The Audubon Center at Debs Park is proud to announce that we’re expanding on our work along the LA River to include the Zev Yaroslavsky LA River Greenway Trail in Studio City. To celebrate, on Saturday, August 10th, we kicked off our work the best way we knew how – with a good, old-fashioned stewardship event! We were so happy to be joined by 25 community members – some of whom were involved in the original creation of the Greenway trail – for a day of trash clean-up, weeding, and mulching.
The day was extremely productive. Together, we cleared out the entryway to the greenway trail, filled a 2 large dumpsters with 40 cubic yards of wild mustard, tree of heavens, and other weeds, and put down 10 cubic yards of mulch to ensure plants stay healthy and hydrated. We also collected a lot of tennis balls – we picked up a grant total of 164 tennis balls – that came from the neighboring tennis court.
So why did we do so much weeding? Recently, MRCA made the decision to stop using herbicide in native habitats. The reason they stopped was because the herbicide contains dangerous chemicals, that when ingested by animals, contaminates the food cycle, killing California native fauna. With all the rain earlier this year, the invasive plant population has drastically grown and taken over Zev Yaroslavsky LA River Greenway Trail. To show our support for MRCA’s decision to stop using herbicide, we were proud to roll up our sleeves and help out in clearing this beautiful greenway of invasive plants for the community!
The Audubon Center at Debs Park is excited for this new prospect – we can’t wait to see how Zev Yaroslavsky LA River Greenway Trail will look like with some tender love and care from the community. We’re looking forward to working with the community to educate them on how to care for and maintain California native habitat at Zev for local birds and other animals! Interested in getting involved? We’ll be hosting stewardship events on the second Saturday of every month from 9am – 12pm. Join us for our next event on Saturday, September 14th! RSVP by emailing mperron@audubon.org.
