Plea for Sea Animal Shelter Rejected

The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council on Tuesday denied a request from an environmental group to place a temporary facility for sick or injured marine mammals near City Hall.

A permanent facility will be built at the Upper Reservation of Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro, but construction isn’t scheduled to begin until spring.

The animals--mostly seals and sea lions--are presently housed at Dockweiler State Beach, which is under Los Angeles International Airport’s flight pattern.

Connie Lufkin Barr, president of the Organization for the Respect and Care of Animals of the Sea (ORCAS), told the council that the aircraft noise is stressful to the animals. In some cases, she said, they would benefit from immediate relocation.

Councilman Robert E. Ryan vehemently opposed the request, recounting the city’s bitter history with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, which closed Marineland shortly after buying it in 1987. The attraction had a first-aid station for marine mammals.

Ryan said the publishing firm shipped Marineland’s animals to its Sea World facility in San Diego and then sold the coastal land to a developer. Finally, he said, the firm gave $3 million to the Los Angeles Unified School District to develop the planned animal care facility at Ft. MacArthur.

Ryan suggested that ORCAS ask the Monaghan Co., which owns the Marineland site, to put the temporary facility there.

Barr said the bad feelings between Rancho Palos Verdes and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich are irrelevant. “We’re asking the city to absorb no expense,” she said. “We’re only talking about a modified horse trailer and a small motor home.”

But Councilman John McTaggart, who, along with Ryan and Councilman Melvin W. Hughes, voted against the proposal, said, “This is not the kind of thing we need to support.”

ORCAS members were angered by the council’s decision. “We thought that since the city supported Marineland, they’d be happy to help us,” Barr said.

“To be locked into a personal vendetta over something that occurred four years ago doesn’t speak well of the city,” she said. “Now the animals have to stay at Dockweiler under the flight path. Sometimes that amount of stress is just enough to (kill them).”