Major Wildlife Confab On Tap There is one reason why deer calmly roam the streets of Pacific Grove and Monterey: there are no predators, like wolves or mountain lions, roaming the streets along with them. The imbalance between predator and prey, as well as other questions, will be explored at a major three-day conference in Monterey starting Nov. 18.

Sponsored by the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, the meeting and convention is titled Carnivores 2002: From the Mountains to the Sea. The event is open to the public.

Attending will be scientists, experts and resource management officials from the U.S., Africa, Mexico, South America and Canada. Panels and discussions will range from chemical contamination in local killer whales to conflict between carnivores and humans to coyote hormone patterns.

At least one panel will discuss the political consequences of the 2002 election for wildlife management.

The meetings will be held at the Monterey Conference Center Nov. 18-20. For more information call 726-9010 or go to www.defenders.org.

KAZU Trades Up

The newly reformatted KAZU may have lost 2,500 members since this time last year, but it gained 500 new ones-and these people are a lot better at writing checks come pledge drive time.

Jim Davis, underwriting director for the public radio station, says it took KAZU three weeks to raise $90,000 during its 2001 fall pledge drive. This year, however, listeners stuffed KAZU''s coffers with $85,000 in 10 days. And that''s in spite of losing all but 300 of the 2,800 listeners who were on the membership rolls last year.

This past June, an outcry went up and members left in droves after the 25-year-old station jettisoned its eclectic music format in favor of one heavy on news. Now, after its first pledge drive, the station has a scant 725 contributing members, divided evenly between Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.

But either they''re wealthier or they''re testier about getting pledge drives over with than their predecessors; average pledges were up 40 percent from last year, Davis says. Maybe NPR''s "Morning Edition" listeners are more annoyed by constant interruptions and artful begging than fans of the blues and electronica.

Davis says the station is taking the membership loss in stride.

"When you start a new format, you have to build a core audience," he says, "and you alienate your former core audience, and hope that the new one supports you. So this was a very successful pledge drive, from our standpoint."

Still, Davis says KAZU isn''t getting cocky. "We feel the real determining factor will be the spring drive," he says.

By then the novelty will have worn off and some of the sympathy pledges will have gone away. KAZU has suffered a fire and flooding in the last four months. "We''re expecting locusts," Davis wisecracks.

Sock It to Monterey

Whether or not you think Monterey is all it''s cracked up to be, the city wants residents to respond to its annual performance survey. Residents are encouraged to fill out the survey and return it to the city by Nov. 30. The survey was mailed to Monterey residents with the city newsletter with return postage already paid. Although about 30,000 people live in Monterey, some 800 to 1,000 usually return the survey, which has been in use since 1997.

According to the last few years of survey results, Monterey residents don''t have too much to bitch about. In subjects such as parks maintenance, beach maintenance, and overall city cleanliness respondents generally give the city passing marks. Despite providing service surveys and the like, the city did not do too well in the "listening well" category. The availability of parking in the business district, programs for teens and bicycle lanes also elicited some less-than-glowing remarks.

-Andrew Scutro, Traci Rae Hukill