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prevent large-scale development in wilderness areas. In return, they are often accused of caring more about red-legged frogs, say, than about human beings.
Sure enough, Mr Eastwood and his friends have blasted their opponents for being anti-development in general, and they argued that their vision for Pebble Beach's future is a lot less damaging than a bigger project envisaged by the company's previous owners, a Japanese consortium, who did not think to propose protecting other parts of the Del Monte forest as a quid pro quo.
Mr Eastwood is no amateur at this game. He lives in the picture-postcard town of Carmel, just south of Pebble Beach, and has considerable business interests of his own in the area. Back in the 1980s, he became so enraged when the Carmel town council turned down his request to turn his restaurant, the Hog's Breath Inn, into an office and shopping complex, that he ran for mayor, swept into office thanks to his unbeatable name recognition and promptly fired the town's planning commission.
Mr Eastwood's passion for golf off-screen mirrors his attraction to firearms on-screen: another of his manoeuvres was to build himself a private course in the hills behind Pebble Beach and get the county authorities to give him access to the considerable water supply he needed to water his greens.
Residents of Carmel Valley, directly below his hillside Tehama Golf Club, point out that while his sprinklers keep the grass just so, they are all on water rationing during the dry summer months.
The struggle over Pebble Beach is far from over. The main obstacle, as ever, remains the Coastal Commission, which is the final arbiter on the matter. In a letter to the Monterey County board, the Commission listed not three but 19 species of endangered plants threatened by the project.
It said the county's interpretation of its environmental obligations was "contrary to law, common sense, the county's own local coastal program and numerous commission and local government actions in other areas on California's coast".
Those are not the words of an agency about to go all starry-eyed over the wishes of an Oscar-winning film maker. On this particular occasion, it is going to take more than a six-shooter to make Clint's day.
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