The vision from the outset was to develop the North Campus Open Space into more than merely a park or nature preserve. “This is really the appropriate time to release the film because we’re moving into the longer-term phase of the plan,” Stratton said, “which includes raising an endowment to keep the site active.” The feature film comes out as the project reaches its second transition point: The active restoration has culminated, and the revived wetland now enters its life as a resource to the university, community and wildlife in perpetuity. In 2019, Love released a prize-winning 17-minute short, “From Golf Course to Wetland,” celebrating the project’s first transition: from fundraising and planning to work on the ground. “There’s really a lot of different places where this film can live and continue to inspire and educate people,” Love said.Ī ribbon-cutting and Chumash blessing in May 2022 provided a milestone for the documentary’s culmination, especially because this area of ancient Goleta wetlands was home to a thriving Chumash population before European settlement. And as a non-profit project, the film will be available to the public free of charge for use at schools, nature centers, museums and so forth. “One of the most challenging aspects was editing,” Love said, “because I had over 10 terabytes of footage.” The film crew also interviewed over 40 people, many more than once.įunding for the film came primarily from the UCSB Associated Students Coastal fund as well as from project grants through the Cheadle Center. And they had their work cut out for them. It was a student crew that shot the installation of the bridges, as Love and photography director Elliot Lowndes were at a film festival in Montana when the bridges arrived from Arizona.įilm and Media Studies was well represented, but interns hailed from many other departments as well. “I had interns who helped with editing I had interns who helped with shooting and filming.” Students produced animations and conducted, transcribed and organized interviews. “Interns from UCSB played a critical role in the making of this movie,” Love explained. The film was a collaborative effort, much like the restoration itself. Photo Credit: RYAN CLARK AND ALISON RICKARD UC Santa Barbara’s restoration effort completely reshaped the land, recreating the upper Devereux Slough from the flat, wilted landscape of Ocean Meadows Golf Course. “There are also certain sections where I really wanted to linger on the moving contrast between this space that was a golf course - a monoculture of non-native vegetation and human use - to the expansive and culturally inclusive natural habitat it has become, where you have everything from little kids planting plants to seniors, birders, people in wheelchairs, runners and all these people doing science projects through the university.” “We want to showcase this and have it be something that can inspire other people to do similar projects,” he said. Love views the piece as a historical document, recording a process that was incredibly ambitious, elaborate and grand in scale. That you kept capturing different parts of the project through time,” replied Stratton, director of ecosystem management at UCSB's Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration. “And I really appreciate, Michael, that you stuck with it. “And whenever anything big was happening with the restoration we’d come back and cover it.” “We filmed it over years in between other projects we were doing,” Love said. The film, like the restoration, was a far-sighted endeavor. Love caught word of the effort in its infancy, approaching project leader Lisa Stratton in 2011, just as the university and Trust for Public Land were negotiating the purchase of what was then Ocean Meadows Golf Course. And you couldn’t find a better example than this.” Stories where humans have been able to make an impact and actually create positive change in the environment. “All my environmental films are really about trying to foment activism by showing good news stories. “One of the beautiful things about this film for me was to be able to follow this process over such a long trajectory and really see the site transform,” said director and producer Michael Love. 13 at 8:40 p.m., at the Metro 4 Theatre and Wednesday, Feb. “Bringing Back Our Wetland” will screen Monday, Feb. And now the resulting documentary is ready for its premier at the 2023 Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which runs Feb. The project took nearly a decade to complete, officially marked as finished in the spring of 2022.įrom groundbreaking to grand opening, a film crew captured it all on camera. Fifty years after the upper Devereux Slough in Goleta was filled with topsoil to make way for a golf course, UC Santa Barbara embarked on a massive environmental undertaking: restore these wetlands to their natural state.
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