Wardens

Members of a wildlife society established after the shooting of a bear in Azusa presented two tranquilizer rifles to the state Department of Fish and Game in the Monrovia City Council chambers Friday. The San Gabriel Mountains Bear and Wildlife Preservation Society, formed earlier this month, raised about $1,000 in 12 days to buy the rifles, said Craig Bonholtzer, founder and president. Bonholtzer said 16 individuals and organizations, including local police unions, contributed to the fund.

While law enforcement officials scoured the hillsides above Big Bear on Tuesday for murder suspect Christopher Dorner, wardens from California's Department of Fish and Wildlife were called in to patrol the rugged terrain of Highway 38. It was on that highway that the officers first encountered Dorner, engaging the former cop in a white-knuckle chase involving two commandeered vehicles. The pursuit culminated in what officials described as a wild shootout between Dorner and a state game warden.

They filed onto a stage to a recording of "Pomp and Circumstance" to receive their diplomas, but this was a different kind of June graduation. Instead of gowns, they wore forest green uniforms. Instead of mortarboards, they wore side arms. These were the 31 graduates of the first class of wardens fully trained by the California Department of Fish and Game. They completed 20 weeks--22 weeks for the 13 women--of the normal intensive schooling at the Napa Valley College Police Academy, plus 400 hours of special fish, wildlife and environmental indoctrination.

Donald Heller wrote the 1978 ballot measure that expanded California's death penalty. Ronald Briggs, whose father spearheaded the campaign, worked to achieve its passage. Jeanne Woodford, a career corrections official, presided over four executions. The lawyer, El Dorado County supervisor and retired San Quentin Prison warden now want California's death penalty abolished, contending the state no longer can afford a system that has cost an estimated $4 billion since 1978 and executed 13 prisoners.

While law enforcement officials scoured the hillsides above Big Bear on Tuesday for murder suspect Christopher Dorner, wardens from California's Department of Fish and Wildlife were called in to patrol the rugged terrain of Highway 38. It was on that highway that the officers first encountered Dorner, engaging the former cop in a white-knuckle chase involving two commandeered vehicles. The pursuit culminated in what officials described as a wild shootout between Dorner and a state game warden.

It started last month when workers at a Paso Robles wastewater treatment plant noticed what appeared to be a giant rodent roaming the facility. The creature eventually swam toward the Salinas River and disappeared from sight, but not before worker Nick Kamp had taken a few photos. He and a co-worker called the California Department of Fish and Game to report what they had seen. Responding wardens used the pictures to confirm that the animal was in fact a capybara — an adult they believe weighs 100 to 120 pounds.

Game wardens on Friday arrested nine people for allegedly poaching sturgeon and chinook salmon from the Sacramento River and the delta. Wardens made the arrests after raiding seven homes in Sacramento. They said the suspects illegally netted young, fall-run chinook salmon to use as bait for sturgeons. The sturgeons' eggs were sold illegally as caviar on the black market. The populations of salmon and sturgeon have dropped in the last few years.

Bears were found Wednesday wandering in residential neighborhoods in two Southern California cities. In both cases, the animals were tranquilized and returned to the wilderness. Residents of a Camarillo apartment complex woke up to an unexpected visitor about 5 a.m. when a 300-pound brown bear was spotted wandering through a densely populated part of town, said the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Deputies followed the bear into the Avalon Camarillo Apartment complex in the 1500 block of Flynn Road, where they corralled and held the animal until wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game arrived and shot it with a tranquilizer dart.

So, ex-Assemblyman Pat Nolan won't let prison silence his message (Dec. 31)? I wonder how many other prisoners can send 1,800 personal newsletters out of their prison cell? Aside from that, having become a critic of the system he helped create, Nolan "attacked the government's 'war on crime.' " I guess a liberal is a conservative that has been in prison. I came across a news release by Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.). He had taken a poll of the prison wardens in the United States for a "reality check."

Authorities in northeastern India have asked the army to help protect endangered one-horned rhinoceroses from poachers and have made the soldiers honorary wildlife wardens, officials said Saturday. Kaziranga National Park, about 135 miles east of Guwahati, is home to more than 1,800 of the world's estimated 3,000 one-horned rhinos. Poachers killed about 20 rhinos in the park last year and six have been killed this year. The armed gangs of poachers kill rhinos for their horns, which many believe have aphrodisiac qualities, and are used in medicines in parts of South and Southeast Asia.

The fictional ad executive Roger Sterling has now done hallucinogens. The real show runner Matthew Weiner has not, though he had his chances. One opportunity for the "Mad Men"creator came as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University in Connecticut during Uncle Duke Day, a campus tradition where some students honored the Doonesbury comic strip character and his fondness for drugs. Weiner remembered a classmate bursting into his room and declaring: "We're all going to take mushrooms - and you're not invited.

The wife of a former Oklahoma prison warden was released from prison Thursday, six months after her conviction for helping an inmate escape almost 18 years ago, authorities said. Bobbi Parker was released at 1 a.m. from the Hillside Community Correctional Center in Oklahoma City, Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie told The Times. She served a little more than half of her 1-year prison sentence and was freed without any further time on probation, Massie said. Parker, 49, was convicted Sept.

A mountain lion found dead in the western Santa Monica Mountains was killed and mutilated by poachers, according to state fish and game wardens who are seeking tips in the case. "We're going to have to get lucky on this. There's virtually no forensic evidence," said Andrew Hughan, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. Investigators, he added, are hoping a member of the public will hear "somebody bragging about how they killed a mountain lion, and they'll call us" at (800)

It started last month when workers at a Paso Robles wastewater treatment plant noticed what appeared to be a giant rodent roaming the facility. The creature eventually swam toward the Salinas River and disappeared from sight, but not before worker Nick Kamp had taken a few photos. He and a co-worker called the California Department of Fish and Game to report what they had seen. Responding wardens used the pictures to confirm that the animal was in fact a capybara — an adult they believe weighs 100 to 120 pounds.

Afghan authorities have arrested the warden and other officials at the Kandahar prison where nearly 500 insurgents managed to escape this week through a tunnel built by the Taliban, officials said Thursday. Ghulam Dastagher Mayar was among 10 officials arrested at Sarposa prison, about half of those on duty at the time of the prison break that began late Sunday, according to Gen. Amir Mohammad Jamshidi, the country's chief director of prisons. Jamshidi and other Afghan officials declined to identify the other arrested officials or detail the charges against those held.

If Joel Anthony of the Heat is now called "The Warden" . . . was he able to put Blake Griffin in lockup Sunday? "No, I wouldn't say all that," said the soft-spoken Anthony. "I was just out there doing my job. " His effectiveness has gone beyond the job he did on Griffin in the Heat's 97-79 victory over the Clippers; that was just a continuation of a strong showing this past month. Griffin struggled from the field, going seven for 17 in scoring 21 points. "[On]

I protest in the strongest terms the clumsy and unnecessary slaughter of a female cougar in Valencia ("Mountain Lion Killed in Backyard," Feb. 26). This trigger-happy episode makes me question our values and the way we use our resources. The wildlife was there first. People who cannot adjust to wildlife, fires, floods and landslides have no business living in foothill and mountain areas. Use of a dozen California Department of Fish and Game people and sheriff's deputies, plus helicopters and dogs, indicates that these agencies are overstaffed.

You know it's going to be a bad day when it's barely dawn and you're already being chased by police officers, firefighters, three rifle-toting game wardens and a news helicopter, and you're stuck up a tree — in a cemetery, no less. That's the predicament a California black bear faced Tuesday after somehow taking a very wrong turn out of a forest and ending up in a three-hour standoff with authorities in Oxnard. The wayward but intrepid black bear was first spotted around 2:15 a.m., lurking around a fire station on Vineyard Avenue.

The warden of a federal prison in San Bernardino County was indicted Wednesday on charges of disclosing confidential information about a pending criminal investigation and then lying to investigators about having done so, authorities said. Scott A. Holencik, warden of a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in Adelanto, is charged in a six-count indictment, which includes two felony counts of making false statements to investigators, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.