SAN BERNARDINO VALLEY, CA – Count David Davalos in if the itinerary includes bugs. 

“Ever since I was little, I would play with bugs. I didn’t see it as a career until college when I found out about other professors who actually studied them,” said Davalos, a Chaffey College student majoring in entomology and botany. 

Davalos joined a team of volunteers for a clean-up event organized by a private nonprofit corporation called Rivers & Lands Conservancy, which was formed in 1989 to protect Southern California landscapes that provide habitat and open space for wildlife and people for all future generations. 

The volunteers went out to the Angelus Block Preserve in San Bernardino County on Saturday morning to pick up trash in area home to an endangered fly subspecies called Delhi Sands flower-loving flies. It is endemic to sand dune formations of San Bernardino Valley, from Colton to Ontario.

The sand dunes, which originally covered about 40 square miles have dwindled down to two percent of their original area. Even though the area is fenced off, there are still debris that thrown in by people driving by the preserve. 

“This fly is only here. Nowhere else in the world. Only in this area. With all this development going on, it is losing all its habitat and for me, it’s more of a reason to protect it because you’re not going to find this fly anywhere else,” said Davalos.

Despite the volunteers’ efforts under the hot sun, the volunteers know they won’t even get glimpse of what the flies look like. Delhi Sands flower-loving flies can only be seen between July and September. They spend most of their lives burrowed 10 feet underground as larvae and has a 2-week lifespan after they emerge as flies. 

“I think all species are worth conserving. It doesn’t just have to be a polar bear or an endangered tiger. I think all species deserve the same consideration,” said Michael Viramontes, a land steward for Rivers & Lands Conservancy. 

Viramontes says one of the conservancy group’s goals is to restore the flies’ habitat back to its original state with native plants and sand dunes which will take a long time and they will need a lot of help. 

“It’s a super great thing to see that people care. We wouldn’t be able to get all this work done without volunteers. It’s a lot of trash. It would take a long time. It would take a lot of staff hours and there’s just not really funding for species like this,” said Viramontes. 

In the meantime, the group is doing what they can to help the flies survive so scientists specializing in insects can learn more about them and figure out just how they’re important to our ecosystem.