<i> Snapshots of life in the Golden State.</i> : Some Ravens Nevermore to Pose Threat to Tortoises

Quoth the Bureau of Land Management: Nevermore.

Federal agents armed with rifles are about to swoop down on killers of desert tortoises in the Mojave Desert.

The targets of the Department of Agriculture marksmen are ravens, which view the thin-shelled young of the slow-moving reptiles as luscious morsels.

For these sharp-beaked birds, “the juvenile tortoises are walking raviolis,” says Bureau of Land Management biologist Kristin Berry.

Under terms of a pilot eradication program to begin this month, as many as 60 ravens will be shot in a 40-square-mile desert tortoise habitat area in eastern Kern County near California City. To be marked for death, ravens must be found in the vicinity of the remains of three or more desert tortoises--a species on the state and federal threatened species lists.

In the last two decades, the raven population has increased by 1,500% as housing tracts and landfills have inched their way toward the desert, scientists say. The tortoise population, on the other hand, has decreased by 90%--to fewer than 2,000--in the last four years in the Kern County preservation area.

The raven reduction plan is part of a larger program to rebuild the population of desert tortoises to at least 50,000 adults in a 10,000-square-mile area in four Western states. That should give the species a 50% chance of survival for the next 500 years, the feds say.

Bulging Population

A sharp rise in the state’s population is projected over 50 years, and figures in Southern California counties are also expected to soar: THE STATE 1990: 30 million 2000: 36.4 million 2010: 42.4 million 2020: 49 million 2030: 56 million 2040: 63.3 million

THE COUNTIES In Southern California, Riverside County is expected to experience the greatest change, with an increase of 310%.

County 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 Los Angeles 8.9 mil. 10.1 mil. 11.4 mil. 12.9 mil. 14.6 mil. Orange 2.4 mil. 2.9 mil. 3.1 mil. 3.3 mil. 3.5 mil. Riverside 1.2 mil. 1.8 mil. 2.4 mil. 3.1 mil. 4.0 mil. San Bernardino 1.4 mil. 2.0 mil. 2.6 mil. 3.4 mil. 4.2 mil. San Diego 2.5 mil. 3.0 mil. 3.5 mil. 4.0 mil. 4.5 mil. Ventura .7 mil. .8 mil. .9 mil. 1.0 mil. 1.2 mil.

County 2040 Los Angeles 16.2 mil. Orange 3.7 mil. Riverside 4.9 mil. San Bernardino 5.0 mil. San Diego 5.0 mil. Ventura 1.3 mil.

Source: State Department of Finance

Inbreeding: Elsewhere in Kern County comes word of another family matter.

Talk about a small world--a new survey shows that 173 of the 1,000 employees of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department are related to each other.

The study was conducted by the county administrative office to determine whether relatives of supervisors had been receiving preferential treatment. It showed that the department employs 47 married couples, 21 children of employees and 22 pairs of siblings.

However, none of the relatives are in a position to supervise their kin, the report concluded.

Poll-itics: California men and women alike favor a recently enacted law giving Gov. Pete Wilson the option of granting clemency to women who have killed or assaulted men on the grounds that the men have habitually abused them, a Los Angeles Times poll shows.

But women favor the law more than men, according to the sample of 1,294 California residents.

The option of clemency in cases of battered women’s syndrome was favored by 83% of women and 62% of men polled.

On another Times poll topic, the same number of parents and non-parents approved of a new state law allowing the suspension or expulsion of students in the 4th through 12th grades who have been found to be sexually harassing other students. In both cases, the law is favored by a 56% to 38% margin, the poll showed.

All wet: In The Times’ mailbag this week came a two-page correction to last December’s monthly report to the California Water Commission by Department of Water Resources Director David N. Kennedy.

Seems as though Kennedy’s remarks on state water conditions had been unintentionally deleted from the December report. Looking back, they may have been better left unsaid, or at least quietly forgotten.

“Any water supply planning must consider another dry year,” Kennedy stated in the corrected report. “. . . This makes us extremely vulnerable during 1993 water year.”

Since December, of course, the state has been hit by a series of deluges. Statewide precipitation for December was 170% of normal, and for January it was 220% of normal.

“On Feb. 24,” Kennedy noted in his most recent report last month, “Gov. Pete Wilson declared an end to the California drought.”

A green Xmas: This year’s U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree will come from somewhere in Southern California, the U.S. Forest Service says.

The tree, which will stand on the south lawn of the Capitol, will be chosen from the San Bernardino, Angeles, Cleveland or Los Padres national forests.

Last year’s tree came from the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota.

EXIT LINE

“We’re like bad architecture--or an old whore. If you stick around long enough, everyone gets respect eventually.”

--Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, discussing the fact that he and two other members of the rock group, founded at the height of the 1960s counterculture movement, were chosen to sing the National Anthem at the San Francisco Giant’s home opener this week.