_ClementeEdits 

Volunteers enjoy the view during a lunch break

Sierra Club National Service Trip to Santa Cruz Island

During the week of September 19, Sierra Club members from all over the country joined CIR staff and key volunteers for some vigorous volunteer work and sightseeing on Santa Cruz Island.  Sierra Club service trips are advertised nationally, and participants pay a fee to the club in order to volunteer in interesting and beautiful locations.  Part of the fee for our trip helps pay two CIR staff members, who spend five days providing a very memorable volunteer experience in some of the most spectacular locations on the island.  The fee also covers the cost of boat transportation, plus vehicles and housing at the UC Reserve Field Station on the island.  Our staff were joined by CIR board member Tanya Atwater (a noted geophysicist) and Jerry Mitcham, a CIR volunteer and Santa Monica Mountain Trails Council board member.

The volunteers helped survey for Vinca major (a highly invasive weed) and helped maintain trails on the island.  The Vinca survey kicked off a new project that CIR has to eradicate the weed in Canada del Puerto, the largest riparian area on the island.  After being trained to spot the plant, the volunteers surveyed at least a third of the Canada, and flagged the sites with colored tape.  The sites were then entered into a GPS.

CIR provides four nights of educational programs during the trip.  These include:

1. The biological significance of the island and its cultural history
2. A presentation by Tanya Atwater on the geological history of Southern California and of the island
3. An overview of restoration on the island, including fox and bald eagle recovery and habitat restoration
4. and an evening of astronomy, far from city lights, with an 8 inch Mead telescope!

The Sierra Club volunteers work hard for four days and are then treated to a day off hike to the south side of the island.  CIR staff are proud to work hard to provide a productive, fun and educations trip to Santa Cruz Island!

New Video on Bald Eagle Restoration on the Channel Islands

Check out this new video recently posted on the Channel Islands Natiponal Park web site.  it provides some details about the restoration of the Bald Eagles on the Channel Islands.  The video can be found here:

http://home.nps.gov/chis/photosmultimedia/return-flight.htm

Also, if you've never seen the Santa Cruz Island "Eagle Cam" you should check it out! Especially when there are eggs and chicks in the nest, it's one of the most popular web cams on the internet! 

http://www.nps.gov/chis/photosmultimedia/bald-eagle-webcam.htm

 

 

Internet and Social Media Helps CIR Organize

Over 1000 people are now fans of our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/cirweb) adding a powerful social media component to or organizing capability.  We have been using a huge email list and an extensive web page to communicate with volunteers since the year 2000, but our Facebook page has only recently become a relevant component of how we recruit volunteers for habitat restoration projects.  Facebook is attracting new people to our organization, and we plan to use the page to post news and interesting features about the islands soon.

Just 20 year ago, non-profits would use written newsletters and phone trees to publicize events.  Now we can use the web, email, blogs Facebook and soon Google Plus to reach volunteers.  Using these tools to their fullest extent can be rather time consuming, but we are able to reach thousands of people quickly and at short notice. 

As popular as CIR is with the public, attracting fans to our Facebook page requires a little finessing.  Earlier this year we publicized the page to our email list (of nearly 1,100 people) which provided an initial surge of fans to the page.  We also created a custom "landing page" so that people who visit the page for the first time see an attractive graphic urging them to "Like" us and learn more about the organization.  Links to the Facebook page can be found on our of our promotional materials, including business cards, brochures and on our web page. 

We look forward to adding more fans in the future, and we plan to use the page for more than just announcing volunteer opportunities.  Watch the page for interesting news and tidbits about all eight of the Channel Islands and about environmental restoration in general.