Experiment Hatched to Restore Wildlife : Rolling Hills Resident Hopes to Return Pheasants to Area

When Steve Shultz was growing up on the family ranch in Rolling Hills, he remembers looking out of the dining room window and seeing 40 quail on the back lawn.

Today, there are few, if any, quail left in this rustic city of sumptuous homes, white rail fences, hills and canyons. And pheasant, which Shultz also recalls from his youth, vanished long ago.

Development, which has cleared land of natural vegetation and spawned a population of pet cats and dogs, has cut deeply into Rolling Hills’ heritage of birds and other wildlife, according to Shultz and others in the city who would like to see the situation reversed.

Deadly Odds

“The loss of breeding habitat is the worst problem,” said Shultz, 37, a science and math major in college who works as an executive with the family owned steel company in South Gate. “There is nowhere for the (wild bird) eggs to go undisturbed by cats and dogs. We’ve devastated the ground bird population.”

But if the odds are deadly for fledgling birds, Shultz--a member of the citizens Wildlife Preservation Committee working to make things better for wildlife--believes that adult birds can survive and once again delight the eyes of residents.

Last year, he began raising ring-necked pheasants with the idea of releasing them into the community when they became adults. So far, he has turned four birds loose in his neighborhood on Johns Canyon Road and plans to release many more next spring.

“Now is not a good time, because this is the dry season, and I don’t know how well they would do,” he said.

Survey Results

The wildlife committee, which is supportive of Shultz’s project, was appointed by the City Council to determine the extent of wildlife in Rolling Hills and to suggest ways that it can be preserved and restored. Committee members and city officials said they were encouraged by the fact that 75% of residents responding to a recent survey strongly favored preserving wildlife on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Shultz has turned a one-time horse pen into a cage for 12 grown brown-and-gold-colored pheasants that have sweeping tails and vivid red eye patches. They share the cage with a peacock and 10 African pygmy goats--family pets that live in the pen next door.

About 60 speckled pheasant chicks--offspring of the 12 adults--fill a brooder and the floor of an adjoining shed. Chicks emerge from eggs in a small hatchery Shultz keeps in the kitchen of the old ranch bunkhouse, which is part of the enlarged and modernized home he shares with his wife, Cathi, and three children.

As a youngster, Shultz had no trouble falling in love with the outdoors and animals.

After World War II, his parents bought the 50-acre Rancho Elastico, which dated from the 1880s and took its name from the tents the early ranchers used. The tents could be moved and enlarged--stretched like elastic--and that gave the place its name.

The Shultzes also leased 300 acres in what is now Westfield and ran 300 head of cattle. Later, they raised quarter horses and thoroughbreds.

1,200 Eucalyptus Trees

“It was a working ranch with hired hands, a foreman, full-time gardeners and carpenters,” Shultz recalls of his childhood realm, which subdividing has since reduced to 17 acres. His parents--who still live in the century-old wooden ranch house surrounded by lavish landscaping--planted 1,200 eucalyptus trees on the ranch.

Shultz said he watered every one of them from a tractor, adding, “I spent my life digging holes, hoeing and raking.”

He fed and raised birds as a teen-ager and said he started thinking about raising pheasants three years ago because he wanted an animal he could turn loose. “I wanted to help promote an interest in something I grew up with,” he said. “When I walked, I’d run into one of them.”

He plans a similar project with quail and is expecting delivery of 50 quail chicks within two weeks.

Shultz said he hopes ultimately to release 70 adult pheasants, letting them go either in one rustic area or in several locales. All will be banded so that if people find dead or injured animals, they can report the locations.

Scrappy Fighters

He said he expects that one-third of the birds will be lost in the first year “to dogs, cars, illness and snakes. Foxes will do their bit, too.” At the same time, Shultz said the pheasants are fighters who can defend themselves. He said they “have claws and spurs and can rip you up pretty good” and “instantly go 15 feet into the air” when menaced.

But Tom Paulek, a wildlife manager with the California Department of Fish and Game in Long Beach, is skeptical that the project will work. He said the key to wildlife survival is a habitat to sustain the animals. “If the habitat were suitable (for pheasant and quail), they would be there,” Paulek said. “There would be no need to release them.”

He said Rolling Hills would do better “to improve the habitat.”

“We’ll see what happens,” said Shultz, conceding that while the birds in his neighborhood appear to be doing well, the whole enterprise is an experiment. “If a year later there are none, we’ll have to change our plan,” he said.

Shultz agreed with Paulek that habitat is vital, and one objective of the Wildlife Preservation Committee is to encourage people to landscape with plants that flower or have berries to provide food for birds and other wild animals.

When land is cleared for fire protection, he said, “some islands of brush” could be left to sustain bird life. People also could clear brush later than they do, he said. “They plow too early in the spring,” he said, “before it goes to seed. This does away with food (for animals).” He also said people can better control their pets, putting bells or jingling tags on dog and cat collars and locking dogs up at night.

“We’ll never get things back the way they were,” said Shultz, “but we can make it less dangerous for animals.”