Eagles Are Riches, Too

According to Proverbs: “Riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” Modern business wisdom, however, tells men like Newport Beach developer Harold Graham not to let things like eagles get in the way of the quest for riches. Thus Graham is bent on building four two-story housing units on 1 1/2 acres of land near Big Bear Lake that may be the most critical eagle habitat in Southern California.

As The Times’ Louis Sahagun reported in Sunday’s editions, about 30 bald eagles migrate from the Pacific Northwest to Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains every winter. Many of them roost in pines along Baker Pond, a shallow waterfowl refuge at the eastern end of Big Bear Lake. Graham’s 1 1/2 acres are smack in between the south shore of the pond and a 125-acre bald-eagle preserve. This is a favored spot for the eagles to feed on fish and waterfowl from the lake. The area is so critical to their survival that Tim Krantz, president of Friends of the Big Bear Valley Preserve, says, “This is the eagle’s last stand at Big Bear Lake.”

The Big Bear Lake Planning Commission properly has voted to prohibit virtually any development on Graham’s land on the south shore of Baker Pond, but Graham plans to appeal to the Big Bear Lake City Council. The council should reject his request. City officials have offered Graham $115,000 for his land, for which he paid $15,000 in 1973. Graham says that he has offered it to the city for $250,000. Some reasonable price must be paid, or perhaps a land exchange worked out. There can be no compromise in terms of allowing any development on the south side of Baker Pond.

Graham says that he likes eagles--and pigeons, too--but yields no special status to endangered species, asking, “What happens when free enterprise goes out of existence?” There is a difference. Graham’s condos can be built somewhere else. For the eagles there may be nowhere else.