Another cleanup site with a beautiful view. Can you spot the volunteers?
On Saturday, September 15, volunteers from the San Luis Obispo area joined Los Padres ForestWatch to clean up West Cuesta Ridge as part of California Coastal Cleanup Day. Our friends at ECOSLO organized San Luis Obispo County’s portion of California Coastal Cleanup Day, which included 35 cleanup sites along the coast from Pismo Beach to San Simeon and at inland sites that drain to the ocean. This was the first time a site in the Los Padres National Forest was included in the county’s cleanup.
Throughout the morning, our volunteers cleaned several sites along TV Tower Road atop West Cuesta Ridge. The area is a popular destination for recreationists, and not all visitors practice leave no trace ethics. Dozens of turnouts are used for camping, which often results in typical campsite trash and illegal fire rings — a dangerous activity along a windy ridgetop covered in chaparral.
The Cuesta Ridge Botanical Area seen here is one of the few areas in the world where you can find Sargent cypress. Photo by Bryant Baker.
The ridge is also home to the Cuesta Ridge Botanical Area, a 1,300-acre area set aside by the Forest Service to protect the many rare and unique plants that occur there, including Sargent cypress, Coulter pine, Cuesta Pass checkerbloom, San Luis Obispo sedge, and San Luis Obispo mariposa lily. This interesting makeup of rare and unique plants is due to the serpentine-derived soils found along Cuesta Ridge. Unfortunately, many areas within the Botanical Area are often trashed out. Our volunteers scoured illegal campsites and trails throughout this sensitive area, finding countless broken glass, cigarette butts and lighters, and beverage containers.
Other finds during the cleanup included a TV remote, shotgun shells, a torn-up foam cushion, and a running board that was once attached to an SUV. Altogether, our small but mighty group of volunteers removed 160 pounds of trash and microtrash from West Cuesta Ridge. This included 40 pounds of recyclable materials.
In a single day, 1,237 volunteers removed 5,664 pounds of trash from 35 beach and inland sites (including West Cuesta Ridge) as part of the Coastal Cleanup Day efforts throughout San Luis Obispo County organized by ECOSLO. We were thrilled to be part such a wonderful event. Thank you to everyone who came out to West Cuesta Ridge and the dozens of other sites to help make our land and water cleaner. And thanks to ECOSLO for providing supplies and promotion of the event and to Figueroa Mountain Brewing, Co. for providing reusable bags for this and other cleanups.
Check out more photos from West Cuesta Ridge below:
Comments are closed.