More animals in Pacific Beach?

ReWild Mission Bay gave a presentation in the Midway District on November 18 at the Loma Riviera community room under the auspices of the Friends of Famosa Slough organization. Rebecca Schwartz, the conservation program manager of the San Diego Audubon Society, is in charge of outreach. She outlined ReWild’s plan to enhance and restore up to 170 acres of wetland habitat in the northeast corner of Mission Bay. Schwartz spoke of the group’s wish to expand the Kendall Frost Wildlife Preserve — once 4000 acres of wetlands that has been reduced to a fenced-in 40 acres. Kendall-Frost is starved for sediment and fresh water, and ReWild seeks to open up Rose Creek to accomplish that.

The group has its eyes on the closed De Anza Trailer Park and the soon-to-close Campland-by-the-Bay resort. Campland, whose lease expires soon, plans to move, and ReWild wants that land, if the city agrees. ReWild hopes the city will also allot the De Anza Trailer Park land to open space. The idea then is to incorporate Kendall-Frost, a reinvigorated Rose Creek, and the restorations of De Anza and Campland into a large parcel of restored natural habitat. Schwartz mentioned how many residents of the Crown Point area “do not even realize that there is a nature preserve in their own front yard of Mission Bay.”

If the group is successful in uniting the parcels of land into one swath of rehabilitated open space, more outreach is planned to “expand community access to Kendall-Frost.”