Group Will Press Bid to Save Foxes

An animal rights group said Friday that it will press its fight to halt the removal of red foxes from a national wildlife refuge near Seal Beach, despite the animals’ threat to two endangered species of birds.

Harold Baerg, president of Huntington Beach-based Animal Lovers Volunteer Assn., said he was “astonished and dismayed” at the disclosure Thursday that 250 red foxes have been trapped and removed from the 5,000-acre Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station since 1986.

Many of those animals, Baerg said Friday, have been “brutally and needlessly” killed.

Admitted Death of Foxes

Federal wildlife officials acknowledged that many of the foxes were destroyed after initial attempts to relocate the animals had been unsuccessful. But they defended the action because predator foxes are largely unwanted by zoos or other agencies. Biologists say the foxes multiply rapidly and can wreak havoc on a wildlife habitat if their numbers go unchecked.

Biologists said they not only prey on adult birds, but also on the eggs, which threatens the species.

In Seal Beach, the foxes pose a threat to a pair of endangered bird species: the California least tern and the light-footed clapper rail. Both species nest in the reeds and sandy areas of a vast salt marsh, which abuts a portion of the naval base.

A similar situation exists in the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, where biologists believe the foxes are threatening sensitive nesting and feeding areas of migrating birds. State officials are carrying out a similar fox-removal operation in the Bolsa Chica.

Baerg’s group has unsuccessfully sued to halt removal of the foxes in both wetlands areas. But Baerg did persuade the court to order federal officials to prepare an environmental impact statement on their plan to protect the least tern and clapper rail. A federal official said, however, that the statement will not be completed for at least a year.

Baerg contends that the foxes are unfairly taking the blame for problems that the Navy created long ago. He insists that if proper fencing had been erected on the weapons station, the foxes would not have been able to reach the birds’ nesting areas.

“But they didn’t do it and now the red fox is being made the scapegoat,” Baerg said.