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 December 2022 newsletter includes updates on how recent rainfall has influenced NCOS. The feature story focuses on bird diversity and efforts to sustain populations of rare and/or threatened breeding birds. Community photos include Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus), Canada Goose (Branta canadensis), California Ebony Tarantula (Aphonopelma eutylenum), American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), Northern Harrier (Circus hudsonius), and Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperii).