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Natural Reserve System founder Bill Mayhew releases a kangaroo rat for students at Boyd Deep Cany

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A snowy plover nesting is nurtured at the Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve, part of a nationally re

Across the state there are a number of unique and extensive natural reserves which house diverse flora and fauna, and groups of researchers studying subjects from archaeology to biology to ecology – all managed by the University of California.

Of these natural reserves, UCLA manages one called Stunt Ranch which is nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Stunt Ranch is one of 35 sites of the UC Natural Reserve System of “living laboratories and classrooms,” which was founded in 1965 for scientific research, conservation efforts and educational outreach.

“The (Natural Reserve) system is very unique in the world because no other university has anything like this,” said Peter Nonacs, associate professor of evolution, ecology and biology.

“In terms of research and conservation, (the UC Natural Reserve System) is unparalleled,” he added.

In addition, the UC Natural Reserve system is incomparable because it allows researchers to begin long-term projects which might span over years and decades, said Alan Muth, director of Boyd Deep Canyon Springs Natural Reserve.

David Greenfield, a former UC Riverside assistant professor, is just one example of someone doing research at the reserves.

Greenfield started studying the acoustic communication between grasshoppers and since then, his own graduate students and their subsequent graduate students have come back to this same site, Muth said.

“Same spot, same population; you can’t guarantee that anywhere else than the NRS,” he said.

In Stunt Ranch, alongside the graduate and college students researching post-fire ecosystem dynamics, are elementary school students participating in acorn grinding, art projects and village games of the Chumash, an American Indian tribe.

Since Stunt Ranch is closer to an urban area than other natural reserves, it hosts formal school programs for students in the greater Los Angeles area, said Carol Felixson, director of education and community outreach at Stunt Ranch.

Generally, three to four thousand students visit the reserve under the coordination of the Cold Creek Docents, a division of the Mountains Restoration Trust. The docents program takes the students on a 1.5 mile hike on the Stunt High Trail to the educational zone for interactive activities.

Named for the Stunt family, the Santa Monica reserve is 310 acres and contains Cold Creek watershed, one of the most pristine watersheds on the West Coast.

In fact, many of the natural reserves in the system are virtually untouched and represent nearly every kind of natural habitat found in California, Nonacs said.

Nonacs speaks from personal experience with the Natural Reserve System.

As of five years ago, Nonacs and his colleagues began studying the behavioral ecology of harvester ants at the Sierra Nevada Research Lab.

The data was then compiled to determine the colonial and parental investments of harvester ants in their offspring.

“The offspring, male or female, never return to the original ant colony after they mate,” Nonacs said. The male dies after mating and the pregnant female goes out to begin her own colony as queen.

Currently, there are two models of parentage – one that states parents produce offspring of the same size and one that states that the offspring are of various sizes.

Since ant colonies are not made for food storage, in times of an abundance of food, the nutrition is given to the existing offspring instead of being used by parents for additional reproduction, thus yielding various sizes of offspring within a colony.

Over the twenty-some years Muth has been working at the natural reserve, he has also been studying the fringe-toed lizard, which is listed as endangered by federal and state law.

“These animals’ habitats are 10 percent of what it was 100 years ago,” Muth explained.

The natural reserve will probably prevent extinction, but will not be able to have the species de-listed from the endangered animals list.