Beefing Up Security

The cows didn’t flinch when the shooting began.

“They’re pretty used to it,” Frank Fitzpatrick said as his prized Barzona cattle wandered around their pen, oblivious to the fusillade 100 yards away. “They’ll adapt to just about anything.”

Outbreaks of gunshots from the firing range at Pitchess jail are just background noise for the 150 head of cattle that Fitzpatrick grazes on the pastures and ravines surrounding the correctional facility.

So vast is the terrain here that most of the time, Fitzpatrick doesn’t even see the jail buildings while rounding up the steers in his maroon pickup.

“You have to keep reminding yourself, it’s a prison,” he said, pushing back the brim of his gray cowboy hat.

The Pitchess Detention Center, formerly known as the Wayside Honor Rancho, for many years had cows aplenty roaming the grounds. They were part of a dairy operation that supplied milk to inmates throughout the jail system. Budget cutters shut down the operation in 1992, when they learned that they could buy milk cheaper than produce it.

But only a year after terminating the dairy operation, Roger Anderson, field services director at Pitchess, realized that the jail had a bigger problem: fire.

All those bovines had kept the area’s brushy pastures trimmed. Without them, the canyons were becoming fire hazards.

Prison officials thought about bringing in goats or sheep. But truth be told, Anderson missed those cows. They gave the place a down-home, farm feel--at least for people outside the fence.

Fitzpatrick’s cattle presented the solution. And, with his easy-going country charm, Fitzpatrick seemed to fit right in as well. At 47, he likes to point out that he is a “cowman,” since he hasn’t been a “boy” for years.

He drives to Pitchess from his Anaheim Hills home several times a week, and his macho Ram 2500 Turbo Diesel pickup puts him at eye level with the deputies who drive trucks of equal or greater height. The only thing missing is the shotgun on a back window rack, but jail rules strictly forbid that.

“He’s a pretty earthy guy,” Anderson said.

*

Jail officials said Fitzpatrick’s ideas fit in nicely, too. Though other cattlemen have overgrazed some properties, Fitzpatrick focuses on renewing and improving the quality of the land to reduce fire hazards and soil erosion. He has divided the jail’s 2,800 acres into 16 parcels, and the cattle graze one parcel at a time.

Each parcel is “rested” for 33 days, allowing the land to rejuvenate itself, he said.

The idea of having animals keep down the weeds is being tried in other parts of the country, said Dick Richardson, a zoology professor and prairie ecologist at the University of Texas at Austin.

“It’s still not what I would say is common,” Richardson said. “But it is gaining momentum.”

Part of the reason the idea is attracting adherents is that traditional fire prevention methods--such as prescribed burns--can be risky. And environmentalists decry the destruction of habitat and the air pollution.

“Prescribed burns used to be common, but you can’t do them as much anymore,” Richardson said. “It’s a fairly blunt instrument.”

Fitzpatrick says he’s already noticed positive results on the land after 20 months of “holistic” management.

Deputies told him, for example, that despite downpours this year, they didn’t have to use sandbags to prevent mudslides.

“I haven’t healed anything here,” he said. “I’ve just started the process.”

*

The Sheriff’s Department isn’t so sure, however, that this will work.

“We’re looking at it to make sure we decide it’s the right thing to do,” Anderson said, noting that county fire officials are closely monitoring progress.

In the meantime, Fitzpatrick roams the rancho, relishing the romance of rounding up the cattle and working the land.

But being a cowman is only part of it. His, he says, is a higher goal.

“Little by little, we’re healing the environment.”