UC Irvine NRS Campus Office

UC Irvine administers three NRS reserves: Burns Piñon Ridge Reserve (BPR), San Joaquin Marsh Reserve (SJM), and Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center (SBAB). The UCI NRS Campus office sits directly alongside SJM, and the history of the NRS at UCI is inectricable from the history of the marsh. Irvine was one of the first fully planned cities, and SJM was not part of the plan, but UCI recognized the value of acquiring a wetlands reserve near campus and purchased it in 1970. The site was previously used for duck hunting. SJM was operated out of UCI's Museum of Systematic Biology until the museum was closed and its collections dispersed in 1994. SJM is small parcel of Southern California marshland right in the middle of some of the biggest Irvine developments and infrastructure projects, and starting in the 1980s, SJM staff became important voices in development and conservation issues in the area.