(This article was originally published in Umbrella magazine Issue #29, in November 1990. It is reprinted here with minor editing.)
It’s a repugnant concept: tossing tons of seed over a pond to entice hungry ducks and geese migrating south for the winter, then blasting them to eternity when they come down to eat.
Ron Vavra has found it so repugnant he’s spent the last 11 years fighting to have a federal ban on baiting enforced — a struggle that has come to a head this fall.
But this is not another story about an anti-hunting crusader on the march, for Vavra is a lifelong duck hunter. Or, as he prefers to put it, a waterfowler.
“There are hunters and there are killers,” Vavra said during a recent interview in the back yard of his East San Diego County home. “The most important thing isn’t shooting the ducks out of the air; the most important thing is getting them there [near the hunter], and not with bait.”
At first glance, it seems ironic that an avid waterfowler would have dedicated a fifth of his life to goading federal officials into shutting down duck-baiting clubs. Vavra himself is part of a non-baiting duck club in the Imperial Valley, and spends numerous weekends there each winter.
Vavra, though, is offended by baiting on three fronts:
“I saw it as unethical, in violation of federal laws, and a rip-off of the resource by the rich and politically well-connected.
“It was the federal Migratory Bird Treaty of 1935 which banned the use of baiting to hunt throughout the United States. Southern California is the only place in the United States that’s been allowed to bait since 1935.
“The only reason baiting has been sustained here is that the people of these clubs are very wealthy and very well-connected politically.”
A typical baiting club, of which there are 22 left in San Diego, Imperial, Riverside and Ventura counties, boasts a hefty $100,000 admission fee and $5,000 in annual dues, Vavra said.
The clubs use bait because it draws far more birds than natural habitat, he said. The two northernmost clubs, in Ventura County, spread a combined 5,000 pounds of sack grain a day over their property as bait.
By spreading the grain at the same time each day — generally in the morning just before the legal opening of the daily hunting time (duck hunting is illegal at night, and in the early morning) — the behavior of the duck flocks can be regulated, Vavra said.
“These two clubs control 25,000 ducks. That is 25,000 birds that are shortstopped; they won’t continue to migrate south.
“It’s an issue of fairness to the wildlife.”
After the 1935 ban, the practice of baiting waterfowl was reintroduced to Southern California in the early 1950s, Vavra said. A type of duck called a widgeon was flourishing in winter wetlands, with an estimated population of 85,000 of them in the Imperial Valley alone. Lettuce farmers complained to state officials that the widgeons were decimating their crops, so the state petitioned the federal government to allow clubs to use bait in order to curb the population.
Washington granted a waiver, and within 15 years the widgeon flock had shrunk to about 5,000, where it has remained. In 1972, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sued, arguing there was no more crop depredation and thus no reason for the waiver on the baiting ban to be continued. A settlement agreement called for an independent study on crop depredation, while the baiting clubs continued in operation, Vavra said. The study took eight years to complete and was conducted by well-respected biologist Leigh Frederickson, from the University of Missouri.
In 1980, Frederickon’s study was issued. The study concluded that lettuce crop depredation was no longer a problem in the Imperial Valley, and that the baiting clubs had never had an effect on crop losses.
After the study was issued, the baiting clubs took another tack to avoid compliance with the federal law. The clubs said the land that they were located on — in many cases adjacent to the lettuce fields — was too poor to grow natural wetlands plants on, Vavra said.
“They were talking out both sides of their mouths,” Vavra said bitterly. “On one hand, there’s this rich farmland that needs to be protected, but at the same time they say the land is too poor to grow natural habitat.”
In 1982, a federal study into the issue of baiting clubs in Southern California concluded that these two dozen clubs could grow natural habitat at less cost than spreading seed, Vavra said.
The baiting clubs objected to the study, and members of the clubs pressured the California Department of Fish and Game to authorize another study.
This study, issued in August 1989, was conducted by Barry L. Jones of Sweetwater Environmental Biologists in Spring Valley. In his report, Jones agreed with the earlier federal study, writing, “These data indicate that the natural food production potential for the Salton Sea Region is almost certainly several times higher than the 626,000 lbs. of grain currently being used in the feeding program.”
After the second study, on which the baiting clubs had pinned their hopes, was released, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the baiting clubs had three growing seasons to convert to natural habitat, Vavra said.
This year, the 1990-91 duck season, was to end the practice of baiting waterfowl.
Earlier this year, again trying to avoid compliance with federal law, 12 of the baiting clubs (the others have apparently decided to convert to natural habitat) filed suit in U.S. District Court in San Diego seeking a restraining order to stop the USF&W Service from enforcing the 1935 law banning the use of bait. Federal Judge Gordon Thompson originally had planned to issue his decision on Oct. 10, only three days before the scheduled start of the duck season, Vavra said. Because the 1935 law mandates a 10-day wait between the last spreading of bait and the first day of hunting, the baiting clubs would have — if Thompson ruled against them Oct. 10 — lost almost a week of their hunting season. Vavra said he thinks the club members pressured the state Fish and Game Commission, and that is why the commission rescheduled the opening of this year’s duck season to Oct. 27.
As it turned out, on Oct. 10 Thompson announced he would not issue his decision until Oct. 26 — the day before the new opening. And on Oct. 26, Thompson again announced he would need more time to make a decision, stalling the baiting clubs at least through the first weekend of the duck season.
So the wait continues.
Meanwhile, the baiting clubs, in their lawsuit, threatened to drain their wetlands if they were not allowed to use bait, Vavra said, and they intimated that this would cause large number of ducks and geese to starve.
But Vavra dismissed this as “empty threats,” and said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can use supplemental feeding if necessary — and that the more likely outcome is that the birds will simply do what they did before baiting was allowed in Southern California: Continue south.
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