Palos Verdes Estates : Peafowl Pals Seek Court Stay

A citizens group is going to court today in an attempt to block trapping and removal of peafowl from private property on grounds that the city did not conduct environmental impact studies before approving the trapping plan last month. Friends of the Peacocks, which was formed by pro-peacock members of the city’s peafowl study committee, will seek a temporary restraining order halting trapping at 1:30 p.m. in Los Angeles Superior Court Department 86 in downtown Los Angeles.

In a suit filed against the city, the group and three individual residents said that peafowl have been a part of the “natural history and beauty” of the community for more than 60 years. Trapping and removing birds, the suit contends, constitutes an environmental change that requires a study under the California Environmental Quality Act. The city has failed to do that, the suit states, and it asks the court to ban trapping until a study is conducted.

“We have studied this thing,” said Councilman Ronald Florance. “For 10 years, peafowl have been a recurring problem and we have looked at it very diligently and hard.”

Capping years of controversy between residents who value peafowl and those who find them nuisances, the City Council in September approved the controlled trapping of birds on private property. Trapped birds will be taken out of the city until a specific number has been taken from each of the city’s two flocks, which totaled 67 at the last official count. Additional birds may be trapped, but they will be relocated in city parklands.

Mayor James H. Kinney called it a “middle position” between those who want to totally protect peafowl and those who want to eliminate all of them.

Trapping will be done by the Southern California Humane Society at the request of property owners. Trapping has not started because the city is still obtaining traps.

Calling the trapping plan “indiscriminate and reckless,” Friends of the Peacocks said birds removed from the city “cannot be retrieved. The physical environment of Palos Verdes Estates is directly threatened.” Under the plan, birds are to be taken to the humane society’s wildlife preserve in Little Tujunga Canyon in the San Fernando Valley.

Peafowl were first brought to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in 1923 by developer Frank Vanderlip Sr., the Friends said. One flock is behind the Malaga Cove Library and the other is in the Espinosa Circle area.