"Year and Review"
For animal advocates, 2009 was a year of sorrow, following two high-profile incidents involving the state Department of Fish and Game.
The first began in April, when Julia Di Sieno, executive director of the nonprofit Animal Rescue Team Inc., tranquilized two apparently undernourished mountain lion cubs that were found foraging in a condominium complex trash can in Solvang and took them to her rescue facility in Santa Ynez, offering to care for them until they could be returned to the wild or sent together to a zoo.
Fish and Game took the cubs, because she lacked the proper permit to keep them. From there, they were split up.
One was sent by plane to New York and paraded around the tarmac on the back of a motorized cart by a baggage handler, before being transferred to the Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park. The other cub ultimately found its way to the Folsom Zoo.
Fish and Game sought to press charges against Ms. Di Sieno because she lacked proper permits to care for the animals.
But earlier this month, the DA's office decided to file no charges. Prosecutors did, however, impress upon Ms. Di Sieno the importance of adhering to her permits.
Fish and Game also found itself embroiled in another controversy -- the Oct. 10 shooting death by warden Roland Takayama of a California black bear that wandered into an Ojai neighborhood.
Democrat Santa Barbara Assemblyman and 2010 state attorney general hopeful Pedro Nava requested a face-to-face meeting with Fish and Game chief Don Koch over the killing. But that meeting never took place, because on Oct. 21, Mr. Koch announced he would resign his $143,000-per-year post of 18 months as of Nov. 1.