A new film, “Bringing Back Our Wetland,” showing the restoration of UCSB’s North Campus Open Space wetland, is having its world premiere at the 38th Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Directed by Michael Love, “Bringing Back Our Wetland” was filmed over nearly 10 years and follows Lisa Stratton, director of ecosystem management at UCSB’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration, as she leads the “magical” transformation — as Stratton called it — of the Devereux Slough back to its former glory of the wetland it was before being converted to the Ocean Meadows Golf Course in the 1960s.
The feature documentary captures the restoration project in its entirety — from UCSB and The Trust for Public Land negotiating the purchase of the former golf course to planning and groundbreaking in 2017 to grand opening and “completion” of the project in 2022.
While the restoration was marked as complete in spring 2022, Stratton and Love said that this wasn’t the end of the work.
“It doesn’t have an ending here,” Love said. “There’s still a long lifetime for this project, hopefully way beyond ours. … This is the launching of its sort-of long-term trajectory as a place for learning.”
Stratton added that the Cheadle Center continues to manage the open space and the wetland will continue to be the site and subject of research and learning for students.
“We’re poised now. We finished all our major grants and now we’re trying to build an endowment so this place can continue to be a living laboratory for everything,” Stratton said. “It’s more than just a piece of land that’s been restored. It’s now this land that can keep giving for generations.”
The film also shows the immense amount of people involved in the project in some capacity.
Between those involved in the planning, volunteers planting vegetation, UCSB students researching and helping with the restoration, young schoolchildren visiting the site, and many more, Love said there were thousands of people involved in some way.
“We were able to integrate students and interns into our work and give them both experience making films, telling stories about hope,” Stratton said. “And also, the students who worked with us, getting to gain the tools to become ecologists or other ways to promote restoration and research.”
Stratton and Love both expressed their gratitude to everyone involved who “put their heart and soul into this project,” and the partnerships that helped make the restoration possible.
One such partnership was with UCSB’s Associated Students Coastal Fund, who provided a large part of the project’s funding — including for its first hydrology study that Stratton said gave them confidence that the wetland restoration could actually be done — and also connected students to become involved in the project.
“These students are hyperaware of climate change,” Love said. “They’re working actively and actually making a difference to make Santa Barbara more adaptive to climate change.”
With over 10 terabytes of footage, Love refers to the film as a historical document that can be compared to how the land looks now and in the future.
Just like the wetland restoration, Love said one of the challenges of the film was that there were so many moving parts, but eventually all the pieces came together.
Love also commended Stratton for the way she organized all the planning, contractors, volunteers, funding, and more for the project.
“You had a very clear vision of what you wanted and how rewarding that you can look at that and look at the results of all that hard work and planning,” Love said to Stratton. “As a filmmaker, the production she does blows me away.”
“Bringing Back Our Wetland” will be shown during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at 8:40 p.m. Monday at the Metro 4 Theatre and at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Fiesta 5 Theatre.
Stratton and Love said they hope the film can be an inspiration for more restoration projects and conservation work.
“It’s great to have [the film] at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, especially because it happened in this town,” Love said. “All kinds of people are able to come and use this natural space. … It’s a beautiful example of sharing a natural space. Lots of opportunities to show this as a model.”
