South San Diego Bay

The South San Diego Bay Unit of the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge was established as a WHSRN site of Regional Importance in March 1999, hosting more than 20,000 shorebirds each year. Historically the San Diego Bay consisted of intertidal mudflats, salt marshes, and shallow subtidal habitat. Years of dredging and filling for development throughout the bay have degraded these environments to a point that the South San Diego Bay Unit contains 90% of the intertidal habitat that remains.

In the fall of 2011 the South San Diego Bay Restoration and Enhancement Project was completed restoring 300 acres of estuarine habitat through excavation of degraded uplands, creating tidal channels by dredging former salt ponds, breaching levees to restore tidal movement, and the establishment of native plant communities. A five-year monitoring program is in place to understand of how these restored systems will evolve over time.

Sand Diego Bay is also a part of the Migratory Shorebird Project, a cooperative of 14 conservation science organizations to survey wintering shorebirds on the Pacific Coast of the Americas from Alaska to Peru.