Movie on North to Be Filmed Near Rare Bird Site at Prado Dam

A television movie about the career of Iran-Contra scandal figure Lt. Col. Oliver L. North will be filmed later this month on Orange County Water District property that is home to an endangered species of small gray songbirds.

Scenes from the 4-hour miniseries, “Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North,” will be filmed on jungle-like land behind the Prado Dam in Riverside County. The filming site is not far from the nesting grounds of the least Bell’s vireo, but a federal wildlife biologist said his office has been assured that the movie crews will not harm the bird’s habitat.

Actually, much of the footage will be shot near a pheasant-hunting area, in a section of property where war games--in which paint pellets are shot--are played. Also in the area is an “obnoxious weed” that is not “associated with a whole lot of wildlife value,” said Dick Zembal, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Laguna Niguel.

Zembal said the federal agency is satisfied that the filming is far enough away from the nesting grounds of the vireo, a small bird that migrates south in the winter but returns to the Prado Dam basin in March to nest.

Was Nearly Extinct

The bird depends on a structurally diverse stream-bed environment, Zembal said. Once a common bird, it was practically extinct several years ago after land development eliminated much of its environment. Through programs to protect the bird, the population of the vireo is slowing gaining in the Prado Dam basin, he said.

The area will be the site for movie scenes that are supposed to have taken place in San Salvador, Vietnam, Okinawa and Camp Lejeune, N.C., said Ricky Frazier, location manager for Papazian-Hirsch Production Inc. of Los Angeles, which is making the movie.

The area was chosen for the film because “it has a numerous amount of looks,” Frazier said. “It’s an attractive place to film. We’re able to do it all in one place in 3 days. Otherwise we might have been going to Puerto Rico and Mexico.”

The crews will film Jan. 16, 17 and 18, he said. The movie, tracing the career of North from his days as a midshipman at Annapolis until the Iran-Contra affair, will be shown on CBS on a yet-to-be-decided date.

The movie will be neutral on the issue of whether North--to be played by actor David Keith--is a hero or a criminal, Frazier said.

“You bet it is. The audience will have to make up their minds on that,” he said. “We’re not putting him on trial here.”

North, a former official on the National Security Agency staff, has been charged with making false statements to Congress, obstructing justice by shredding White House documents, participating in a tax fraud conspiracy involving private fund raising for the Nicaraguan Contras and illegally accepting installation of a $13,800 security fence outside his home.

Agency Gave Permission

Independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh moved Thursday to drop two central charges of conspiracy and theft in selling U.S. Army weapons to Iran at a profit, and then secretly diverting the funds to the Contras.

Frazier said he discovered the area for filming while he was pheasant hunting there.

In arranging to film there, he learned of the nesting grounds of the least Bell’s vireo. “We took great pains to work with the guy who leases the property, to make sure we weren’t going to be in any of its nesting areas or habitat,” Frazier said.

Gordon Elser, director of public affairs for the Orange County Water District, said the agency granted permission to the film crew and will be on hand during the shooting to make sure the nesting grounds are protected. (Zembal said representatives of the federal wildlife agency may also show up, but more out of curiosity than concern.)

Elser said the water district is spending thousands of dollars studying how the birds would be affected if the dam’s water storage is increased as part of proposed flood control improvements to the Santa Ana River. Ultimately, the agency could be responsible for replacing their habitat at a huge cost.

With all that at stake, he said, there is no way the district will allow a film crew to ruin the birds’ habitat.

“We’re not going to blow it on this,” Elser said.

Federal wildlife biologist Zembal said the agency has been assured the least Bell vireo’s habitat will be safe. The bird is not even in the area now, although care must be taken that its environment is not damaged, he said.

“It sounds like they (the production company) did their homework, and so did the water district,” he said.

The biggest threat to the least Bell’s vireo, Zembal said, comes not from the film crew but from another bird, the brown-headed cowbird, an abundant “nest parasite” that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.

When a cowbird uses the nests of vireos, it often removes eggs or pecks the host eggs open. The baby cowbird “is very aggressive and will kick the host babies out of the nest” if eggs from both birds hatch at the same time, he said.

The population of least Bell’s vireos is believed to be about 300 pairs in California, according to the state Department of Fish and Game’s 1987 annual report on endangered and threatened species.

In the Prado Dam basin, 25 territorial male least Bell’s vireos were counted in 1983. By 1986, they were down to 19. At that time, a 3-year program, funded by Caltrans as part of the project to build a bridge on Interstate 15, was begun to help protect the birds. In 1987, 26 male birds were counted, and last year--the final year of the Caltrans program--37 males, representing probably 30 nesting pairs, were found. In addition, many fledglings were observed, “so next year probably will be significantly larger,” Zembal said.

The program, run by Cal State Long Beach, will continue with funding from the Orange County Water District, Zembal said. Elser estimated the cost at $35,000 a year.