Forest Service, Under Fire, Closes Range

When four shooters dressed in camouflage pants and carrying assault rifles arrived Thursday at their favorite target range, they almost didn’t recognize it.

With the pending closure of the Pacoima Canyon shooting area, a stone wall had been erected and a pile of nearly 30 abandoned vehicles had been hoisted from the hillside.

Then they spotted an old friend--a late-model Chevrolet van so riddled with bullet holes that it appeared to be covered by mesh.

“That van was brand new the last time we were here,” said Marc Sonoda, a 22-year-old grocery clerk from West Los Angeles. “When we shot out the engine, radiator water came out of it.”

That is precisely the kind of thing the U. S. Forest Service refers to when rangers explain why they are closing the Pacoima Canyon shooting area, saying it has become a dumping ground for stolen cars and a perilous playground for would-be Rambos.

The Aug. 5 closure will mark the first time that the Forest Service has permanently closed one of the 13 areas designated for target practice in Angeles National Forest, said Forest Service spokesman Bob Swinford.

“Safety-wise, it’s a nightmare to patrol,” said Wayne Wallace, a deputy at the Crescenta Valley substation of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, citing the canyon’s thick foliage, remoteness, dirt roads and dangerous occupants.

No Family Outings

The canyon has become a hangout for “soldier-of-fortune type people infatuated with military gear,” he said. “Because of numerous reports of automatic weapons, this area has not been available to the legitimate shooting public--a dad and his son.”

“Because of the area’s inaccessibility, it’s become a place for people to abandon stolen cars,” ranger Chris Rose said. The 2,000-acre shooting area, as well as the 10,000-acre recreational area of which it is part, will remain open for hiking, horseback riding and mountain bicycling, Rose said.

Although the four shooters acknowledged a need to clean up the canyon--it is littered with bottles, cans, toys, appliances, and cartridge cases--they expressed dread at driving to any of the 12 other shooting areas in the national forest.

“I’m not sure where I’ll go,” said Glenn Kushida, 24, because Pacoima Canyon is the closest to the northern part of Los Angeles.

The four shooters said they have heard machine-gun fire several times, but said their guns are legal, semiautomatic, civilian versions of military weapons.

Sonoda, for instance, said he favors a Chinese replica of the Soviet-made AK-47 that was used in Vietnam. “It was so respected that U. S. Marines would throw down their M-16s and pick these up,” he said.

He said he will miss the Pacoima Canyon range, with its din of constant gunfire. “It’s like something out of the movies,” he said.

A resident of a nearby ranch, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, did not share his sentiments, lauding the closure as “a fantastic accomplishment.”

She said riflemen had shot at her property, her animals and, on one occasion, at her.

“I’d just gotten out of my car, and I heard, ‘Bing, bing, bing,’ ” she said. “I looked down and there were these shots at my feet. Usually, if I yell, they’ll leave, but one out of 10 won’t, and this was one. I had to run under a tree.”

Mark Knight, a Little Tujunga Canyon Road resident, however, acknowledged mixed emotions over the closure.

“If people don’t have a legal place to shoot,” said Knight, 35, “they’re just going to park off the side of the road and start shooting there.”

The National Rifle Assn. supports the closure because of unsafe conditions in the canyon, representative Bob Grego said. But, he said, other shooting areas should be opened in the same district because of its proximity to Los Angeles and highways.

Fear of Illegal Shooting

“Shooting has been declared a legitimate use of the National Forest,” Grego said. “Therefore, I think that areas ought to be made available to people. If areas are closed down, I fear that we’ll have more incidents of people shooting in areas where it’s illegal to shoot.”

Rose, the forest ranger, confirmed that bullets sometimes stray onto private property because shooters fire outside the designated area, either taking aim from roads above the canyon or venturing miles beyond its limits.

Shooters are supposed to fire only from the bottom of the canyon, and only at the hillside. Many large wooden signs, most pockmarked with bullet holes, warn hikers not to stray into the line of fire.

“In actuality, the shooting area is only 1 1/2 miles long, but people will shoot the full eight miles of the canyon,” Rose said.

Some shooters drive through the shallow stream that runs through the canyon, she said, killing fish and fouling the water. The stream has “been harmed a great deal,” she said, “but we know it’s retrievable.”

And shooters have shot away so much of some trees that they have died, or even been cut in half, by gunfire.

The Forest Service hopes the closure will also lower the risk of fires in the canyon. It has been the site of seven shooter-related fires since May 1, including one that claimed 100,000 acres and cost about $80,000 to extinguish, said Tujunga District Fire Manager Officer Cal Yarbrough.

The Forest Service will spend $100,000 to clean up the area with help from rangers, the California Conservation Corps and a commercial towing service hired to remove stolen and abandoned vehicles.

By dropping a hook hundreds of feet by cable into the canyon Thursday, tow-service operator Rick Munson used a five-ton wrecker to retrieve the bullet-riddled carcass of a car that had been pushed over a precipice. In a week at the site, Munson said, he had removed about 30 vehicles in the same condition.

“So far we’ve recovered five stolens,” Munson said. “And those are just the ones we’ve been able to identify. Some are so old and shot up that we can’t.”

There also have been drug arrests at the site and seizures of illegal, fully automatic weapons or illegally altered weapons, including sawed-off shotguns and semiautomatic rifles converted into machine guns, Deputy Wallace said.

Rose said most injuries at the site have been accidentally self-inflicted. Wallace could recall no injuries to passers-by, but one neighbor said she could remember a boy whose leg was hit by a bullet as he rode a bicycle outside the shooting area.

Two More Sites Targeted

Swinford said the Forest Service is also considering permanently closing shooting areas at Pigeon Ridge in San Gabriel Canyon and Texas Canyon in Saugus because of similar policing difficulties. The Texas Canyon shooting area has been temporarily closed since July 3 for a cleanup that is expected to cost $15,000 and be complete by Oct. 1, said Mike Wickman, Saugus District ranger.

Like the Pacoima area, the shooting areas at Texas Canyon and Pigeon Ridge are isolated and can only be reached by dirt roads, said Swinford. The Texas Canyon site has the added disadvantages of an antiquated and unsafe layout and a location near the Rowher Canyon off-road vehicle park, authorities said.

The target areas were established in 1982 to limit shooting within the forest, Swinford said. Areas were selected not for their suitability but because they were already being used by shooters.

Notifying Users

He said the Forest Service expected difficulty in informing shooters of the closure because most are “the occasional user” out for recreation.

“Organized clubs tend not to use these areas,” he said. “They normally go to private shooting ranges.”

The three vehicular entrances to Pacoima Canyon will be closed, park authorities said, shutting off access from Pacoima to the south, Acton to the north and eastern points within Angeles National Forest.

“If we didn’t close the roads,” he said, “we feel the illegal shooting would continue, and people would go to some other part of the canyon rather than go to a legal shooting area. We’re trying to break some habits.”