Fox Fight Escalates to Terrorism : Activism: Animal rights advocates are suspected of threatening those who want to remove red foxes from Ballona Wetlands.

Animal rights activists, who have been protesting state-approved trapping and killing of red foxes in Ballona Wetlands, are suspected of engaging in a campaign of terror and death threats aimed at Friends of Ballona Wetlands and Maguire Thomas Partners over the last two weeks.

On July 24, Maguire Thomas employees found “Fox Killers” written in red paint on a wall and sidewalk of the Playa Vista project building.

On July 24 and 29, threats were left on the telephone answering machine of Friends of Ballona Wetlands, which favors removing the foxes the group believes are destroying the wetlands.

In addition, Ruth Lansford, president of Friends of Ballona Wetlands, received four telephone calls about the fox trapping. One message was left by Wildlife Protection League Vice President Peggy Randall, who identified herself in a profanity-laden message. Randall, who later acknowledged that she left the message, verbally threatened Lansford with physical beating and stalking for “murdering” the foxes.

In another message to Lansford, an anonymous caller said: “If you keep killing those foxes, I am going to take a knife to your heart.”

And a gunshot shattered a huge window on the north side of the Playa Vista project building recently. Nelson Rising, a senior partner with Maguire Thomas, reported the incident to police and said he thinks that animal rights activists are responsible.

Capt. Jan Carlson at the Pacific Division of the Los Angeles Police Department said: “We do take these (threats) seriously and we certainly do follow up on any crime that is reported. I believe that there is only one side that is involved in the violent incident--the people involved with the foxes. We are monitoring it but, because of the sensitive nature of the issue, we are keeping a low profile. We don’t need to be drawn into a confrontation between two environmental groups. Generally we don’t have this kind of problem on the Westside because usually environmental groups share the same opinion.”

“It’s tortured reasoning that you can kill a human being to keep a fox alive in an ecosystem that it is destroying,” Rising said at a press conference Saturday in which he publicized the recent incidents.

Mary Sheehy, president of Wildlife Protection League, said Randall’s call was an individual act and did not represent the group’s sentiment. To her knowledge, Sheehy said, the other incidents were not carried out by league members.

Lansford said she is “taking a lot of precautions.”

“My husband is with me a lot and I have talked with the police about it. I am afraid, but I am also very angry. What made me angriest is they are trying to stop our walks and we take foreigners, handicapped kids and inner-city schoolchildren on walks through the wetlands. By being threatened with obscene phone calls, my rights are really being violated.”

Friends of Ballona Wetlands, a volunteer group, organizes guided nature walks in the wetlands throughout the year.

The controversy came about as a result of Maguire Thomas’ decision to trap foxes that biologists say are destroying the wetlands. Maguire Thomas Partners, the development company that owns nearly 1,000 acres of land north of Westchester Bluffs that includes the wetlands, authorized trapping and fox euthanasia July 20. Three days later the company ordered the trapping stopped when a zoo in Carson City, Nev., offered to take at least two red foxes.

The trapping has not resumed, according to Rising, but Animal Pest Management, the private company hired to eradicate the foxes, has continued to track the animals’ movements.

Trapping and euthanizing foxes by lethal injection began after a search of more than two years reaped refusals from 47 states for fox relocation and rejection letters from numerous zoos. Neutering the foxes and leaving them in the wetlands, or fencing in the near-extinct birds that many biologists say the foxes are decimating, were rejected by Maguire Thomas and several consulting biologists.

But Maguire Thomas’ efforts have done little to soften the stand of animal rights activists, who believe that the foxes should be saved at all costs. Led by Wildlife Protection League, and supported by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, In Defense of Animals and Last Chance for Animals, about 30 activists protested Saturday along Culver Boulevard at Nicholson Street.

Protester Bill Dyer likened the fox trapping to “Yugoslavia’s ethnic cleansing. This is a species cleansing.”

“We want the fox to remain here and the killing is going to stop,” he said.

Activists, who have said repeatedly that they have zoos and states who will accept the foxes, have not come forward with the names of states or zoos.

Animal rights activists claim that the red fox is indigenous to California, is not a threat to near extinct birds, and is a necessary predator of mice and rats that would overrun surrounding communities without the red fox for population control. Wildlife Protection League members cite two sources for their beliefs, one of which is George Jefferson, associate curator at Rancho La Brea Tar Pits.

But Jefferson said he agrees with those who advise that the red fox be removed from the wetlands, adding that he spoke with animal rights activists and told them about discoveries of red fox fossils in Northern California that date back to the ice age. Red fox fossils have not been discovered in Southern California, he said, indicating that they are not indigenous to the area.

Sarah George, associate curator of mammals at the Natural History Museum, said that the situation is really a matter of making the best choice for the whole wetland ecosystem: “People have to take responsibility for these decisions. If you choose to keep the red fox, you’ve essentially killed the native mammals and a lot of native ground nesting birds. The wetlands would become a monoculture.”

The Los Angeles Audubon Society, the Southern California Sierra Club and Endangered Habitats League have lined up on the side of Ballona Friends of Wetlands and Maguire Thomas.

Maguire Thomas is developing 1,000 acres north of Westchester Bluffs into one of the largest developments in Los Angeles history. The company pledged to spend $10 million on restoring the wetlands, a 260-acre area between Marina del Rey and Playa del Rey designated a wildlife preserve. One of the first steps to restoration, according to several biologists and mammalogists, was the removal or eradication of the red fox.