PIRU : Gun Club Abandons Permit to Protect Endangered Bird

An endangered bird has caused a 35-year-old gun club to abandon its permit for a member-owned trapshooting range in Hopper Canyon near Piru.

Members of the Piru Sportsmen’s Club said that none of them have ever seen the endangered least Bell’s vireo, but that it would cost more than the group’s annual budget to find out if the shooting range that they have operated for 20 years interferes with the nesting habits of the four-inch-long gray bird.

Earlier this year, Ventura County officials told the Piru sportsmen that a permit to shoot on their 72-acre property could not be renewed without a $10,000 environmental study, because the land contains wetlands that might provide habitat for the endangered vireo. Officials said the bird was spotted last year in the Santa Clara River bed, within 10 miles of Hopper Canyon.

“The club doesn’t have the money for the study,” Secretary-Treasurer Bill Darlington said. “We won’t disband, but we’ll quit shooting as a club or running an official gun range.”

The club has had a permit for the shooting range since 1970. Club President David Inman said each renewal of the permit--every five years beginning in 1980--has been more difficult and more costly. Negotiations for the latest renewal began last year.

“We’ve already paid out a fortune,” he said. “They’re just looking for any way they can find to make money, and it’s put us out of business.”

Ventura County planner Myrna Garrison said her department has simply followed regulations.

Garrison said the endangered bird became an issue this year because a consultant hired by county officials to keep track of environmental matters called attention to the wetland area on the club’s land.

“And there have been some neighbor complaints,” Garrison said. “There are also more houses in Hopper Canyon than there were when the permit was first issued in 1970, which means we have to look into the club’s compatibility with surrounding uses.”

Club member Gary Creagle, a gun store owner and former mayor of the city of Fillmore, said the group would be renamed Piru Sportsmen’s Land Co. and might plant trees or run cattle on the land above the five-acre gun range.

But Creagle said that giving up the gun range permit does not necessarily mean the end of shooting in Hopper Canyon. About 30 of the club’s 50 members, including Creagle, own a share in the land. He said California state law gives owners the right to shoot on the property as long as the range is not open to the public.

“I’m a property owner, and I plan on exercising that right,” Creagle said.

Garrison wasn’t sure if it is legal for multiple owners to fire guns on their property. “It hasn’t come up yet. It would probably be a zoning enforcement problem,” she said.

And Inman said the issue has been blown out of proportion. “We’re just a bunch of country boys who want to go shooting,” he said.