Foxes Put Agency $25,000 in Hole : Wildlife: The state Department of Fish and Game will try to recoup its costs.

Capturing Orange County’s freeway foxes cost the California Department of Fish and Game about $25,000 by tying up 33 state officials on the project, including many of the agency’s top administrators in Sacramento, according to an estimate calculated Thursday by state officials.

Pete Bontadelli, director of the state Department of Fish and Game, said he is trying to find a way to reimburse the financially strapped agency for the cost of handling the infamous fox family, which captured the attention of animal lovers and legislators last week.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for the general taxpayers of California or those who buy hunting and fishing licenses to pay for it,” Bontadelli said in an interview. “We are looking at alternatives to reimburse the cost, and we are in discussions with Caltrans. We may wind up having to eat it. I don’t know where it will come from.”

Fish and Game officials in the Southern California office, already hampered by budget deficits and staffing shortages, said they had to delay other wildlife projects they believe are more critical so they could remove a mother fox and her six kits from an embankment of the Costa Mesa Freeway.

The $25,000 estimate was calculated by adding up the 145 hours spent on the foxes by the state agency’s employees between April 15, when the dens were found by a construction worker, and Tuesday, two days after the family was captured, said Fish and Game spokesman Curt Taucher. About 65% of that cost is for salaries and about 35% for employee overhead.

“That’s a big price tag,” said Taucher, adding that the figure is probably conservative since it basically includes only salaries.

The major players were the agency’s deputy director, several wildlife biologists and wildlife management supervisors, the division chief for wildlife protection, the deputy regional manager in Long Beach, public-affairs officials, wardens, dispatchers, clerical and secretarial staffs and a federal trapper under contract with the state.

The estimate does not include expenses incurred by other agencies involved. The California Department of Transportation, the California Highway Patrol, the Costa Mesa Police Department and Orange County Animal Control all played a role in the capture of the foxes. Caltrans officials said Thursday that their cost was negligible.

The estimate also doesn’t include work by Jeff Lewis, a Humboldt State student on contract with the Fish and Game agency who donated about 100 hours of his time, or other volunteers, such as veterinarians.

Fish and Game wildlife managers and biologists in the Long Beach office wanted to leave the fox family where it was, in an embankment of a freeway extension that was opened to traffic Tuesday as scheduled.

They said that the foxes have lived along Southern California’s freeways for years without being run over and that the mother probably could have safely moved her 12-week-old kits to a new den.

But the agency was pressured by animal-rights groups and legislators, especially state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who wanted the foxes moved to a safer place. Its Long Beach office received as many as 1,000 phone calls about the animals after a TV station urged people to call.

“They had every phone line here tied up for three straight days,” said Taucher.

When the Los Angeles Zoo offered last week to take the foxes, Bontadelli issued orders to relocate the family before the new freeway opened.

“I have real problems with the cost of this, as everyone does,” said Bontadelli. “But at the same time, the issue was basically a highly publicized group of foxes, and the decision to leave them alone was unacceptable to a lot of people. The basic decision in this case (to move them) was not one relative to dollars.”

Nancy Burnet, an animal activist in Orange County for the United Activists for Animal Rights, said she doubts the accuracy of the cost estimate. She also said the agency didn’t need so many people involved.

“If it takes 33 people to trap a family of foxes, then that explains why things are in the terrible state they are in California as far as wildlife management” is concerned, Burnet said.

The elaborate capture lasted from Thursday night to Sunday night, primarily because the mother fox consistently eluded trappers. The team finally dug the babies out of two deep foxholes and caught the mother in a leg trap.

“We were hopeful that the capture would go more quickly and easily than it did,” Bontadelli said. “But at the same time, animal captures like this are less than fully predictable.”

The department, which gets 85% of its funds from the sales of hunting and fishing licenses, had to cut $4 million in expenses this year and lay off some employees.

“It’s unfortunate because we have such limited resources and we put such inflated value on these animals when there are other ones that are less furry and less cuddly that need our help much more and they are being virtually ignored,” said Jon Fischer, a Fish and Game wildlife biologist.

Because of the fox emergency, the staff stopped work for almost two weeks on monitoring rare least terns that nest in and near Huntington Beach, acquiring habitats for endangered species and responding to sightings of mountain lions, Taucher said.

The staff also missed deadlines for reviewing the environmental effects of some development projects because the fox issue consumed so much time, he said. The department reviews hundreds of environmental-impact reports every month to ensure that developments and road projects will not adversely affect animals or natural resources or violate state wildlife laws.