IN PERSON : Southern California Wilderness in His Blood : Laguna Canyon Man Is Self-Taught Expert on Local Flora, Fauna

Peter Paul Ott’s always-stocked 1967 Land Rover rests at the back of his Laguna Canyon compound, near the grab-bag collection of cages holding tortoises, iguanas, rattlesnakes, birds, Mexican lizards and one lone rooster, fattening itself unwittingly for a python’s meal.

It’s a menagerie that is continually replenished. When Laguna Beach police find a snake or exotic animal they cannot handle, officers call Ott. When the Santa Ana Zoo receives an unwanted iguana, Ott gets the call.

“People tend to think I can take care of all these exotic animals, so they bring them to me,” said Ott, 52. “But that’s OK; this has become a rehab center for animals.”

Ott, an artist and sculptor, is perhaps best known as a self-taught naturalist who has become a walking textbook on the flora and fauna of Baja California and Southern California, particularly Laguna Canyon, his home for nearly 50 years.

It’s a calling he grew into naturally from living in the canyon starting in the late 1940s, when it was still a remote wilderness and man was the minority species.

“There were snakes and deer and frogs and salamanders and turtles in and out of our yard,” he said. “I never got enough of it.”

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Ott is not an optimist when it comes to the future of the wild creatures of this developing area. He hardly fits any nerdy stereotype of a tree hugger, but he is one of those who believe the loss of any creature, such as the tiny California gnatcatcher, is a symptom of a decline in the quality of life for everyone.

“You can say the gnatcatcher is not important in the grand scheme of things, but the fact is we have lost millions of species in the last few years,” Ott said. “That’s unprecedented in the history of the planet. We have to stop this somewhere or we’ll lose another million, which might happen anyway. . . .

“Never in the history of this planet has a species had the ability to exterminate other species and the inclination to do so, never. It’s indiscriminate, wasteful slaughter,” Ott said. “People can act like ostriches and put their heads in the sand and hope it will go away. But it won’t, and it’s ganging up on us.”

Ott and his Land Rover are recognized figures in this small town. He calls his vehicle a “mini-house” because it unfolds into a bivouac where he can “fix anything or fabricate anything I need,” allowing him to live off the land and his wits.

Ott used to be an avid hunter, using a bow or hand-held catapult so that “you have to get very close to the animal. That’s the intrigue.”

“I don’t hunt for sport; it was only in a survival situation,” he said. “If you are in the wild, you are one of the species who needs to survive. You have to exploit the species who might want to exploit you.”

A resident of Laguna Beach since 1948, Ott has seen Orange County’s environment evolve.

“It used to be you’d drive around Southern California and occasionally come to a town. Now you drive around and occasionally come to a wilderness,” he said. “You have to look on a map to find a park now. . . . And then when you get there, you see all the signs: ‘No Parking, No Dogs, No Fishing, No Overnight Camping.’ It’s unbelievable.”

But there are environmental success stories, such as that of the California gray whale, which has come back from near-extinction--thanks to the efforts of environmentalists and the Mexican government, he contends.

When Ott was just a beach-town kid tantalized by nature, the gray whale was the mightiest creature on the landscape, each year blowing past Laguna’s Main Beach, where Ott’s father--a noted sculptor himself--ran a hamburger stand on the old boardwalk.

Ott’s fascination with whales “turned into a business” and he began guiding tours down to their Baja California breeding grounds.

In the process, Ott has turned himself into a respected authority on gray whales.

“They were afforded international protection in the 1930s because there were nearly none left then,” Ott said. “That’s generally how these things work. Animals are hunted and hunted until there are none left, and then they are given international protection.

“But what has saved them is basically they feed and breed in remote areas that are not subject to development,” Ott added. The whale “feeds in the summer up near the Bering Sea and breeds down in basically three lagoons in Baja. It used to breed in San Diego, but obviously they’re not going in there anymore. If Scammons Lagoon in Baja was developed, they would be chased out of there, too.”

Ott has an attitude about Baja California too.

“That tiny little sleepy village called Cabo San Lucas? In 1985 its population was 4,000 people. Now it’s 40,000,” Ott said. “Baja is part of the global situation. It’s going to go like anything else. But what saves it is that it’s extremely rugged, it’s hot, and there’s little water to speak of.

“Once they learn to desalinate water, look out. . . . But I can’t wait to get down there again.”