Outdoors : Everything Isn’t So Ducky : Preparations Have Been Made, but the Season May Be Held Up in Court

Chris Gonzales is for the birds.

As manager of the Imperial Valley Wildlife Area’s Wister Unit, between California 111 and the Salton Sea, Gonzales is caretaker of more than 6,000 acres, on which he has spent many a blistering summer day preparing for the autumn arrival of thousands of ducks and geese.

Levees separating ponds, baked in the sun and cracked by daytime temperatures of 120 degrees, are being repaired. Seeds have been planted in five different types of soil--most of it poor. Ponds are being flooded, water structures replaced or fixed.

“Think of building waterfowl habitat area in the desert, on the side of a hill, in salty earth,” Earl Lauppe, wildlife management supervisor for the Department of Fish and Game, said of the annual task facing Gonzales and his small, overworked crew. “You start with that perspective, you might get an idea why it takes so much effort to build the dykes, levees, ditches and keep this place going.”

Gonzales, 57, has helped keep the place--the largest public hunting area in Southern California--going for the past 30 years.

He couldn’t care less about the brewing controversy over private clubowners’ right to attract waterfowl to their lands with out-of-sack grain. It’s a practice that started--with DGF permits--in the 1950s to alleviate crop depredation on nearby agricultural lands. Ducks and geese would fly in for the winter, devour and trample the crops, then fly out in the spring.

Crop depredation is no longer an issue, because of a change in agricultural practices and a sharp decline in the number of ducks. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has therefore labeled the practice “biologically unsound,” and two years ago issued an edict banning it before the start of the 1990-91 season, which was supposed to open Oct. 13.

But 30 or so clubs still use grain, and owners of a dozen have taken the matter to federal district court in San Diego, where on Oct. 10 a judge will decide whether to issue a restraining order, allowing the practice to continue while the court decides its fate.

Gonzales has no comment. “I think it’s best if I don’t say anything,” he said.

The bickering over whether the clubs in the area should be able to attract incoming waterfowl with grain does not concern Gonzales. Providing and maintaining habitat and natural feed for the birds that use Wister does.

The habitat looks healthy at the state-run wildlife refuge and it appears ready, not only for the thousands of migrating birds due to arrive in the next few weeks, but for the thousands of hunters awaiting the start of the 1990-91 waterfowl hunting season.

Gonzales doesn’t care that opening day of Southern California’s split season is still undecided, long after the DFG proposed--and most hunters planned for--an Oct. 13 opener. Nor does he about the reasons for the possible delay.

His concern is how to best use the land and water the DFG pays a high price to extract from the Colorado River.

“We actually are spending money on water that we shouldn’t be spending if we’re going to go Oct. 27,” he said.

The commission will decide Thursday whether to keep the original date of Oct. 13, or to change it to Oct. 27. It claims it has been receiving letters from “private individuals” asking that it delay the season-opener for two weeks because there will not be enough birds in the area on Oct. 13.

“Virtually all the comments are that we’re starting the season too early,” said Dan Connelly, wildlife coordinator for the DFG. “It’s too hot, there aren’t any ducks around and that people will prefer to have a later season.” Connelly then contradicted one commission member by saying, “The feeding clubs are an issue” in the commission’s consideration.

Al Taucher, an ardent supporter of the feeding program over the years, denied that the commission will base its decision on the desires of those who operate feeding clubs, but did say delaying the opener makes sense.

“It’s pintail (duck) habitat down there in the early part of the (season),” he said. “But if they can only shoot one (the limit on pintails is one), wouldn’t it make sense to prolong the season so they could get more (productive) shooting in?”

His reasoning made sense until a check of the records showed that of the 966 ducks taken at the state-run hunting area during the Oct. 14 opener last season, only 96 were pintail.

Gonzales doesn’t want to get involved, but he pointed to a wide variety of species of ducks congregating in the ponds at Wister and said he expects thousands more in the coming weeks.

“Some show as early as July,” he said. “Most are here by late October. They’re here by the thousands.”

Jim Brown, who belongs to a nearby “non-baiting” club--those opposed to the practice call it baiting--says the commission’s choice as an alternative opening day is no coincidence and hints that it is bowing to pressure from influential owners and members of the feeding clubs.

“The law requires that no shooting take place until 10 days after the last kernel of bait has been removed,” Brown wrote in a column that appeared last Thursday in the San Diego Tribune.

Therefore, if the clubs lose in court on Oct. 10, the first Saturday they would reasonably be able to hunt would be Oct. 27.

Dick Bauer, migratory bird coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said: “If the decision would go against them, that would give them some time to clean up the grain and still have that 10 days and the opening of the season.”

Gonzales’ response: “We have to put the water in whether it’s the 13th or 27th. We have to be ready for either day.”

After the USFWS issued its edict, Cliff Lawrence, owner of the Rancho de los Patos club, said: “The feeding program keeps the ducks here. I predict that after two years (of not being able to feed) we will lose 50% of the waterfowl habitat in the Imperial Valley.”

Fish and Game Commissioner Taucher agreed, saying: “I am in favor of the feeding clubs. When the ducks come in, their feed is gone in a couple days. Besides keeping them there, it also gives them a chance to rest. Instead of moving on to Mexico, well you know what happens in Mexico.”

It is widely believed among supporters of feeding-baiting that if it is stopped, the birds would continue down the flyway and face slaughter in Mexico, where hunters and guides have little or no regard for conservation.

Mike Maier, executive vice president of Waterfowl Habitat Owners’ Alliance at the time of the edict, said: “Without (feed), ducks would clean out the natural food and leave. These soils are poor. Sure you can produce crops--you need (costly) drain tiles to do it. It’s no big trick to grow waterfowl plants, the question is abundance. Besides, they’re feeding on natural food first anyway.”

Gonzales’ response to all this: “They say there’s nothing out there, the birds are starving, there’s nothing for the birds to eat. We have cattails, a lot of cattails. We chop the cattails, and the geese like to eat the shoots when they’re still young. We have cattails, alkali bulrush, over 1,000 acres of swamp timothy, which is very high in protein. . . . “

A tour over 36 miles of dirt roads that slice their way back and forth across Wister also revealed sunflowers, watergrass, ryegrass and atriplex.

“There are (plants) out there I don’t even know the names of, but the ducks eat it,” Gonzales continued. “There is plenty for them to eat out there, and I don’t want anybody telling me (otherwise).”

He has the backing of the USFWS. Bill Henry, a biologist who was stationed at the nearby federal wildlife area when the edict came out, advised feeding-club owners: “The soil temperatures are very warm, so the (ponds) should be drained quickly before salinity increases. Water is the key to growing desirable amounts (of swamp timothy) and reducing salinity--draining at proper time, irrigating at right time, leeching it to reduce salinity . . . it may take two years on some of the poor ground.”

Bauer said last week: “We came out with an evaluation report stating it can be done. We’ve shown that. You don’t blink your eyes, and it doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s no more costly than putting feed out.

“Their bottom line is they want us to let the feeding program continue as it has over the last many years, where we’ve gone in on the statement that we think it’s in violation of federal baiting regulations.”

The practice isn’t allowed anywhere else in the country. Time will tell if it will continue in Southern California, and what its impact on waterfowl will be.

Meanwhile, Gonzales vows “to manage this area for all wildlife,” including the endangered clapper rail, the pheasants introduced last year, the quail, doves and other upland birds. And of course for waterfowl.

“Our first priority is for the birds,” he says.