Pinniped protections have taken La Jolla in a bad direction
I enjoyed your article in the Oct. 3 La Jolla Light (“Parks & Beaches group launches project to maintain public access to La Jolla Cove”). For what it is worth, I would like to share my perspective.
I have lived in La Jolla and the surrounding area for 40-plus years. Back in the ’80s, people swam and snorkeled at the Children’s Pool along with a few seals, with no issues. Then the seal people started sitting in chairs close to the seals and would scold anyone if they got close to the seals.
This evolved into roping off the small area where the seals were. At the time it seemed extreme but OK.
The small roped-off area kept expanding over time to finally take over all of the Children’s Pool. The seal people would even scold you went down the stairs to the bathroom.
This has continued to expand to now potentially taking over La Jolla Cove. I love nature and animals as much as anyone else, but I firmly believe the seal and sea lion people have created an imbalance and are at fault for this current issue.
Gary Higganbotham
Lamenting the loss of old trees
I once planted a Torrey pine seed where I live. When it sprouted, I showed it to my landlady, who allowed it to grow to be a healthy, 35-foot native tree.
Sadly, after 24 years, it was cut down recently as I watched. The yet-greater loss was removal of a century-old exotic palm and an equally old and magnificent juniper, both thriving.
I’ve resided for 47 years in a room on the half-acre La Jolla estate built in 1923 by Clara Trask, a wealthy contemporary and associate of Ellen Browning Scripps.
The landscaping and house, within earshot of the ocean on Rosemont Street, have caught the eye of at least one present-day UC Berkeley landscape architecture professor, who shows images of the property to his students.
Preservation of the trees ed in 1974 to Dr. Johnnie Johnston, owner (and my landlord) for the majority of his 89 years until his ing in 2021. The land was sold to a group of buyers last year.
It is a rule of real estate that you cannot buy property, then install an ocean. It is nearly as impossible to have a small grove of hundred-year-old trees on your land unless they were planted a century earlier. The Trask estate is that rare unicorn that has both: an ocean view framed by limbs of old trees.
I am in no place to second-guess the choices of the current owner-curators of the old trees, which I would consider to be precious. I can say that if one catches a unicorn, one does have the option to sample unicorn meat. Perhaps it produces a heavenly meal, perhaps a slow and gruesome death.
Most likely, it tastes a bit like chicken. But it ends the unicorn.
Russell La Puma
What’s on YOUR mind?
Letters published in the La Jolla Light express views from readers about community matters. Submissions of related photos also are welcome. Letters reflect the writers’ opinions and not necessarily those of the newspaper staff or publisher. Letters are subject to editing. To share your thoughts in this public forum, email them with your first and last names and city or neighborhood of residence to [email protected]. The deadline is 5 p.m. Friday for publication in the following Thursday’s paper. Letters without the writer’s name cannot be published. Letters from the same person are limited to one in a 30-day period. ♦
