Peafowl, parks, monuments mulled

The La Cañada Flintridge City Council moved ahead with several city projects and actions during its relatively short council meeting Tuesday night. The meeting was the first of the new year and included updates on city projects as well as information on the city’s plan to decrease the peafowl population.

In an update by Kevin Chun, the city’s director of administrative services, the council learned that following a count of peafowl within the city, that number was reduced during the month of December through trapping from 40 to 19.

This after the Oct. 20 council meeting, at which the council directed city staff to reduce the number of peacocks and peahen in area neighborhoods to accommodate resident complaints of health and safety concerns with the overpopulation of the birds.

An additional five peafowl are expected to be trapped within the coming weeks in order to comply with the city’s peafowl maintenance plan, which allows for 14 to 18 peafowl within the city, Chun said, adding that the remaining numbers of peafowl also will comply with the preferred ratio of two-male-per-five-female birds.

The birds were trapped by Mike Maxcy, principal animal keeper with the Los Angeles Zoo, and relocated to private residences in Hemet, Palmdale and Pomona. All of the residences have a minimum of one-acre for the animals to roam, Chun said.

The council on Tuesday night also accepted a $35,000 donation from local resident Liz Blackwelder to help provide water piping to the Ultimate Destination pocket park along the trails in Cherry Canyon.

Irrigation and landscaping of the pocket park already is part of the city’s capital improvement program and is expected to cost about $65,000 more than the donation in order to install 2,000 feet of pipe, a water fountain for people and bubbler for horses. The costs also include an irrigation system and the planting of 30 trees.

Blackwelder, 88, already is identified with the nearby trails as Liz’s Loop, a portion of the trails, across the fire road from the pocket park, is named in her honor.

Blackwelder, a longtime La Cañadan, avid equestrian and former president of the La Cañada Flintridge Trails Council, told the council a brief history of her association with the planned pocket park and its need for water to quench the thirst of runners, bicyclists, equestrians and their horses.