Virus Kills 32 Ducks Near San Diego : Wildlife: State officials assert that a Venice bird lover may have spread the disease by smuggling an infected waterfowl. An activist calls the charge ‘preposterous.’

SAN DIEGO — Thirty-two ducks on a lake south of San Diego have died of the same rare virus that was found among waterfowl in the Venice canals, leading wildlife officials to suspect that a Venice bird lover may have spread the disease by smuggling out an infected duck.

The remaining ducks at the lake in Chula Vista, estimated between 10 and 40, are to be put to death to keep the infection from spreading, state officials said.

“We told people that this disease was highly contagious and that it was highly probable that it would spread if any ducks were taken,” said Steve Capps, assistant director of the state Department of Fish and Game. “Someone apparently didn’t listen.”

But a spokesman and organizer for the group that has tried unsuccessfully to block Fish and Game from killing the remaining Venice ducks said Capps’ allegation is groundless and a canard against environmentalists.

“That’s preposterous,” Bill Dyer said Tuesday. “That someone would drive all the way from Venice to Chula Vista is unbelievable. If you wanted to save a duck, there are plenty of closer places. I don’t know a single person who has taken any ducks. They’re just trying to discredit us.”

The 32 dead ducks were discovered in a 15-acre man-made lake in the Eastlake subdivision in Chula Vista. The diagnosis of duck virus enteritis was made Monday by a San Diego County veterinarian, who turned the case over to Fish and Game. State officials in turn sent the duck carcasses to the National Wildlife and Health Center laboratory in Madison, Wis., run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Capps said the Fish and Game Department will move this week to give lethal injections to the remaining ducks at Eastlake. But officials will not announce a specific time, in an effort to prevent the kinds of demonstrations that occurred in Venice.

“Our fear is that if we put out an exact time, we’ll have a bad scene again, just like Venice,” Capps said. The move is necessary to keep the fast-moving, always lethal virus from spreading to migratory ducks and to ducks kept as pets, he said.

Dyer said Fish and Game is again displaying its tendency “to just begin killing without trying other methods” such as a quarantine.

“As long as we can take care of this situation quickly and people don’t move any ducks, we should be able to keep this from spreading,” said Capps, who oversees the department’s conservation education programs.

In Venice, Fish and Game has killed about 325 ducks. Once workers are finished in Venice today or Thursday, they will go immediately to Chula Vista, Capps said.

Hubert Johnstone, the San Diego County veterinarian who made the diagnosis, is unwilling to accuse Venice bird lovers without proof. The ducks at Chula Vista and Venice may have gotten the disease from the same source, possibly a migratory duck, Johnstone said. That theory is supported by the Venice Canal Duck Foundation, which organized the Venice protests and legal action.

“If you figure we got it from Venice, you still have to figure out where Venice got it,” said Johnstone.

In his 32 years with the county veterinarian’s office, Johnstone said, he has never seen a case of duck virus enteritis, which leaves ducks dead and bloody and distended but poses no threat to humans or poultry.