2 Draw Fines for Marketing Buckle Made of a Bear Claw

Two Woodland Hills women were ordered Tuesday to donate $1,000 each to the state Department of Fish and Game’s preservation fund for selling a belt buckle with a bear claw set in sterling silver.

Mary Jean Baratta, a Cherokee Indian who goes by the name Winona, and her business partner, Bette Jean Wildish, pleaded no contest to violating the state’s Fish and Game Code by marketing the claw buckle, which they sold for $450. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors agreed to recommend a reduced sentence and drop two related charges.

Besides the $1,000 payments, Van Nuys Municipal Judge Alan E. Ellis sentenced both women to 36 months on probation and ordered them to perform 200 hours of community service.

Each woman could have faced a $5,000 fine or six months in County Jail for selling the buckle, Deputy City Atty. Nicholas J. Fratianne said.

Sells at Fairs, Markets

“If I get 30 days in jail, I’m out of business,” said Baratta, 56, who sells Indian artifacts at weekend fairs and markets throughout the Southland.

Baratta and Wildish, 49, were arrested at their Woodland Hills home in August, 1987, after a Fish and Game warden posing as a customer bought the bear-claw belt buckle.

“He asked me to get him this piece of jewelry,” Baratta said after the sentencing. “He pursued me for nine months to get this piece of jewelry.. . . And how come they didn’t find additional pieces of jewelry when they raided my home? They had five men raid my house like we were criminals.”

Armed with a search warrant, Fish and Game wardens and Los Angeles police officers seized rattlesnake skins, two bags of animal teeth and other items from Baratta’s home the day of her arrest. Defense attorney Mark R. Schwartz said all the items were permitted under the law.

Schwartz, who represents both women, maintains that his clients were entrapped by an overzealous department. He said the women assumed that using the bear claw was legal.

“We were singled out for a sting operation,” Schwartz said.

Court documents show that a Fish and Game Department warden first approached Baratta at an arts festival in November, 1986, and asked her if she could get him a claw buckle to replace one that had been stolen. After several more discussions over a nine-month period, the two women came up with the bear claw and were arrested a short time later.

Previous Pleas

Both women previously had been charged with similar offenses in San Bernadino County and pleaded guilty in 1985 to possession of an endangered species for sale. They were sentenced to one-year probation and fined $85.

Although California law permits hunting of bears under very restricted conditions, the sale of any part of the animal is illegal, even if the bear was killed in another state. Fratianne said Baratta and Wildish bought the bear claw from someone in Arizona.

“It’s a major problem,” said Capt. William Powell of the Fish and Game Department. “There are people in California and elsewhere who are killing bears solely for profit. They’re hunting them scientifically and removing their internal organs and claws, and that’s it.”

Powell said a bear’s gallbladder, for instance, can bring up to $400 an ounce. It is used for medicinal purposes and is purported by some to be an aphrodisiac.