Center to Showcase Wildlife at Mugu Lagoon : Point Mugu: Park service plans tours along Navy-owned coastline and to build a facility that will highlight the area’s plants and animals.

The 200 harbor seals at Mugu Lagoon have lived a very private life until now. That’s about to change: The seals are going public.

Their beachfront lounge at the Point Mugu Navy base will soon become a regular stop on a tour route being plotted by the Navy and the National Park Service.

So will the rare saltwater marsh that lies behind the base gates.

Through an agreement being carved out between the Navy and the park service, the public will soon be able to see wildlife in its natural habitat on the base.

The park service will also build a visitors center just outside the base gates along Pacific Coast Highway, where an existing turnout provides a spectacular coastline view of Navy property to the estimated 4 million people who pass that way each year.

Although the base now hosts some group tours for schools and clubs, the new tours that will leave from the visitors center will open the base to the general public for the first time.

Tour guides will explain what time of year the 200 resident harbor seals at Mugu Lagoon inside the base have their babies, or when the gray whales pass by on their annual migrations.

Visitors will also learn about the endangered birds that live on the base’s 2,000 acres of marsh and coastal wetlands, a rare occurrence in California where 90% of wetlands have already been filled in by development.

“Mugu is a world-class resource,” said Scott Erickson, assistant superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, a division of the National Park Service. Erickson, who initiated the recent round of talks with the Navy on the project, said part of the base property lies within the district’s boundaries.

“Mugu is part of what gives our recreation area national significance,” he said. “What a generous opportunity the Navy has given us to open this up to the public.”

For officials at the Naval Air Weapons Station at Point Mugu, whose primary mission is developing weapons, developing the visitors center and tours is part of their job as well.

“Our mission is also to be good stewards of the environment,” said Alan Alpers, a base spokesman. “For us, this is a good opportunity to let people know about the resources here.”

The memorandum of agreement now being drawn up calls for cooperative efforts on the visitors center and tours. Funding for the project--estimated at about $250,000 for the interpretive center--is expected to come from the Department of Defense and the private sector.

The visitors center plan calls for a small building or kiosk to be built in the turnout on the south side of Pacific Coast Highway just north of Mugu Rock. The building will include signs and displays explaining the environs and the animals living there.

The signs will explain that the base and its wetlands are part of the Pacific Flyway and provide a stopover for thousands of migrating birds each year. The area hosts at least eight endangered species, including a salt marsh plant and seven species of birds.

The center will also offer viewing scopes so visitors can get a close-up look at the birds. In addition, a type of boardwalk or raised nature trail is planned to take visitors onto the marsh.

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That boardwalk will probably be made from recycled plastic, which looks like logs, Erickson said.

“We took a Lever Bros. representative out to the site and discussed the donation of the recycled plastic lumber to build the boardwalk,” he said.

But no visitors will be allowed down into the wetlands themselves.

A recent stop at the site planned for the visitors center shows more than four miles of Navy-owned coastline, where endangered California least terns nest in the sand dunes and the wings of snowy egrets in flight flash bright white in the distant fog.

California brown pelicans, also an endangered bird, fly overhead in a V.

Looming above the wildlife in the distance stand the buildings where Navy warfare systems are developed for the country’s most advanced fighter jets. A closer look at the building where software is developed for the F-14 Tomcat shows swallows have built their mud nests under an overhang.

“The Navy has for the most part done an excellent job of protecting the environment,” Erickson said.

The tours leaving the visitors center will take the public on base to see up close the critters that live in and around Mugu Lagoon. Until the center is developed, the only way to get on the base is through an organized group, such as a school classroom or Boy Scouts.

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The new tours will be regularly scheduled visits to the base, for individuals, families and whoever else might want to climb on a bus and have a look at what biologists call some of the best preserved coastline in the state.

“On a good day, visitors might see a gray whale or a group of dolphins swim by,” said Cora Scott, a base spokeswoman.

The tours will stop on the edge of the lagoon, a salt- and freshwater pool that ebbs and flows with the ocean’s tides. On a sand spit jutting into the lagoon, the harbor seals lounge and their fluffy pups born in March roll and play in the sand.

Hundreds of pelicans, which until recently claimed the sand spit for themselves, are now displaced to a nearby shore.

Visitors may be allowed to picnic on nearby tables and take a look at an exhibit of stuffed animals and birds. That exhibit, now housed in an old metal building, will be transferred to an old cabin, one of the first built on the base.

The cabin, which now sits at the north end of the base, is being overrun by the ocean and will be moved across the road.

“We’re just going to move back and see what the ocean does,” Alpers said.