Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Tr For Long Beach & Seal Beach
PROGRAMS
Estuary Explorers Program
We provide transportation to and from Los Cerritos Wetlands for third and fourth grade classes to experience hands-on environmental education field trips at Zedler Marsh, a small tidal wetland in Los Cerritos Wetlands. This facility is an outdoor laboratory where students engage directly with nature, explore trails and work with local college students who are budding environmental educators. At this point this program is on-line only but we are optimistic we can return to in-person field trips as soon as the stay-at-home orders are lifted.
The goal for this program is to develop long-term, committed partnerships with 10 targeted schools from Seal Beach and Long Beach school districts that will eventually contribute matching funds to provide annual field trips for all third and fourth grade students to these local wetlands in perpetuity as part of the science curriculum. For schools initially participating in the program, we expect 75% retention of schools interested in participating on an annual basis and contributing to the cost share of providing this program.
BESafe Program
Each summer we host members of community centers from parks located in dense and urban areas to come and explore the Hellman Ranch Lowlands with our team of naturalists and environmental educators. We provide a bus from the community center to the wetlands as well as a healthy meal for each of the participants.
We have been able to provide this program for 6 years and have garnered incredible partnerships with the park's community centers. We hope that this will lead to people in this neighborhoods finding value in our wetlands. Our program for summer field trips from urban areas was suspended this year due to the stay-at-home orders but we hope to bring the field trips back as soon as we are allowed to.
Land Tours
We provide monthly land tours of Los Cerritos Wetlands. These tours explore exclusive areas that are only accessible through our partnership with the landowners. Three different tours rotate each month and include the Raptor Ramble which explores the 100-acres Hellman Ranch property, the Heron Hike which showcases a freshwater wetland called Marketplace Marsh, and the Turtle Trek which traverses the San Gabriel River in search of viewing opportunities for the threatened Pacific Green Sea Turtle.
Each year this program allows thousands of local citizens to discover Los Cerritos Wetlands. Without these tours, there would be no way for the public to explore this land. This has led to a growing number of people who support the future restoration of these valuable coastal habitats. These nature walks are currently on hold due to the stay-at-home orders but we look forward to resuming our monthly educational community nature walks starting Saturday, July 3rd as we are now allowed to do since cases of COVID are declining and vaccinations are available and sufficiently widespread.
CONTACT
Los Cerritos Wetlands Land Tr For Long Beach & Seal Beach
P.O. Box 30165
LONG BEACH, CA 90853
Phone: 714-357-8576