Glendora Group Shapes Land to Save Wildlife : Environment: Landowners, with aid of Operation Stronghold program, join in effort to preserve foothills of San Gabriel Mountains.

Tim Ferguson remembers the thrill of discovering a baby heron in the pond at his ranch in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The mother heron was feeding her chick on an island Ferguson had carved out and protected with a moat in the pond he created to attract wildlife.

“You just feel wonderful,” he said. “Ducks and herons need a place to lay their eggs so coyotes can’t get to them.”

The pond is just one way Ferguson gives wildlife a hand on the 440-acre Bluebird Ranch. But other examples abound: There are the bees he keeps on the property to pollinate wildflowers. And the underground water he pipes to the surface to provide animals with another spot for a drink.

Ferguson is part of a growing network of landowners who are developing their property to attract wildlife with the help of a nonprofit organization called Operation Stronghold. The group, started by Oregon cattle rancher and author Dayton Hyde in 1979, helps owners of more than 6 million acres in a similar way.

For the last five years, Ferguson, a Glendora doctor who manages the land he co-owns with six families, has been getting preservation advice from Operation Stronghold through the mail. Ferguson, 44, feels his involvement in the project offers a sensible option in the conservation debate Glendorans have faced in recent months.

Concern for hillside preservation has sparked enough interest in the foothill community that the City Council last week placed a special property tax on the April 10 ballot that, if approved, would fund land acquisition for conservation.

Ferguson, president of the Chamber of Commerce, doesn’t think the idea will fly with voters. The chamber last week presented City Hall with more than 1,500 signatures opposing such a tax.

“There’s no way we can afford to buy the land,” he said. The city has estimated the cost of purchasing Glendora’s 2,112 acres of privately-held hillside land at $112 million.

Jack Mason, a member of the mayor’s advisory committee that proposed the tax and the creation of a hillside conservancy, said that although acquiring all the land at once would be impossible, even piecemeal purchases would be important.

While parcels that landowners donate to the conservancy could be closed off at their request, the hillside committee would prefer opening most areas to the public because “it’s the kind of beautiful countryside that people would enjoy,” he said. “There will always be people who would abuse the privilege, but you hope for the best.”

Ferguson said he thinks a more effective avenue would be to encourage landowners to nurture what wildlife they have.

He has urged the city to take an active role in linking local landowners with Stronghold and advising them of tax benefits that come with membership.

Stronghold, which includes members in England, Canada and South Africa, doesn’t hurt the image of landholders either, said 61-year-old Hyde, the organization’s driving force.

“It’s not just the rich guy up the hill who wants to keep (the land) to himself but (someone who) is doing something positive for the environment,” he said.

A New England couple built an entire trout stream on their property, one Canadian member maintains 1,000 miles of bluebird houses along the birds’ migratory trail and many members are creating wetlands on their land.

“There’s a lot of good people doing quiet unsung jobs like that. It adds up nationwide to a pretty big contribution,” Hyde said, adding he believes private landowners have an advantage over the federal forest service because they can protect their property from the recreational demands of the public.

Stronghold advised Ferguson to plant fig trees around an abandoned reservoir he was converting into a fish pond. The ripened fruit drops into the water and feeds the bluegill and catfish he bought from a pet shop.

When Ferguson asked how he could fend off the gophers and squirrels gnawing at his avocado trees, Stronghold suggested he erect posts in the fields as perches for preying hawks to control the rodent population.

“Here’s a deer track,” Ferguson said, waving at a V-shaped imprint in the mud downstream from a shallow drinking pool. He created the puddle by damming up a trickle of spring water so animals could have an easier drink. Nearby, a metal water heater lay on the ground, a hole welded in its side to form a trough fed by another spring.

“These are not things that are new and shiny,” Ferguson said. For a reason.

Once he put out a relatively clean bathtub for animals to drink from, and no one showed. “Only after I painted it with camouflage paint and it got mossy did we start seeing tracks around it.”

The deer that thrive on the ranch--Ferguson has observed as many as 14 in a single cluster--also draw hunters. He has had to run scores of hunters off his property within the last year.

“We’ve had deer shot on our front lawn and carried off, and bullets in our home,” he said, adding that stray shots killed a family pet as well.

“I feel immensely wealthy with the land, the beauty and joy it brings, and I want to protect it,” he said. “I feel guilty because a lot of people look up there and want to zone it open space.”

Ferguson hopes the hillside conservancy the city is helping to establish will keep public use of the land limited. Animals should be able to live without interference from humans, he said.

“You go to places like Griffith Park, and (people) have driven all the game away.”