Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration

The Cheadle Center at UCSB manages the North Campus Open Space (NCOS), which is a project that has restored 136 acres of upland and wetland habitats that existed before the area was converted into the Ocean Meadows Golf Course in the 1960s. The NCOS restoration project began in 2017 with a fine-scale grading of the site in order to recreate the salt marsh and use the excavated soil to rebuild the upland habitats to the southwest, which are now called the NCOS Mesa. In addition to re-establishing native biodiversity, a key goal of the restoration is to utilize the site as an educational, scientific, and recreational resource. This archived version of the May 2017 newsletter includes updates on ground breaking, removal of golf course infrastructure, surveys for tidewater goby (Eucycloglobius newberryi) and California red-legged frog (Rana draytonii), grant funding for the Whittier Channel Restoration Project and South Parcel invasive plant removal, and implications of the project on public access. The feature story focuses on how the hydrology of Devereux Slough was altered by the golf course and how the NCOS project will restore it to a more natural regime.