Colette an Inspiration to Many : Animals: Director’s experience and devotion to refuge she founded commands great respect, even among critics.

A carved wooden sign by the entrance of Los Angeles’ most famed animal sanctuary is both salutation and proclamation. It reads: “Welcome to Martine Colette’s Wildlife Waystation.”

Let there be no doubt. The 160-acre refuge for abandoned and abused animals ranging from crocodiles to cockatoos, bobcats to boa constrictors--and one tiger that someone cruelly crossbred with a lion--is inseparable from the life of the 52-year-old French-born Colette.

“There is nothing in my life that is not in some way connected to this place,” she said, standing near the reptile house, which is located inside the rugged, rocky canyon above Lake View Terrace she bought 19 years ago.

Although Colette declined to comment in a recent interview about a damaging rift among current and former way station board members over financial issues, she easily talked about her work at the animal refuge.

She has just begun her daily rounds. Her voice conveys both a cool authority and a disarming sense of humor. Five-foot-2 with light olive skin, straight blond hair and a smooth face accentuated by high cheekbones, Colette, dressed in black tights, moccasin boots and an oversized T-shirt, issues a steady stream of polite directives and requests via walkie-talkie to employees and volunteers.

In a vaguely French accent, she pauses to answer a question about where to plant a sapling relative to a new enclosure for a male wolf. “The tree is deciduous, isn’t it? Plant it so that it will provide shade in the summer.”

Much of her knowledge about animal behavior and care was acquired in the jungles of Asia, Africa and South America and in the Australian outback. Colette’s father, a Belgian diplomat and naturalist, took her on safaris and extended stays in hunting and trapping camps.

“In those days, we didn’t have much science at our disposal in caring for the animals,” Colette says, after telling two volunteers where to hang a eucalyptus tree branch inside a newly built cage for a dozen macaws. “We had to make do with tincture of iodine, goat’s milk, penicillin. I learned.”

When she was 8 years old in South Africa, she recalled, she was brought a young baboon, badly sunburned and motherless. “He had no hair and was terribly scorched. There was nothing I could do but use the cook’s olive oil to soothe the burns. We fed it goat’s milk, and it lived.”

Colette’s ability to improvise, her experience and her devotion to her animals have inspired a respect bordering on reverence. It has also earned her the appreciation of some of Los Angeles’ top wildlife officials.

Gary Olsen, general manager of the city’s Department of Animal Regulation, said he met Colette when he responded to a call that an exotic cat had been cornered.

“I got there, and there was Martine. I said to myself, ‘Who is this lady?’ But in watching what she said about the animal, how she approached it and how the animal reacted to her, I said, ‘You’re the boss. How can I help you?’ ”

Colette settled in Los Angeles in the early 1960s, after the first of what would be three failed marriages. During that time, Colette began collecting animals, brought to her by friends and others who knew of her background. Her first animal was a cougar purchased from a sideshow for $1,500. More animals followed, many of them bought from pet stores to liberate them from their cages.

Colette launched a line of clothes she designed and promoted with the help of friends in the movie industry. Clients included musicians such as Earth, Wind and Fire. In the 1970s, alone except for her animals, she moved to a three-bedroom house in Lake View Terrace and acquired even more animals, which she housed in back-yard enclosures and even in her bedroom.

There she met who she calls her “adopted” brother, Gary Lee Davis, a stuntman who taught Colette how to shoe horses, rope steers and drive a tractor. Colette married a rodeo acquaintance of Davis’, and though that marriage also failed, she and Davis’ family have remained close.

“She and I rode into the hills to look at the land that is now the way station before she bought it,” Davis recalled. “She told me what she wanted to start. I said, ‘It’s absolutely impossible; it can’t be done.’ Then I told her she was just the person to do it.”

Davis helped Colette build the first enclosures on the property. When she bought the land, using money from her fashion business, the only structure present was a 1950s-era one-bedroom cabin, where Colette still lives.

In 1980, Paramount Pictures filmed a movie starring Kristy McNichol in her compound. Paramount built the structures that now serve as an office, an animal hospital and a large animal arena.

As the sanctuary grew, so did Colette’s knowledge.

“I believe it’s instinctive, her ability with animals,” said Mike Dee, curator of mammals at the Los Angeles Zoo, who met Colette at a party thrown by a zookeeper more than 20 years ago. “She learns by just absorbing things, too. I have run into her at zoo seminars and wildlife association meetings. My impression of her: extremely intense in caring for the animals.”

Bob Wenners, Colette’s business administrator, said that while Colette’s manner can be brusque, she is invariably fair.

“She also has this ability to teach,” he said.

In her office, cluttered with animal books, several animal skulls and personal mementos, Colette, a bright green macaw perched on her shoulder, reached into her boot and pulled out a tissue.

She had had a flu since the day after the sanctuary was rocked by accusations from six former members of its board, who questioned the amount of Colette’s salary and several other financial issues. Clearly angered by the charges, she is waiting until a state financial audit of the sanctuary’s status is completed before discussing the matter.

Smiling wanly, she sneezed and answered an unrelated question.

“What else do I have in my boot? Two pieces of candy and a cigarette butt. The candy is a treat for somebody. The butt, somebody dropped it on the ground and I picked it up. I don’t allow littering here.”