Dana Point Headlands Habitat to Be Restored in California

On Wednesday, the California organization The Strand at Headlands announced that the last significant piece of undeveloped oceanfront property in Southern California, the Dana Point Headlands, is at long last going to be restored and partially developed by the Headlands Reserve, LLC.

The Reserve will restore the headland's natural habitat while utilizing less than half of the 121-acre property for development.

Sanford Edward heads the project.

"The Strand at The Headlands" shall comprise close to 70 acres of public preserves and open space, 118 homes, a 90-room hotel and spa, and 1.6 acres of commercial development.

The centerpiece of it all will be the 30-acre Headlands Conservation Park, which will span the entire promontory of 200-feet-high cliffs.

In addition, there is a mitigation effort to restore large portions of the Headlands to their original beauty as part of a highly organized program to create natural habitat. The open space restoration program seeks to restore 75 percent coverage to self-sufficient, indigenous coastal sage brush and 25 percent coverage to native grasses. Costa Mesa's Fairview Park and the Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point will also receive repairs and restoration efforts.

The objective of habitat restoration is to bring back lost habitat "services", or functional values, which an area's economy, security, and life-quality are dependant upon. It intends to take degraded or unwisely developed habitat and restore it to a state in which it is healthy, self-sustaining, and resembles its pre-disturbed state as close as can be.

Cleaning up polluted habitats, controlling or eradicating invasive species, and maintaining a clean and abundant water supply are some of the most prominent concerns involved in habitat restoration. Restoration is deemed necessary or desirable in more and more areas as environmental technology progresses and areas of historic human habitation fall into disrepair or are abandoned.

Restoration efforts, which require a certain amount of public acceptance, have often had their participants' image marred by conservationists' "lunatic fringe". For example, University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka said last year at a meeting of the Texas Academy of Science that 90% of the human population needs to die if planet Earth is to be saved, and they need to die soon. Pianka then offered up using a disease that would kill about that many people and do it fast. Pianka's belief is that most people make their own lives not worth living, all the while ruining the whole planet.

Pianka's critics call him "Malthusian" and say that, like Thomas Malthus centuries ago, he seems to know precious little about economics or demographics.

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