Venice Ducks Get Reprieve--at Least for Now : Standoff: Faced with vocal supporters and telephone threats, officials temporarily abandon roundup. Activists deny making calls but plan to keep protecting the birds.

Residents along the Venice Canals stayed on the lookout for wildlife officials who never came Saturday amid signs that the standoff over a government plan to eradicate diseased ducks is getting increasingly nasty.

Telephoned threats were reported against state Department of Fish and Game officials, who called off plans to capture and kill ducks at the canals Friday night after encountering about 30 demonstrators. On Thursday, state and federal wildlife officials captured and gave lethal injections to 37 ducks at a pond in nearby Marina del Rey; on Friday, they confiscated 71 ducks and geese that activists had taken to a Kern County refuge.

Activists, who for weeks have battled plans to eradicate all the ducks and geese at the canals, denied that they were behind the threats to wildlife officials. The birds are believed to be infected with a deadly virus that officials fear could endanger the 2.8 million birds that travel the Pacific Flyway each year.

“There’s a lot of mudslinging going on here, and I hear it coming from Fish and Game,” said Helen Fallon, one of those active in the fight to save the ducks. “They want us all to (look like) nut cases.”

A grassy lot next to the bridge over Linnie Canal has become the makeshift headquarters of the duck forces, a handful of whom printed signs and stayed on the lookout for Fish and Game agency trucks Saturday.

Sometime late Friday, someone had added a macabre touch to the site’s protest flyers, balloons and flowers set out “in respect for our dear loved ones.” Impaled on the posts of a chain-link fence were the carcasses of six cooked ducks that appeared to have come from a restaurant or store.

“Some insensitive idiots came down here to try to threaten us or scare us--who knows what?” said Glen Lynch, a spokesman for the group. “We’re trying to save ducks’ lives. This is very disheartening.”

Residents took to the canals Friday evening after getting word that wildlife officials appeared to be heading for the canals. Boys on bicycles sped through the neighborhood, blowing whistles to alert neighbors. Adults, who are fast learning how to organize, worked the phones. Faced with the protest, Fish and Game officials decided not to move forward with the operation.

Hours earlier, a state appeals court refused to stop the government from killing an estimated 275 ducks still in the canals and nearby wetlands. The group is still considering whether to take its case to the California Supreme Court, members said Saturday.

Residents dispute statements by wildlife officials that the domesticated ducks and geese must be killed to save wild waterfowl from the deadly virus--called duck virus enteritis. Residents have called instead for the birds to be quarantined and tested. Government officials say quarantining is costly and ineffective because no vaccine or treatment is available and there is no sure way to prove that a bird is not infected.

The roundup was announced last month after dead ducks were found in the canals, which crisscross the neighborhood south of Venice Boulevard, just blocks from the beach. Tests showed that the ducks were infected, and the remaining ducks are believed to have been exposed to the herpes virus, which causes internal bleeding. Officials say about 60 ducks have died from the virus.

The struggle has brought national attention to residents of the canal district, whose ducks are one of the neighborhood’s draws for locals and out-of-town tourists. Duck supporters charged officials Saturday with escalating the rhetoric to win the fight for public opinion.