State Plan Allowing Hunting Club to Manage Wildlife Area Draws Fire

RIVERSIDE â€”  A state Department of Fish and Game proposal to turn management of much of the sprawling San Jacinto Wildlife Area over to a private hunt club is drawing fire from environmentalists who say the idea poses a threat to native birds and mammals.

In exchange for managing a major part of the wildlife area, the club would be permitted to run a public bird-hunting program on the land.

Although hunting clubs have long played a major role in support of California’s designated wildlife areas, and although shooting of native birds is permitted on most of them, the proposal for the San Jacinto area--situated about 15 miles east of Riverside, would represent a shift in policy for the Department of Fish and Game.

100 Hunters a Day

It would be the department’s first attempt to save money and manpower by turning over some of the duties of regulating hunting on public lands to a private business, officials said.

“It would provide hunting opportunities in Southern California we sorely need, and free up manpower we are strapped for,� said Fred Worthley, Department of Fish and Game regional manager in Long Beach.

The proposal calls for a private concessionaire to offer up to 100 hunters a day an opportunity to shoot pen-raised pheasant, bobwhite quail and chukar on about one-third of the area’s 4,000 acres of undeveloped plains and hillsides, officials said. The program would operate seven days a week, July 1 through March 31.

The concessionaire would charge each hunter an entry fee of $5 and receive an additional undetermined amount for each game bird taken. As in all other state wildlife areas, the hunting of native game animals such as rabbit, quail and dove would also be permitted.

In return, the concessionaire would perform the Department of Fish and Game’s duty of controlling access to hunting lands and of safeguarding sensitive habitat and native species on or near them. It would also provide manpower for the planting of native vegetation and pay for the construction of a parking lot, a concessionaire headquarters and holding pens for the game birds, officials said.

One of 55 designated wildlife areas in the state, the San Jacinto Wildlife Area was established in 1983 but is not scheduled to open to the public until September. Like most other wildlife areas in the state, San Jacinto allows a variety of uses ranging from hiking and bird watching to hunting and fishing, officials said.

It is home to the endangered Stephens kangaroo rat and a variety of eagles, hawks and migrating birds, and the proposal to allow additional hunting in the area worries the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and even some Fish and Game employees.

“My concern is that it would attract more hunters than the area could stand,� said Alan Craig, the Department of Fish and Game’s manager of the wildlife area.

“Normally, hunting of any wild species is self-limiting--when hunters run out of things to shoot they go someplace else,� Craig said. “But under this plan, for seven months a year, seven days a week, we would have captive birds released here for hunters to shoot.�

Other critics contend that a privately managed “put-and-take� hunting operation simply has no place on a designated wildlife area.

Donations From Groups

“A major philosophical issue here is whether this is a legitimate purpose for public lands,� said Larry LaPre, president of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, which has donated $75,000 toward the acquisition of the Stephens kangaroo rat habitat in the area. “The Audubon Society does not think so and never will.�

The Department of Fish and Game has for years accepted donations such as the one from the Audubon Society from groups or individuals interested in enhancing wildlife areas, said Department of Fish and Game spokesman Pat Moore. The donors often include hunting clubs.

At least one hunting organization with a vested interest in the property has joined the opposition to the San Jacinto proposal.

Southern California Ducks, which has 2,800 members, has donated $58,000 for the establishment of ponds, vegetation and a well on the property in support of native waterfowl for hunting purposes.

“The proposal is a neat concept,� said Richard Haldeman, executive secretary for Southern California Ducks. “But that land at San Jacinto was given to the state for natural wildlife projects--not ‘put-and-take’ hunting.�

Group Interested in Bidding

The controversial proposal is the brainchild of Fish and Game Commissioner Al Taucher, who was appointed to the panel in 1983 by Gov. George Deukmejian and who belongs to a private hunting club with members who have expressed an interest in bidding on the lease, officials said.

The five-member commission sets regulations and policy regarding hunting and fishing in California.

Taucher asked the commission to consider the possibility of allowing the Etiwanda Game Assn. to establish a hunting concession at San Jacinto after the club lost a lease on hunting lands in San Bernardino County.

“I take full responsibility for getting the ball rolling,� Taucher said. “My main interest was that the 150 members out there could have a place to shoot.

“The project is going to take heat but it is going to work,� he added. He denied that his membership in the Etiwanda Game Assn. represents any potential conflict of interest.

Critics, he said, “don’t like us because we shoot guns.�

Bidding on the lease is expected to open if the commission votes to approve the proposal sometime later this year. It is not clear if other groups or individuals besides the Etiwanda Game Assn. members will bid.