Dear Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Works, et.al.,

The city of Pasadena and the Oak Grove Disc Golf Club has had many past meetings with other stakeholder user groups, including the representatives from the Sierra Club and the Hahamongna Watershed Parks Advisory Committee. During these prior dialogues, we had all agreed that disc golf course can be effectively integrated with the other existing uses of the park. Particularly, all stakeholder users came to an unanimous agreement of where the disc golf course can safely and properly operate within the park, while not interfering with the restoration efforts for the rest of the park.

The constituents of Oak Grove Disc Golf Club (OGDGC), a nonprofit corporation, were shocked and displeased to hear that the County is now considering the removal of holes 5 and 14 from the Oak Grove disc golf course on account of new concerns with the least Bell's vireo, without providing us with any Notice whatsoever, let alone involving our users in any of its discussions of a course redesign. The county’s attempt to ignore past stakeholder discussions is not only unfair to the established disc golf user group, but is disappointingly inconsiderate, negligent, imprudent, and can indeed be construed as a sign of bad faith on the County’s behalf.

We at OGDGC were never given the opportunity to participate in the dialogues regarding these new environmental concerns, and would like to take the opportunity to do so now, despite the County’s unprofessional behavior. It is our view that Oak Grove Disc Golf Course is a well-established trail in the park (that has existed since the 1970’s) like the many trails that run through all of the Arroyo Seco. The least Bell's vireo has not been seen in the Hahamongna Watershed Park for over 5 years. Indeed, there have been no commissioned, authenticated reports or environmental studies that have documented the actual return of this species. With the ongoing project of removing sediment from the area, it seems very unlikely that this bird population will ever return to the area.

In the event that the bird actually does return to the park, we at OGDGC would be more than willing to cease throwing holes which endanger the bird's nesting area. The concerns of the bird’s safety from flying discs seems to be unfounded. In the many years of disc golf in Oak Grove Disc Golf Course, we have never seen or heard of any incident that involved a bird being injured on account of a thrown disc. Moreover, practically speaking, birds are intelligent enough to avoid intelligent living predators coming at them at very high speeds and over great distances both on the ground and in the air. That said, birds are capable of evading an unintelligent piece of plastic thrown by a person. Like the hikers who constantly strive to stay on the trail to preserve the park’s natural beauty, disc golfers are public users that also respect our park’s resources and would love to see nature flourish especially at Oak Grove. We are very happy with the LA County’s effort in creating a natural habitat but we do not feel that our sport has a concerning impact of the natural habitat in the area to justify an immediate course redesign without discussions with OGDGC.

For the foregoing reasons, we strongly urge that the County use the agreed upon course design detailed by the City of Pasadena and all stakeholder groups during the Oak Grove Area Improvement Meetings (held in 2014) which was deemed acceptable by ALL stakeholders.



Sincerely,

Howard Tan

President

Oak Grove Disc Golf Club

An 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization