No Chance for Birds to Become Old Coots

They faced off Tuesday morning at Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley:

The birds weighed a few pounds each, sopping wet.

The exterminators wielded shotguns.

Gunfire echoed across the placid housing tracts of Wood Ranch, startling neighbors at their breakfast tables.

And when the gunfire ended an hour later, the carcasses of dozens of coots were carted off by city workers for disposal.

“It troubles me very much,” said Jennifer Collopy, who lives near the course.

“I have real problems with the fact that this golf course has man-made lakes on it, and it attracts birds to it and when they get there, they get shot,” she said. “I also don’t like listening to World War II outside my house.”

But the slaughter was sanctioned. The golf course began using a new federal permit that allows it to kill up to 800 of the waterfowl in and around its six lakes, said Brad Williams, the club’s general manager.

Coots clog golf courses all over Southern California, where they winter away from the icy lakes of home in the northern United States and Canada, said Scott Harris, a biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game.

“Occasionally, [killing] permits are issued for certain species if they’re considered threats to a person’s livelihood,” Harris said.

Williams said that the birds also represent a health hazard.

“In addition to it not being good for the golf course from the growing-grass perspective, it’s also a very unhealthy condition when golfers are walking through this,” he said. “They’re walking with golf spikes through literally thousands of droppings, they’re walking into the building, into the locker rooms, so it’s a very dirty condition.”

Williams said the coot shooting probably will not resume until at least next week.