Ranch Owners Say Trapping Wasn’t OKd

The owners of a huge ranch where dozens of bobcats and other animals recently were trapped and killed said they did not authorize the trapping, which makes it illegal.

“We’re very unhappy about it,” said an official with H. F. Ahmanson & Co., owner of the Ahmanson Ranch, one of the private tracts where 252 bobcats, coyotes and gray foxes were trapped from Thanksgiving to the end of January.

The trapper “does not have permission to trap those animals on the Ahmanson Ranch, and we don’t want him to do it,” said Gail Morris Sweetland, a senior vice president with Ahmanson & Co., which owns Home Savings of America.

Sweetland said Friday that company lawyers are considering what action “we can or should take” regarding the “unauthorized and apparently illegal trapping on the Ahmanson Ranch property,” next to the Cheeseboro Canyon preserve, part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

Trapping without written permission of the landowner is a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail, said state Department of Fish and Game officials. The trapper can also lose his license.

John Hernandez, state fish and game warden for northern Los Angeles County, said he had not heard that the trapping, which has created an uproar among local environmentalists, was not authorized by Ahmanson.

The trapper, 38-year-old Steve Clark of the northern California town of Bangor, is a construction worker who said he began trapping part time because he likes the outdoors.

Clark, who has a commercial trapping license, caught 112 coyotes, 60 bobcats and 80 gray foxes on private land near the federal preserve in Agoura during the recently concluded trapping season. Clark said he also killed nine raccoons and about 100 skunks.

In a telephone interview, Clark said he trapped on about 5,000 acres near Cheeseboro Canyon. He said most of the animals were trapped immediately west of Cheeseboro Canyon on the Jordan Ranch, owned by Bob Hope, and that most of the rest were caught on the Ahmanson Ranch on the eastern flank of the park.

Hank Heeber III, an Agoura rancher who manages the Jordan Ranch, said he let Clark trap because the ranch has lost cattle and sheep to coyotes and bobcats.

Clark, who acknowledged that such approval must be in writing, said Heeber had secured verbal permission from Ahmanson & Co. representatives to trap on the Ahmanson Ranch.

Ahmanson Officials ‘Horrified’

Clark’s account was contradicted by Sweetland, who said Ahmanson officials were “horrified” when they heard about the kill.

Heeber and Clark declined comment when told of Sweetland’s remarks.

Clark said he has trapped in the area nine years, including the last five on the Jordan Ranch and the last two on Ahmanson Ranch.

He described this year’s kill as “average.”

Since first reported in The Times on Monday, the trapping has provoked outrage from some local conservationists because of the size of the kill and the fact that it occurred next to Cheeseboro Canyon, where wildlife is protected.

“The animals put one paw over the line, and they’re killed,” said Elizabeth Wiechec, executive director of the Mountains Restoration Trust, which works to preserve land in the Santa Monica Mountains.

“What I find most offensive is that foxes, especially, present absolutely no threat to livestock,” Wiechec said. “And bobcats are such a rare sight for most people in the mountains. It makes it terribly disturbing that so many have been killed.”

Income From Selling Pelts

Clark gets his income from the sale of pelts. Ranchers don’t pay him, but let him kill animals, such as foxes, that pose no danger to livestock and have valuable pelts.

The animals are caught in leg-hold traps and then shot or strangled. Clark said he normally shoots his prey.

Besides protecting livestock, Clark said, trapping improves the supply of quail and rabbit, which the predators feed on.

Clark says the fact that he has roughly the same catch each year proves that trapping poses no long-term threat to wildlife. Rather, he said, trapping gives the remaining coyotes, bobcats and foxes a better supply of rodents. The increased food supply makes the females healthier and they bear larger litters, he said.

“Right now, the population is considerably down in that area, so now there’s plenty of rabbits and small game for them to eat . . , and they’re not as apt to go into these housing developments . . . and they’re not as apt to take down a sheep or a calf.”

Wiechec bristled at Clark’s reasoning. “Whether or not they’re replaced numerically, they’re certainly not replaced,” she said. “They’re dead.”

And Greg Smith, a planner with the City of Thousand Oaks and a biologist, questioned the notion that trapping won’t mean dwindling wildlife populations.

Smith said the trapping is occurring at the same time development is taking huge bites out of open space. “I’m really worried that we have a situation that’s completely out of balance,” Smith said. “When you consider all the pressures on wildlife habitat, including trapping. . . , it can’t help but have a long-term negative effect.”

Concerned citizens have scheduled a meeting Monday to discuss the trapping, said Dee Akemon, an Agoura Hills resident. The meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. at the Annandale Recreation Center, 18700 Conejo View Drive, Agoura Hills.

State fish and game officials say commercial trappers reported taking 328 bobcats, 314 coyotes and 653 gray foxes in Los Angeles County during the 1985-86 trapping season. Those are the most recent figures available. In Ventura County, the totals were 252 bobcats, 298 coyotes and 450 gray foxes.

Wildlife experts say the 2,146-acre Cheeseboro Canyon preserve and adjacent private land serve as a corridor through which large mammals such as deer and coyotes migrate between the Santa Monica Mountains to the south and the Santa Susana and San Gabriel mountains to the north and east.

Constricted Corridor

This migratory corridor could narrow considerably because of major developments now proposed, including those for the Jordan and Ahmanson ranches.

A development group hopes to build more than 1,800 luxury homes and a championship golf course on the 2,300-acre Jordan Ranch. The National Park Service has said it will buy the ranch from Hope and preserve it as part of the national recreation area if Congress approved the money.

Ahmanson wants to develop a mini-city of 3,000 homes, an industrial park, a hotel and two golf courses on the 5,500-acre Ahmanson Ranch. The company has said it would donate 3,000 acres to the National Park Service if the development is approved by Ventura County officials.

The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a 150,000-acre patchwork of mountains, canyons, beaches and private holdings stretching from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park on the Ventura County coast.