Piru : Gun Club Must Pay for Study of Bird

Ventura County officials have ordered a Piru gun club to pay for a $10,000 environmental report or stop shooting in the nesting area of the least Bell’s vireo, an endangered bird.

The Piru Sportsmen’s Club Inc. must determine if its trapshooting range between Piru and Fillmore affects the rare bird before a target-shooting permit can be renewed, officials said.

At least one of the birds was spotted last year in the Santa Clara riverbed within 10 miles of Hopper Canyon, where the club owns 72 acres. Since 1970, the gun club has met to shoot clay targets on a five-acre section of the property.

The shooting range includes wetlands where the least Bell’s vireo might breed, according to a consultant hired by the Ventura County Resource Management Agency. State law requires environmental studies for any land use that could adversely affect an endangered species.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Cathy Brown described the four-inch-long gray bird as extremely endangered because its stream-side habitat is disappearing from Southern California.

Brown said the least Bell’s vireo “has a beautiful song, but an unremarkable appearance.”

At a meeting of about half the gun club’s 50 members last week, Secretary-Treasurer Bill Darlington said the cost of studying the threatened bird may endanger the gun club’s existence.

The environmental study could cost more than the organization’s annual budget, but members made donations to pay the club’s permit application fee.

“What we’ve done is agree to pay the county $1,000 to find out what we’re up against,” Darlington said. “We’ll have to see just how much money we’re looking at, and then see if we can come up with it.”