A 4.6-acre habitat reserve in Del Rey Oaks, encircled by barbed wire, is vulnerable to a new threat.

On April 22, Nikki Nedeff, a volunteer with the Monterey chapter of the California Native Plant Society, addressed the Del Rey Oaks City Council with a seemingly simple ask. She wanted the city to give her and other CNPS volunteers permission to pull invasive French broom from the borders of a native plant reserve on city property at the northeast corner of Gen. Jim Moore Boulevard and South Boundary Road.

But nothing on the former Fort Ord is ever simple.

The 4.6-acre reserve is host to one of the few remaining stands of undisturbed native habitat – coast live oak woodlands and maritime chaparral that once stretched from the Monterey Airport to the Salinas River mouth. It was set aside by the Fort Ord Reuse Authority in the late 1990s as an environmental mitigation for widening Gen. Jim Moore Boulevard and other road projects, and FORA also entered into a contract with Del Rey Oaks and CNPS to set the property aside as a plant reserve in perpetuity.

But just over a decade later, FORA proposed realigning Gen. Jim’s intersection with South Boundary Road further north from its existing location, partially cutting through the reserve.

FORA and the city were supposed to negotiate with CNPS to find a solution to that problem, but did not, and in June 2020, CNPS sued them both for failing to honor the contract.

That led to nearly three years of litigation and a 2023 settlement in which Del Rey Oaks agreed to leave the habitat undisturbed – the new intersection would be rerouted even further north. (The engineering and planning for that realignment is currently underway).

But while the matter is settled in one sense, all is not well inside the concertina wire lining the property.

Nedeff has twice asked the city if CNPS volunteers could access the property to eradicate the French broom so it doesn’t take hold and crowd out the natives.

But the city has rebuffed Nedeff’s offers. Del Rey Oaks City Manager John Guertin says the settlement agreement states that no vegetation can be removed from the reserve, and he emphasizes one thing he insisted be included in the agreement – that the city have “no affirmative duty” to manage the property. (Though it does require the city to put up interpretive signs around the border, no less than 125 feet apart, titled “Del Rey Oaks Habitat Reserve,” which has not been done, in violation of the agreement.)

Nedeff says CNPS is not interested in litigating the matter further, and that she and others feel the spirit of the agreement – protecting the reserve’s resource value – should allow for removal of invasives.

But Guertin is adamant, and says, “If they want to take over ownership and maintenance, then we’d be happy to transfer title to them.”

However, CNPS – a statewide nonprofit – doesn’t hold property as a rule. Unless another entity takes ownership, one of the last remaining stands of native plants in the region will slowly lose its ecological value, encircled by concertina wire.