GARDEN GROVE – A rooster struts from a clump of bushes.

Cotton-white rabbits nibble on blades of grass.

Turtles drop into a pond with a thunk as waddling ducks get too close for comfort.

This menagerie of farm animals, pets and wild predators is not the scene at the Santa Ana Zoo or a nature park. It is, rather, at the center of Garden Grove’s urban hub, nestled among the Public Library, Garden Grove High School, the police station and City Hall.

Community Center Park has, essentially, become an ad hoc animal refuge hidden in plain sight, home to native ducks and other birds but also a dumping ground for unwanted chickens, ducks and red-eared slider turtles.

Compounding the problem is that parkgoers feed the animals, said city staff.

“To ducks, eating bread every day is like if humans ate ice cream every day,” said DeAna Vitela-Hayashi, the director of AquaBio Environmental Technologies, a firm hired by Garden Grove to clean the artificial pond, even sending scuba divers in to unclog its pipes, as happened a couple of weeks ago.

The result is an overpopulated park that was never designed to handle such a random ecosystem of animals – leading to wasted staff time spent cleaning the park and keeping the artificial pond’s pipes unclogged. It has moved the city to consider increased regulations to fine those caught feeding the animals.

“We try to discourage feeding the animals and dumping pets,” said Bill Murray, the city’s Public Works director. “But it’s hard to stop people from doing so. Hopefully, updating the municipal code will give our park rangers another tool.”

Murray said staff would like to have an ordinance before the City Council sometime next year, though it is unclear how much any fines would be and if warnings would come first.

It is also unclear how many animals or different species occupy the park, Murray said, because the city does not conduct any counts of the population there.

“Keeping the population at normal levels is difficult,” Murray said. “The only animals that should be there should be there naturally.”

Unfortunately, he said, dumping animals has been a problem at Community Center Park since before he started working for the city in 1996.

Garden Grove, though, rarely removes animals from the park, partly because of lack of resources and partly because of ambiguity over which animals may be protected by federal sanctuary laws.

The city is aware that some of the ducks occupying the pond were unwanted pets dumped there illegally. But the park also has wild ducks protected by law, making it illegal for the city to remove them.

“It’s not worth it to try to identify which ducks are wild and which are pets,” Murray said.

When staff does remove other animals, such as the roosters, it is often because the population has become so unwieldy that park conditions become unsafe for both the animals and human visitors.

Animals that are removed, Murray said, are sent to no-kill shelters or reserves.

The city does have an ally in population control.

“The hawk is very happy in the park,” Murray said. “Those bunnies aren’t jackrabbits. They don’t stand a chance. And he is a very messy eater.”

Contact the writer: 714-704-3707 or chaire@ocregister.com