Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve Videos

Devereux Slough from Michael Love on Vimeo.

Devereaux Slough, Michael Love

One of the last remnant wetlands left in Santa Barbara county, Devereaux Slough is being restored to its former natural glory. The NRS’s Coal Oil Point Reserve is reversing decades of development and infill to return this waterway to wading birds, native fish, and a wide variety of other wildlife. Watch the slough sandy berm get breached by big tides, and flush its brackish, deoxygenated shallows with seawater. It’s a wild and dramatic place in every season.


Bringing Back the Wild, Michael Love

Santa Barbara is graced with an oasis of native wilderness surrounded by urban areas. This is the story of the restoration and natural history of Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve, an environment of native wetland and coastal strand that is home to the threatened western snowy plover and tidewater goby. After a decade of care by UCSB Reserve Director Cristina Sandoval, the plover is breeding again and the protected and yet accessible reserve has attracted a myriad of birds and birders, researchers and nature enthusiasts. This film reveals the people who are behind this successful restoration project and how they have invited the public to both respect and enjoy it


The Thin Red Line, Ian Vorster Photography

A program led by the NRS’s Coal Oil Point Reserve was able to protect a nesting population of the endangered western snowy plover while maintaining human access to Sands Beach in Santa Barbara.  


Introduction to Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve, UC Natural Reserve System

One of the best remaining examples of a coastal strand environment in southern California, the University of California Natural Reserve System’s (NRS) Coal Oil Point Reserve protects a wide variety of coastal and estuarine habitats. Located adjacent to the Santa Barbara campus, the reserve provides an accessible research and teaching resource used by many university courses. Management efforts include roping off beach dunes to protect nesting snowy plovers, and providing a haven for thousands of migrating birds.