Roving Archers fend off critics taking aim at their shooting range in Pasadena’s Lower Arroyo Park
June 19, 2011
By: Janette Williams
PASADENA – Since 1935, Pasadena Roving Archers have had a home in the Lower Arroyo Park.
It’s now the oldest field archery range in the world and one of only two in Southern California, according to President Gary Spiers.
But after more than seven decades of accident-free and generally peaceful co-existence with dog-walkers and hikers, club members say they’re being targeted by claims they take up too much space and are a danger to others using the popular 150-acre recreation area.
“It’s unclear how it evolved,” Spiers said, adding that he thinks the controversy started with a complaint to the City Council late last year.
“The problems are not clear to us.”
The safety and space issues in the
Lower Arroyo, last raised about 20 years ago, has resurfaced at the most recent Recreation and Parks Commission meetings – now accompanied by a lively on-line debate, pro and con.
“We’ve never had an accident here, the archers are very safety conscious – no one wants to shoot at anyone,” Spiers said Tuesday, as a group of club members moved between targets set against the hillside east of the arroyo channel.
The club’s area is one area of dispute.
The city lists the range as 18 acres, but long-time Roving Archer Jim McQuarrie said it’s probably half that. Use of the north range is restricted to once a month, plus an annual competition, he said, and the club’s area has never expanded.
Spiers said the city – not the club – put up a line of short wooden posts among the rock edging that separates the range from the designated hiking trail; several are topped with signs alerting passersby to the archery range.
“The signs don’t say ‘keep out,’ but they do say ‘Danger, archery,”‘ Spiers said. “It’s like a riptide at the beach – people have to take responsibility.”
The nonprofit club has about 350 members, including whole families, Spiers said. It has conducted classes in one form or another since 1967, including free try-outs for the public at weekends, and several members are world-class competitors.
But former Councilman Bill Crowfoot, who lives near the lower arroyo, said having archery on public land is problematic and not just another “tedious squabble” between park users.
“Archery, for all its tradition and inherent elegance as a sport, involves the shooting of potentially lethal weapons,” Crowfoot said in a lengthy memo sent this month to the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission.
Archery, he said, is not an “innocuous use” for recreational land.
“This issue has become significant because we have a shortage of accessible landscaped attractive park space for walkers in Pasadena,” Crowfoot said in an email Tuesday.
“People are discovering just how much land on the west bank of the arroyo is off limits to walkers because of the archery. The city is more crowded now than it used to be and too much of the park is turned over to archery. It’s that simple. To say that this controversy is all because of one person is unfair; one person had the guts to call them out.”
John Fauvre, who brought the initial complaint to the City Council, said walkers in the arroyo have a longer history even than the archers.
“I’d like to see shared use,” Fauvre said, suggesting designated days or hours for archers to use the range that would leave it open to walkers at specific times.
And if the range is one of the last in Southern California, he said, that’s probably because other cities have decided the liability could be too great.
“It’s in one of the most beautiful, accessible areas of the arroyo,” Fauvre said. “Our position is that, if archery is dangerous and imposes risks of liability to the city, maybe it’s no longer appropriate.”
Spiers and MacQuarrie said the history of archery as a public recreation in the lower arroyo, as with the nearby Casting Pool, should be acknowledged and appreciated.
“There are 22 miles of hiking trails,” MacQuarrie said, adding that no city map shows paths for walkers in the archery range.
And as for reports of “bad archer behavior,” Spiers said, not everyone shooting is a member of the club, although everyone is required to follow the rules posted.
“I would like to see (the city put) a new set of rules there,” Spiers said. “Adequate signage would go a long way – if you don’t understand the rules you’re going to be in conflict … Mutual consideration goes a long way, otherwise it becomes an intractable problem.”
Marnie Mosiman of South Pasadena, walking her Airedale, Zazi, past the range Tuesday morning, said she was aware of the debate over the Roving Archers’ use of the arroyo.
“I heard a rumor they were closing this trail at the weekends,” Mosiman said. “It’s not true – great,” she said, as Spiers and MacQuarrie said that and other “misinformation” was going around.
Mosiman said she’d never felt endangered during her regular walks, but is “cautious” passing the archery range and keeps to the marked trail.
“I’m a big fan of letting everyone who comes in this area using it as they want to,” she said. “We’d love an area to let dogs off leash.”
Source: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_18131672
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