Plant Critical Habitat, Save Money on Water Bills

In 2006, the Nature Reserve of Orange County successfully relocated the cactus wrens observed in this video to protected lands in the coastal reserve. Dana Kamada shot this video.

If you live between sea level and 600 feet in Orange or San Diego counties, plant cactus scrub in your backyard. Not only will you save money on your water bill but you'll help save a threatened species, the coastal cactus wren.

The coastal cactus wren is vanishing from California’s Pacific slope. Driving through the foothills of San Pasqual Valley in San Diego County, I recently saw why. Blackened and yellowing prickly pears, some melted like rubber, marred the southern slopes of the hills. The cactus wren builds nests in prickly pear and cholla, using the prickers like barbed wire against predators. But the wren needs mature stands at least a meter tall, and the cacti take decades to recover from fire. According to Jonathan Atwood, director of the conservation biology program at Antioch University, the cactus wrens are more threatened than California gnatcatchers, a federally listed species. That's because cactus wrens have a smaller total population, more fragmented distribution, more specialized habitat needs, and are underemphasized in habitat reserve design. But one issue complicates preservation, making this an even more interesting and important story: the cactus wren is not considered a separate subspecies, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a controversial ruling that the bird does not warrant federal protection.

With half a million people moving to California each year, conservationists are bracing themselves for more wildfires. They warn that to save the cactus wren, gnatcatcher and other species in coastal Southern California, people must slow the frequency of human-caused wildfires and quickly plant and restore coastal sage, not just in reserves but also in homeowner's yards.

Wildfire Slideshow