The San Fernando Valley Audubon Society is looking for able-bodied volunteers this Saturday to help with its annual cleanup trash and other debris in the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve’s Haskell Creek that has ended up in the area due to recreational use and homeless encampments.

The group, with help from the Resource Conservation District of the Santa Monica Mountains and LA River Master Plan, will remove trash left by visitors to the recreational site from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The SFV Audubon Society is a local chapter of the national environmental organization promoting natural resource conservation and preservation of local wildlife. The event will also include educational programming on native flora and fauna; students who attend can receive community service hours.

Muriel Kotin, former president and Valley representative to the organization’s wildlife areas steering committee, said this cleanup has taken place for some 26 years — she suggested it would take 150 people to fill the 300 bags she received from the city Department of Recreation and Parks.

“We’re really hoping for a good turnout. It’s sad to see the space so messed up,” she said, emphasizing the importance of an annual cleanup to the site as both a popular hiking spot for nearby residents and habitat for dozens of bird and fish species. “The trash is washing mostly from homeless encampments upstream and sloppy park users.”

Although Haskell Creek is not a pre-eminent location for the Sepulveda Basin’s homeless population, encampments in other parts of the area like nearby Encino Creek have led to aggravated levels of debris around the waterways feeding into the Los Angeles River.

“Encino Creek along Burbank Boulevard is a disaster zone. We’re not quite at that level unfortunately, but it’s a growing problem, I think, largely because of the homeless issue.”

The Sepulveda Flood Basin is part of the network of dams built in the early 1940s to protect the Los Angeles basin from flooding. The basin is federally owned and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but partially leased to the City of Los Angeles — meaning the Bureau of Sanitation is tasked with anything to do with site cleaning and the LAPD with law enforcement.

Stephanie Pincetl, director and professor of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, said creative solutions are needed.

“One of the things we really need to work on is providing strategies for homeless people to manage their own trash — and make some money doing so — through informal arrangements where people organize to provide services,” she said, citing Tokyo and Mexico City as good examples.

She urges Valley residents bothered by alarming amounts of trash near waterways to consider the greater structural issues at play.

“Trash is a larger manifestation of the organization of our society,” she said. “Sometimes it’s easier to point a finger at folks who create the problem … but if we don’t provide housing for people, and they’re on the street, what are they supposed to do?”