Rancher in Ventura Hills Feels the Squeeze From Encroaching Development

Richard Atmore, suburban cowboy, keeps spurs on his boots and a wetsuit in the back of his truck.

From the Ventura hillsides, where Atmore is the lone rancher on 8,000 acres of scrub, he has the best view in the city: On one side is the tumble of chaparral; on the other, a Monopoly board of city life stretching to the ocean he loves as much as the spot where he lives and works.

It’s a view people would pay millions for.

“I know why people would want to live here,” he said, looking out from a hill where he, 260 cows and only a handful of others can legally stand. “These hills are one of the most beautiful places going.”

And that may be his problem. Where the two lifestyles collide--where suburbs meet cattle herds, where rancher meets surfer--ranchers get the squeeze. And, at the moment, it’s his prize place on the hillside that is in question.

As debate continues over what development, if any, will occur on the land Atmore leases, his future is uncertain. Will he coexist with new development or, as some grazing opponents hope, could he be banished from his exclusive perch?

Atmore, 42, is a member of a steadily shrinking industry. Never much of a force in Ventura County agriculture, livestock have been pushed into the crevices of an increasingly urban county. But few of the 100 or so cattle-ranching families in the county are feeling the burn of suburban encroachment more than Atmore.

“There’s a whole industry up there that, unless a cow gets out, you don’t even know is up there,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. “It’s almost like time has stood still within miles of high-density development.”

In 1995, livestock production--which includes poultry, hogs, sheep and cattle--was an $8-million industry. Last year, it only reached $2.61 million, a wisp of Ventura County’s $1.59-billion agriculture industry, according to figures from the county agricultural commissioner’s office.

But Atmore is confident that he will be able to stay. He thinks development can’t be stopped, but he is counting on the hillside’s owners needing someone to watch over the treacherous areas where building is nearly impossible. His cattle help control fires by keeping brush low. They keep nonnative plants from taking over.

“Behind every city in this county, behind the Oxnard Plain, behind Moorpark, above every single community, there is cattle ranching,” Atmore said.

Atmore is not the cowboy archetype. He isn’t laconic or slow-talking or given to stony stares. The squint on his face comes not from years of looking into the sun, or from flinty determination, but from his frequent laughs.

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He surfs several mornings a week, his time to get away from it all, and then comes back up to the only home in these hills--and his wife and children--surrounded by chaparral.

He is the suburban son of Ventura schoolteachers, a graduate of Buena High School and Ventura College.

But he has been up working in these hills since 1980, trained, beginning at age 22, by cattlemen who between them ranched in these hills for 100 years. Their names are legend to many in Ventura--Toots Jaregui and the late Rocky Esparza--and they taught Richard Atmore almost everything he knows about cattle.

It started because Atmore needed a cheap place to live and Esparza had a spare trailer.

“He said, ‘I’m only 83 years old; I can take care of myself. Just come in and check on me in the mornings,’ ” Atmore said. “Then, I spent about seven years as an indentured servant” before he bought Esparza’s operation and took on the work himself. He took over Jaregui’s operation on the other part of the land in 1994.

On any given day, Atmore does what he always does, what Esparza and Jaregui did before him and what the Spanish did before that. He moves the cows, mends fences and checks for the calves that look a little sickly. And he worries that there won’t be enough rain. Several weeks ago, he had to sell some of his cows because of the parched grass.

He probably knows this land better than anyone, anywhere besides Jaregui.

“I feel like I know every habitat here personally, every creek, every water hole,” Atmore said. “I know the open space. I know all the trails. It’s been my whole life.”

Though it’s not enough to support him--he also runs firewood and weed abatement services--he wants to do this for a long time, if he can.

“I could say this is my place, but, myself, I’m a tenant,” Atmore said. “I never lose sight of that.”

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Five thousand of the acres belong to a group of families who have had it for 100 years. The families want to develop some of the property and have recently begun holding public meetings seeking input on what should happen there.

The families say Atmore will be the caretaker as long as they own the land. And it will be years before anything--if ever--gets built there.

“He will remain there as long as the owners have the property and until something is worked out--or isn’t worked out,” said Frank Cribbs, president of Dabney-Lloyd Corp., the family company.

At this point, public sentiment appears strongly anti-development. In some cases, it’s also ardently anti-grazing.

Environmentalists say that cattle grazing can decimate the hillsides, leading to erosion problems. All across the West, battles have raged between ranchers and activists concerned about grasslands.

The first draft of Ventura’s “vision”--a statement about the city’s future--called for grazing land to be turned back into “original vegetation types to reweave the frayed ecological values of the area.”

But that was changed after complaints from the county Farm Bureau and a letter from Atmore who was, until a year ago, president of the Ventura County Cattlemen’s Assn.

Kim Uhlich, an analyst at the Environmental Defense Center in Ventura, said that even ranchers who mean well often overgraze their land as they attempt to make economic goals.

“If there are too many cattle in a given area, they can eat the grass down to a point where it can’t recreate itself,” she said. “That obviously results in more erosion [and] sedimentation of water bodies.”

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But Atmore says he cares about those things, listens to environmentalists and tries to work in ways that won’t harm the land, such as moving his cows on a regular basis and letting some pastures rest to let seasonal grasses grow.

He doesn’t roar across the land in an off-road vehicle. Most of his work is done on horseback, and the truck is saved for the trails.

“I’m not the standard, typical stereotype,” Atmore said. “We do some things the old way and some new.”

Some agree that if it’s done right, modest grazing can be healthy, or at least not detrimental. The Nature Conservancy--which some had hoped could be the savior of the land, although the group itself says it won’t be stepping in--allows cattle grazing, in some cases because it provides a manager for the land.

“If you take the cattle off an area that’s been grazed for many years, then what comes up is nonnative [plants], which spread themselves,” said Wendy Millet, south central coast area director for the organization. “There’s no check.”

Millet said she suspects that Atmore should be allowed to continue to live in his hillside home and keep his million-dollar views.

“Some want to protect it for cattle, some want to protect it for scenery,” Millet said. “They’re reasonably compatible, which is a whole lot better than a subdivision.”

All Atmore hopes for is the chance to hold onto some of this land, even if his acreage shrinks with development. He would miss the view out across the ocean; the sight of Two Trees, the hilltop landmark he likes to think of as representing Jaregui and Esparza; the chance to roam over land that has changed very little since the Spanish worked it.

He, above all, understands those who want to share his world.

“Who wants to live in town when you can live up here?” he asked. “For me, it’s something that comes with the job.”