Black Lake Wetland Mitigation Project
The Black Lake Ecological Area Habitat Restoration Project is located east of Oceano Dunes State Recreation area in San Luis Obispo County, California. The project description to restore and enhance approximately 45 acres of coastal wetlands and adjacent uplands within the 160-acre Black Lake Canyon Ecological Area (BLEA) located near the community of Nipomo, in southern San Luis Obispo County, California.
The project will restore several different habitat types that function collectively as a dynamic, coastal dune ecosystem to benefit and aid in the recovery of sensitive, endemic and federal and state listed species. Implementation of this project would restore and enhance the following communities: 7 acres of freshwater pond; 5 acres of freshwater emergent wetland; 12 acres of freshwater forested/shrub wetland; and 21 acres of coastal dune scrub.
This project removed built-up sediments and overgrown tule/bulrush (Bolboshoenus spp. and Schoenoplectus spp.), cattail (Typha spp.), and poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) within and around the lake and marsh. Restoration efforts associated with these wetland features includes outplanting of marsh sandwort and La Graciosa thistle, which once occurred onsite but has become extirpated. These activities would also include installation of habitat features and other elements to increase western pond turtle and California red-legged frog basking, breeding, rearing, and aquatic dispersal habitat.
The proposed upland restoration efforts would include removal of invasive veldt grass (Ehrharta calycina), Saharan mustard (Brassica tournefortii), hedgerow eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), and Italian thistle (Carduus ycnocephalus) to rehabilitate the native coastal dune scrub habitat.