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The Real-Estate CRUNCH - habitat protection may actually harm certain species

Animals, Sept, 2000 by Joni Praded

Why the land trade-offs known as habitat conservation plans may be mortgaging the future of at-risk species.

On a cool California morning, all is quiet at Crystal Cove State Park. Hillsides flanked with rare coastal sage scrub lead down to an expanse of empty beach. In this Orange County outpost, just three joggers pass by in half an hour, while shorebirds skim the waves and a dolphin breaks the horizon in the nearby surf.

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Amid the hubbub of fast-growing southern California, this place could seem astonishingly serene. But it doesn't take long to spot the real action. Just across the Pacific Coast Highway, which rims the park, undulating hills mark the massive holdings of the region's largest private landowner, the Irvine Company--and bulldozers churn their way through scrub to clear the land for single-family homes on some of the nation's most valuable real estate. It is real estate coveted by endangered species and humans alike. The process that took this parcel from wildland to housing lots is billed by some as conservation-friendly smart growth, and by others as the nation's endangered-species policy gone awry.

The Crystal Cove area is not alone in its transition. All over southern California, construction crews are transforming rare, unspoiled wildlife habitat into housing or commercial spaces. It surprises many to learn that this part of California--home to L.A. smog and Hollywood hype--is one of the most biodiverse regions of the continental United States. With its extensive variety of habitats, it supports a wide array of plant and animal species--many of them found nowhere else on earth. In fact, one-fifth of all species on the federal endangered list are found in California. So, too, are 36 million people, and southern California's population is expected to grow by 6 million--or two Chicagos--over the next 20 years.

Before the early 1990s, such development was frequently stalled by endangered or threatened creatures that most had never heard of before. Corporate and private landowners became entangled in lengthy permit battles as they sought to circumvent the stringent requirements of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which would have prevented them from altering their land in any way that would add to the risk faced by troubled species.

The region eventually became the ground for bitter battles as species such as the coastal California gnatcatcher and the Stephens' kangaroo rat threatened to halt big-ticket development plans. The federal government, weary from the spotted-owl wars in the Pacific Northwest, looked anywhere it could for compromise and found it in a little-used 1982 amendment to the ESA. This amendment allowed landowners to receive permits to harm or kill endangered species in exchange for developing habitat conservation plans (HCPs) on their property. Despite its drawbacks, many U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) officials say that the HCP approach, while far from perfect, is better than its alternative--reviewing each permit application individually. Says USFWS Assistant Field Supervisor Jim Bartel, "The project-by-project method is not efficient and is limited in its ability to address a lot of species and a lot of habitats. If your preserves are all postage-stamp preserves, many species are going to be doomed."

At the time, many environmentalists lauded the move, believing, for a while, the HCP promise of a winning outcome for everyone, including endangered critters. But today, with 270 HCPs covering 20 million acres of land in the country, conservationists and scientists are analyzing what has been gained and what has been lost. And, they say, the picture is not always rosy.

Take the case of the coastal California gnatcatcher, a diminutive, grayish blue songbird with a home range limited to coastal southern California and northwestern Baja California, Mexico. It lives almost exclusively in coastal sage scrub, where it thrives on insects and, in breeding season, fashions grasses, bark strips, small leaves, spider webs, down, and other materials into nests that rest just three feet above the ground.

When the USFWS responded to petitions to list the species as endangered in 1993, estimates cited between 1,800 and 2,500 pairs in their highly fragmented southern California habitat. Worse, the gnatcatcher lived mostly on private property, including land owned by several major companies.

For years battle lines were etched in the scrub over the listing. In 1991, when the USFWS announced its intention to designate the bird as endangered, it received two petitions--one containing 9,000 signatures supporting an emergency listing, another with 6,000 signatures opposing it. Predictably, conservation groups and scientific organizations were among the supporters; labor and building industry organizations joined a number of landowners in opposition.

If the gnatcatcher were listed, development could have been barred on every acre the species occupied until, and unless, developers received "incidental-take permits." These permits, costly and time-consuming to obtain, are essentially ESA exemptions granted on a project-by-project basis to individuals or companies that agree to minimize their impact and compensate for any habitat they intend to disturb--usually by setting aside or restoring suitable habitat elsewhere.

The Real-Estate CRUNCH - habitat protection may actually harm certain species

Animals, Sept, 2000 by Joni Praded

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