Officials Hope to Quickly Lift Caspers Park Ban on Minors : Liability: They think park is safe, lion risk remote and closure ‘ridiculous.’ They’ll gladly reverse it if courts or Legislature protect the county from lawsuits.

County officials said Thursday they hope to reverse an unprecedented decision to ban minors from Ronald W. Caspers Wilderness Park once they can guard themselves from liability through either the courts or the state Legislature.

“We don’t think (the park) is unsafe,” said Michael M. Ruane, director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency. “When the lawsuit is gone, I will recommend we let kids back in.”

The chief motivation for the change in policy, officials said, was the $2-million verdict handed down against the county last summer over the mauling of Laura Small, then 5, by a lion at the park in 1986.

County officials said they are prepared for public criticism of their decision--perhaps even legal action to block it. But they said they believed there was no other choice.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose South County district includes Caspers park, said he found the legal liabilities that forced the county’s decision to close the park to everyone under 18 to be “ridiculous.”

He said, for example, that two 17-year-old Marines back from fighting in the Persian Gulf were not allowed to go into the park because of current restrictions on minors unaccompanied by a parent. (Children with their parents are now allowed into the park; they will not be after Monday.)

“It certainly is an unfortunate turn of events,” Riley said, “when we have to deny a park’s use to the constituency that probably would get the greatest joy out of it.”

Among the harshest critics of the county’s action Thursday were the parents of Laura Small, who lost sight in one eye and was disfigured in the mauling.

Don Small, the girl’s father, said the ban on children is “ridiculous” and “an attempt by the politicians to influence the courts and public opinion against us.”

Small claims that the county, which is appealing the case, was responsible for his daughter’s mauling because it did not offer any warning of the danger to children. He said the county now provides sufficient warning, and suggested that parents can decide for themselves whether to take the risk.

Orange County authorities, however, said they could no longer be assured that a waiver of liability from an adult on behalf of a minor is enough to protect the county from a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The fallout from the Small verdict could have been even more extreme, officials disclosed Thursday. At one point, authorities had even considered closing down all county parks where lions had been sighted.

Robert G. Fisher, the county’s director of harbors, beaches and parks, said the idea of closing down parks within the cougars’ domain was considered, but it was never an “active” proposal. On the other hand, a proposal to shut down Caspers to everyone was actively recommended by some staff and put before the Board of Supervisors, he said.

Officials said they felt Caspers posed the greatest risk because there have been two attacks there, both in 1986.

But wildlife experts said Thursday there is no biological evidence that would single out Caspers as any more dangerous than a number of other county wilderness areas or nearby Cleveland National Forest.

“It is my opinion that the Board of Supervisors has made a mistake,” said Douglas Padley, a wildlife biologist in Corona who has tracked and captured mountain lions. “Granted, two attacks occurred in that park, but that was very unusual and probably a coincidence.”

Paul Beier, a biologist conducting a study of Orange County’s mountain lions, said attacks on humans are very rare. In all of the United States and Canada there have been about 50 maulings in the past 100 years. As a result, 11 people died, nine of them children, he said.

There may be 14 adult female mountain lions, four adult males and 10 to 20 cubs roaming 800 square miles of the Santa Ana Mountains, Beier said. The lions prey mostly on deer and generally avoid people, Beier said. He figures that about once a week a lion ventures into Caspers park.

“The lawyers really have more to say about this than the biologists,” Beier said. “It is obviously a legal maneuver” to put pressure on the state Legislature to pass laws that would protect the county from civil lawsuits brought by victims of mountain lion attacks.

County park officials said that since 1986 attendance at Caspers has been cut nearly in half, to about 35,000 last year. They expect a drop of about 30% because of the no-children decision--and perhaps far more.