Reflections on Ecology, Community, and Care from My Time at the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy By Mathilde Larsen, Roskilde University, Copenhagen
During my master’s degree in Sustainable Development in Denmark, I spent five months interning at the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (PVPLC) in Southern California. The internship became a deeply personal experience and served as both an ethnographic case study and a hands-on learning journey in environmental restoration. It encompassed ecology, planning, community, and care, offering insights into how sustainable development unfolds in practice.
From Theory to Practice: Restoration as a Social Process
At the Conservancy, I experienced restoration as more than weeding and watering plants. It is a social process shaped by relationships, care, responsibility, and collective action. People and nature are interconnected. Restoration isn’t just technical; it’s relational, justice-oriented, and deeply human.
Each week was a mix of office work, fieldwork, and community engagement. I moved between spreadsheets and seed trays, GIS maps and trail walks. Through this, I saw how sustainable development is both practical and relational.
Learning Through Doing: Fieldwork & Monitoring
Hands-on work helped me understand how knowledge is produced and applied. My work contributed to the following:
- Establishing photopoints to monitor ecological changes
- Tracking Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly phenology
- Conducting vegetation surveys
- Setting up and monitoring wildlife cameras
- Removing invasive ice plant to improve Cactus Wren habitats
- Participating in special field tours such and experiencing “A Day in the Life of a Biologist”
It was powerful to see how tools like GIS aren’t just for analysis—they communicate climate information and inform real-world restoration decisions.
Education, Care, and Social Responsibility
Education programs, activities, and outreach are central to the Conservancy’s mission to help people of all ages connect with nature. I witnessed children seeing the ocean for the first time through the 3rd Grade Naturalist program, shared the scent of California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), also known as “cowboy cologne,” and saw corporate employees get their hands dirty planting rattlepod at restoration sites as part of a recovery program for the endangered Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly.
I learned that these connections are about meeting people where they are—not just explaining or “simplifying” biology. This experience highlighted how social responsibility is inseparable from environmental care.
Seeds, Biodiversity, and Ethics of Restoration
Working at the seed farm at the Conservancy’s native plant nursery gave me a new understanding of biodiversity and restoration ethics. My tasks included:
- Seed collection, cleaning, and storage
- Planting, transplanting, and weeding
- Nursery and preserve maintenance
This work led me to reflect on ethical questions such as: What does it mean to “restore” nature? Who decides what belongs? How do care and responsibility shape restoration practices? I came to see restoration as the cultivation of reciprocal relationships with nature. Humans are part of the ecosystems they care for.
Planning, Trails, and Everyday Coordination
Working on hiking trails, I saw firsthand how ecological goals, public access, and long-term stewardship intersect in practice. I contributed to the trails and stewardship team through trail assessments and monitoring, which showed me that:
- Ecological goals, public access, and long-term stewardship must be balanced continuously.
- Each decision—whether rerouting a path to protect sensitive habitat, reinforcing erosion-prone sections, or balancing accessibility with preservation—requires weighing immediate visitor needs against the long-term health of the landscape.
- Sustainable land management isn’t abstract policy but a series of deliberate, on-the-ground choices that shape how people and ecosystems coexist.
Community, Justice, and Commoning
One of the most inspiring aspects of my internship was working with volunteers and local residents, including members of the Indigenous Tongva Collective, through educational programming at the White Point Nature Education Center. The Nature Center features multipurpose exhibits that present the area’s natural history from the Pleistocene era to the present.
From native plant garden tours to enrichment presentations, several key perspectives emerged:
- Restoration can be a struggle for justice, challenging colonial narratives.
- Seen through a commons-based lens, restoration becomes communing, an ongoing practice in which humans and nature co-participate in care and responsibility.
- Local approaches rooted in relationships strengthen sustainability by relying on shared responsibility and local knowledge, allowing communities to adapt as conditions change something top-down solutions often miss.
Beyond technical skills, I now understand that sustainability is not just designed, it is practiced every day through collective effort.
Looking Ahead
As I look ahead, these commitments shape the direction of my next career steps. I am drawn to work in sustainable development grounded in care and social responsibility, where environmental goals are inseparable from the well-being of communities. I want to engage in community-based environmental planning that values local knowledge and shared stewardship, and to pursue justice-oriented, relational approaches that recognize humans and nature as deeply interconnected. Above all, I aim to bridge academic insight with practical action translating theory into on-the-ground practices that support resilient ecosystems and more equitable futures.
Presentation: PowerPoint Link
