In a 50-year battle to protect California’s coast, they are still in their 80s

IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif. — Mike and Patricia McCoy answered the door of their cozy house in Imperial Beach, a long walk from the crashing waves and a few blocks from the Tijuana River Estuary, where California meets Mexico and the mountain trails are named.

They offered me a seat in a lounge filled with awards for their service and books, some of them about the wonders of nature and the threat to its survival. The McCoys are the kind of people who look you in the eye and give you their full attention, and Patricia’s British accent carries a happy, bird-like tone.

In the long history of conservation in California, few have worked as long or as hard as the McCoys.

Few have achieved so much.

And they still are. Mike is 84, Patricia is 89.

The McCoys settled in Imperial Beach in the early 1970s – Mike was a vet, Patricia a teacher – when coastal defense movement was spread across the country amid fears of overdevelopment and privatization. In 1972, voters approved Proposition 20, which laid down a landmark declaration:

California’s coastline is a public treasure, not a private playground.

Four years later, the Coastal Act became national law, regulating development in partnership with local government agencies, ensuring public access and protecting marine and coastal habitats.

At the time, the McCoys were locked in a battle that must be revisited now, on the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act. For years there has been talk about turning the underappreciated Tijuana River Estuary, part of which was used as a dumping ground, into something useful.

Mike McCoy knew that an area of ​​approximately 2,500 XNUMX was already something useful, and very important. It was one of the last large undeveloped wetlands in Southern California and a breeding and food site for 370 species of birds, as well as fish, reptiles, rabbits, foxes, coyotes and other animals.

In McCoy’s mind, it needed to be restored, not repurposed. And certainly not like a large marina, which would destroy a habitat that was home to several endangered species. At a 1977 Imperial Beach rally packed with marina fans, Mike McCoy drew his line in the sand.

The Tijuana Estuary at Imperial Beach is seen on Friday.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

“I went up there,” McCoy recalled, pausing to say he could still feel the heat of the moment, “and I said, ‘You people, and I don’t care who you are, you’re not going to put a marina in that harbor. It’s sacred.

The river won, but the McCoys were not finished. When I started talking to them about the years of advocacy that followed, Patricia’s modesty was shocked.

“We don’t want to blow our own trumpets,” he said.

It is not necessary. I do it for them, with the help of music lovers who are happy to join the symphony.

Patricia went on to become a member of the Imperial Beach City Council and served two years on the Coastal Commission, which oversees the implementation of the Coastal Act. He also helped Mike and others take the riverfront restoration fight to Sacramento, Washington, DC, and Mexico.

“This is what a real couple looks like,” said Sarah Christie, the Coastal Commission’s legal director. “They use the power of nature and the power of people, you cannot overestimate their contribution to coastal protection.”

The McCoys’ signature success is two-fold, it says Jeff Crookswetlands specialist from San Diego. They helped establish the harbor as a wildlife sanctuary, and helped to structure the harbor to serve as a research center for the management, management and conservation of habitat and to collaborate with other US harbors.

“It’s been a living laboratory for 40 years,” said Crooks, the research coordinator. Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Save.

Sewage and debris are flowing from Tijuana they are an ever-present threat and the source of decades of frustration and anger in Imperial Beach, where beaches have been closed and some residents have planted “Stop the Stink” yard signs. Crooks said there has been progress in infrastructure development, there is still a long way to go.

Coastal conservationist Mike McCoy looks at a new interpretive sign in the Tijuana Estuary at Imperial Beach on Friday.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

But “even though we’re beating it,” Crooks said of the pollution entering the estuary, it’s been incredibly resilient in part because of regular monitoring and management.

Chris Peregrin, who manages the Tijuana Estuary in the state park system, said the nonprofit organization Tijuana Estuary Foundation been a good partner, and the president of the foundation’s board guess who:

Mike McCoy.

The foundation “fills in the gaps that the state can’t,” Pergrin said. “As one example, they are running a research program in the reserve.”

For all their ongoing passion for the machines in their backyard, the McCoys are concerned about the bigger picture — the alarming increase in greenhouse gases and the decline in biodiversity. Through the port window, they see a planet in danger.

“They both think a lot like that,” Crooks said. “Mike especially comes from the idea that this is ‘think globally and act locally’.”

“Restoration is the name of the game, not hacking,” Mike told me, and he wasn’t just talking about the river.

The same week I visited the McCoys, i The Trump administration delivered a heavy blow in the environmental movement, the government that finds that greenhouse gas pollution is dangerous to the world and public health is dismissed. He called those claims, supported by a large scientific consensus, “big scam.”

It’s easy to throw your hands up in that knuckle-dragging indifference, and Mike told me he had to keep reaching for more power.

But Serge Dedina, the former mayor of Imperial Beach who was inspired by the McCoys’ activism as a child, sees new generations bringing new energy to the fight. Many of them work with him Wildcoast, an international non-profit coastal conservation organization he founded, with Patricia McCoy among his early collaborators.

“I would not have become an environmentalist and coastal activist without having worked with Patricia and Mike and been surrounded by their love,” said Dedina. “I think sometimes they underestimate their legacy. They had a huge impact on a generation of scientists and conservationists and people doing work all over the coast.”

We cannot underestimate the legacy of the 1972 citizen uprising, and the creation of an agency dedicated to coastal conservation. But it’s worth noting, with the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Act, that not everyone will be reaching for the party hat.

The Coastal Act has been enforced aggressively, sometimes erratically from the perspective of developers, property owners, commercial interests and some politicians. Former Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed the act into law, once called Coastal Commission agency workers “bureaucratic criminals” with strict limits on development.

There have been ongoing tensions, due to political pressure and the power of developers, and one of the many threats to the primary goal is the need for more housing throughout the province. A balance between new construction and ongoing maintenance it will definitely remove the wars of the years.

Coastal conservationists Mike and Patricia McCoy on the trail named after them at the Tijuana Estuary Visitor Center in Imperial Beach.

(Hayne Palmour IV / For The Times)

But as the Coastal Commission’s website puts it in commenting on the memorial, the great achievements of the last 50 years they include “unfilled wetlands, sensitive areas that have not been degraded, access roads that are not closed, farms and ranches that have not been converted to urban use, highways and gated communities and undeveloped industrial areas.”

In the words of the late Peter Douglas, who co-authored Proposition 20 and later served as executive director of the Coastal Commission, the coast is never saved, it’s always being saved.

Saved by the likes of Mike and Patricia McCoy.

I had the pleasure of walking the estuary with Mike, passing a plaque dedicated to him and his wife and “all those who love wildlife and the Tijuana Estuary.” We also found some of the new interpretive signs that were to be dedicated on Friday, including one with a photo of Mike and Patricia as teenagers “Making a Difference.”

Mike pointed here and there, explaining all the conservation programs throughout the year. We saw an egret and a rabbit, and when I heard the sound of hooting, Mike lit up.

“That’s a clapper rail,” said Mike, an endangered bird that makes its home in the river bed.

Trumpeting isn’t just for McCoy.

It is a rallying call to those who may follow in their footsteps.

steve.lopez@latimes.com