When Nature Isn’t Being Nurtured

More than 500 acres of Alpine meadows and marshes harboring some of the nation’s rarest plants and animals are being managed -- or not -- from behind bars.

Officers of the Natural Heritage Foundation that oversees the land are in prison or facing attempted murder charges, unrelated to their responsibilities as land stewards.

Now, after two years of watching helplessly as intruders and vandals trample the sensitive ecosystems born from retreating glaciers 15,000 years ago, residents and environmentalists are ready to strike back against what they see as the root of the problem: neglect.

“If the foundation is no longer able to fulfill its mission of land conservation and stewardship,” said Tim Krantz, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Redlands, “then local authorities or the state should be able to reassign that responsibility to another organization.”

Surveying a broken metal gate that once guarded a 10-acre patchwork of federally endangered plants found no place else, Krantz shook his head in dismay.

“This really bothers me,” he said. “The expenses for maintaining these properties are minimal. All it would take is routine fence-mending, sign repairs and reporting of offenses. But there’s no one doing that right now.”

It’s been that way since June 2002, when Christian Lindblad was accused of shooting his girlfriend, Christina Marie Stebbins, several times, then, for six days, leaving her in his garage in Baldwin Lake, a community named for a dry lake bed on the outskirts of Big Bear Lake.

Lindblad’s father, Robert, and his mother, Samantha, later pleaded guilty to being accessories to attempted murder, because they tended to the woman’s wounds for six days but didn’t call paramedics for fear their son would be arrested.

Robert Lindblad, who headed the nonprofit environmental foundation, also pleaded guilty to possessing destructive devices and is serving a three-year prison sentence. His wife is on probation. Their son is facing trial on charges of attempted murder, torture, false imprisonment by violence and assault with a firearm, said San Bernardino County prosecutor Robert Brown.

The family’s defense attorney, Catherine Lombardo of Claremont, could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, “nobody’s looking after all that land,” said Erv Nichols, chairman of a Sierra Club chapter in Big Bear and a friend of the Lindblads.

“I’m concerned about that because we recently received a complaint that off-roaders were going through some foundation property near Sugarloaf,” he said. “Then, too, developers are chomping at the bit to get their hands on any piece of land they can up here.”

On a recent weekday, Krantz; David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy; Kassie Seigel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity; and San Bernardino National Forest activist Peter Jorris toured the foundation’s environmental projects with the goal of gathering information to forward to the state attorney general. They want the attorney general’s office to step in and shift authority over the land to some other conservation group with the resources and personnel to protect it.

On the Heritage Foundation land throughout the 20-mile-long Big Bear Valley, they noted evidence of vandalism and habitat destruction.

At a parcel near Baldwin Lake, they photographed several broken fences and a dried-up pond that once contained one of the last colonies of three-spined stickleback fish in California. At another area about a mile away, a neighbor said she saw a driver of a pickup truck ram a gate protecting federally threatened southern mountain buckwheat and Bear Valley sandwort.

A wetlands preserve and bald eagle foraging grounds at the eastern edge of Big Bear Lake was marred by torn-down fences and heaps of trash. On a pricey hilltop development overlooking the wetlands, they discovered a Heritage Foundation conservation easement partly filled with the refuse of a nearby construction site: broken concrete, discarded lumber and fill dirt.

Striding along the edge of the easement, Myers said, “This kind of thing should have been brought to the attention of the people who issue building permits up here.”

With 71-year-old Robert Lindblad in state prison, that is not likely to happen.

Lindblad and his wife, who have lived for years in a remote, 663-square-foot cabin with no electricity or running water, remain legendary figures in Big Bear Valley. Residents still talk about how Lindblad would carry a 55-gallon plastic jug into town, fill it with water and haul it back home.

Several years ago, Lindblad, described by friends and others as a secretive weapons fanatic with strong anti-government views, was handed control of the prominent foundation from a friend and neighbor who was leaving town and wanted the direction of the organization to remain local.

“Mr. Lindblad was a real character,” said Gene Martin, lake manager for the Big Bear Municipal Water District. “Our district was involved with the Heritage Foundation for two years in the creation of islands in a waterfowl area.

“But we haven’t seen hide nor hair of the foundation since Lindblad went to prison,” he added. “No one from the foundation has contacted our district. As far as the land they manage and what is happening to it, I haven’t a clue.”

That worries environmentalists.

“All it takes is some fool on his all-terrain vehicle on one wet spring day to do irreparable damage to those resources,” Krantz said. “We’ve got to have a land steward who is on the job seven days a week.”