After a four-year effort to raise $7 million in federal, state and local funds to buy the property, the Trust for Public Land acquired 63.9 acres of the Ocean Meadows Golf Club. The Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, the Trust for Public Land and UC Santa Barbara will work together to restore the area to the wetlands that it once was.

Michael Feeney, executive director of the county Land Trust, said the nonprofit has been working with UCSB’s Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration on initial studies to determine how to best create an ecologically functional habitat in such close proximity to an urban environment.
(Excerpts taken from complete Noozhawk article and Gina Potthoff / Noozhawk photo).