Ugly battle escalates over picturesque trail in celebrity enclave
LOS ANGELES— The trail for decades has been a shortcut used by hikers and equestrians traveling between the wealthy ranches of Hidden Valley and the miles of dirt paths that traverse the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
In recent years, however, it has become a battleground between neighbors in an escalating spat pitting public access against private property rights.
It has given rise to fences and “No Trespassing” signs, lawsuits and even a state investigation into claims that a deer carcass was dragged onto the Los Robles trail system to lure mountain lions— and in turn to scare off hikers and horseback riders.
Ugly fights over public use of trails that cross into private property are nothing new in the affluent communities on the far western edge of the San Fernando Valley.
“But the dead deer on the trail makes this case bizarre, to put it mildly,” said David Szymanski, superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
At the heart of this fight is a trail that cuts through the community of Lake Sherwood— a gated development that has been home to celebrities including Sylvester Stallone and hockey great Wayne Gretzky.
David Margulies, 52, a Hidden Valley resident, said he was on horseback in late 2016 when a man warned him that the path was the private property of Sherwood Development Co., a real estate company owned by the billionaire chief executive of Dole Food Co., 95year-old David Murdock.
According to Margulies, the man said he had no right to be there.
Soon after that encounter, Margulies was the subject of an illegal grading complaint filed with Ventura County related to trail work on paths on his property linking to those on Sherwood Development property.
In April, Margulies filed a lawsuit in Ventura County Superior Court against Sherwood Development, alleging the company has been discouraging public use of the trail as part of an effort to “expedite the development process” and increase the exclusivity and value of the properties it seeks along the hillsides.
The trail is visible in aerial photos taken in 1947— nearly four decades before the community of Lake Sherwood was developed. Given its history, Margulies argues, hikers and horseback riders have what’s known as a prescriptive right to traverse it even though it is on private property.
Attorneys for Sherwood Development said in court documents that the applicable statute of limitations has expired to debate public use of the contested trail.
It seemed like a run-of-themill spat over property rights until the dead deer showed up.
While hiking with friends on the morning of Aug. 4, Margulies said he came across a scene that didn’t look quite right.
A dead deer lay across the trail— but there were no signs of ants or flies on the carcass. On the ground nearby were discarded rubber gloves and fresh tire tracks. Attached to trees were three motion-activated cameras trained on the scene.
It looked as if someone had left the deer as bait, he thought, perhaps for a mountain lion.
Margulies should know: As the former chairman of the National Geographic Society’s Big Cats Initiative, he is familiar with the way dead prey can be used to lure large predators.
Without permission, Margulies examined the photos from the motion-activated cameras, which appeared perfectly angled to capture any scavengers that preyed on the carcass.
That episode convinced him to amend the lawsuit last week to allege that Sherwood Development had placed the deer on the trail for two possible reasons, both illegal, he said.
Sherwood Development “intentionally and knowingly set the deer at that location to lure mountain lions to my ranch, in order to create danger to me and my family if we used the trails,” the amended lawsuit reads.
Or, he alleges, the company “deliberately acted with the intention to do harm to the local mountain lion population” by poisoning the deer. He questions in the lawsuit whether there is a connection to the death of a 3-year-old adult male mountain lion, known as P-55, found a mile away by National Park Service officials in July.
Attorneys representing Murdock and Sherwood Development declined to comment. Calls to Sherwood Development were not returned.
As Margulies tells it, there is little doubt Sherwood Development put the deer on the trail.
Margulies points to an email he says he received from Jeff Sikich, a federal biologist with the recreation area and an expert on local mountain lion populations, whom he notified soon after discovering the carcass.
“I just spoke with Lake Sherwood and they said they placed the deer in front of their remote cameras on their property” in order to photograph the scavengers it attracted, Sikich said in the email, which was forwarded to The Times.
Sikich declined to comment. As did Kate Kuykendall, acting deputy superintendent of the recreation area.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is conducting an investigation into the deer’s death. That includes an ongoing necropsy to determine how the animal died, whether it was hauled to the site and if it was poisoned— perhaps with the intent of harming local mountain lions.