New Approach to Protecting Fragile Habitats Criticized Summarized by Dani S. from a LA Times article by Deborah Schoch, July 20, 1998

A new study has shown that developments in environmentally fragile areas has often failed to ensure that plants and animals are protected from extinction.

Supported by the Clinton administration, Habitat Conservation Plans have been made nationwide to make peace between the two sides; the welfare of rare wild life and the pressures of economic growth.

However a draft study, developed by a research team from eight universities are raising questions. The study indicates that some plans lacked scientific input and raises questions about whether some species are receiving the protection the government has promised.

The study was developed this past year by 13 faculty members and 106 graduate students from eight universities nationwide. It was sponsored by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara and the American Institute of Biological Sciences based in Washington. The study is expected to be published by the end of the year.

When completed, this study will be the most complete and up to date scientific report card to one of the most significant federal environmental initiatives of the 1990s.

Although the study shows that designers of the plans do a good job on researching the details needed to ensure the safety of the plants and animals, it also showed that there were gaps. This is due to the fact that "we just don't know the information, and we don't for an awful lot of species," said Peter Kareiva, the University of Washington zoology professor who led the study.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has experts at its offices nationwide review the draft, and a formal agency response is due later this summer, said Laverne Smith, chief of the agency's Division of Endangered Species. She said that her agency would not comment until its critique is finished.

"The Endangered Species Act will allow developers to destroy habitat containing some rare species as long as other habitat is set aside and managed for species protection. Orange County for example, the Irvine Co., its largest developer, negotiated with regulators to craft a 37,000-acre preserve for the California gnatcatcher and other rare creatures. The developer, in turn, was granted freedom from endangered species laws on certain land outside the preserve." Schoch

The Orange County plan constructed a piece of habitat that is larger than the cities of Costa Mesa and Irvine combined. It is solely used to protect species. Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coalition for Habitat Conservation, called the review process rigorous. "I've watched the process up close and personal, and seen the level of review involved in it. It's been a tough, tough process," Pearce said.

The study examined 208 plans, or most of those in place in 1997. It examined 43 plans in-depth, including the Orange County and one in San Diego County. More than half involved construction, with another quarter related to logging.

The smallest plan studied is a project just four-tenths of an acre intended to protect the Florida scrub jay. The largest is a plan on 1.6 million acres in western Washington state containing the Northern spotted owl and the grizzly bear.

The draft indicates that many of the plans do not monitor the number of plants and animals that may be harmed or destroyed. Only a some percentage of the 43 habitat plans studied in depth contained clear monitoring programs adequate for measuring success of the plans, according to the study.

"I was surprised by the monitoring," Kareiva said. "I thought that without too much effort or expense, we could do a lot better monitoring. Otherwise, there's no way of finding out if they're effective or not."

Plans must often be completed quickly by an overworked staff. "Often, the time pressure under which they're put together is enormous," said Kareiva. He said he felt tremendous sympathy for the Fish and Wildlife Service, which has been deeply involved in the process. The explosion of HCPs "puts a huge workload on them" Kareiva said.

If the proper steps are taken into developing these plans, they should be capable of protecting species.

One bright spot in some plans, Fran James , a professor in biological science at Florida State University, said, is how they manage sensitive habitats using such techniques as controlling harmful nonnative weeds that can crowd out sensitive native plants. And few other tools besides HCPs are available to manage endangered species on private land, she said.

"This tool, even though it has its flaws, we really need to think positively about how to make it better," said James, immediate past president of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

"The study comes at a crucial juncture for HCPs, which grew out of a 1982 change in the Endangered Species Act that gave landowners more flexibility in dealing with rareplants and animals. The first such plan in the nation was created on San Bruno Mountain south of San Francisco to protect the fragile Mission blue butterfly.

California has become a focal point for HCP planning, in part because 237 of the state's plants and animals are federally listed as endangered or threatened-more than any other state except Hawaii. More impetus came in 1991 when Gov. Pete Wilson launched a state effort known as the Natural Community Conservation Planning program that has yielded some of the largest and most ambitious plans in the nation." Schoch

"Overall, I don't see how a study could have been done better," said Peter Brussard, a biology professor at the University of Nevada at Reno who has worked with the HCP program. It's probably as free of bias as any of those studies can be."