The Battle of Extraordinary Baldwin Lake : Conservationists, Developers Engaged in Tug of War Over Bucolic Area

Against a backdrop of rolling meadows spiked with sagebrush and pine trees, biologist Larry LaPre nudged one of the world’s rarest plants with his boot.

“That little guy there is a Big Bear checkerbloom,” said LaPre, president of the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society.

Nearby, nestled among clumps of grass and cow dung, was a patch of equally rare slender-petaled mustard plants, which grow only on 12 scattered acres here.

On the far side of the lake, a bald eagle soared high above a small creek containing one of California’s two known colonies of unarmored three-spine stickleback fish.

Conservationists like LaPre say Baldwin Lake, a shallow body of rainwater and melted snow 80 miles east of Los Angeles in the San Bernardino Mountains, harbors one of the nation’s largest concentrations of rare and endangered plants and animals.

Affordable Land

The area also contains some of the only affordable undeveloped land left in Big Bear Valley, the western half of which is a congested resort community serving the 10 million people who live within a two-hour drive of the place.

Now, commercial and residential growth is pushing east and threatening to destroy the stickleback’s outpost, the pine trees in which a winter colony of bald eagles spot prey and the open spaces inhabited by 14 plants not found anyplace else.

In reaction, conservationists are buying up property and, in some cases, blocking development on private property in an effort to preserve what remains of an ecosystem born of glaciers retreating from the 20-mile-long Big Bear Valley more than 15,000 years ago.

“Our job is to try to balance the realities of continued growth in Big Bear with the protection of the wildlife and open spaces,” said Tim Krantz, the botanist and county commissioner who has led an ongoing fight to set aside much of the Baldwin Lake area as a nature preserve.

Developer Critics

But some developers and real estate agents think the conservationists are going too far in their efforts to protect what one developer called “plants that no one has ever heard of.”

Marie Hilliard, co-owner of Spencer Real Estate, one of the largest realty firms in the area, argued that Big Bear Valley is already surrounded by federally protected U.S. Forest Service land. “I’m sure those mustards, eagles and whatever . . . have plenty of room,” she said.

“It is true that the Forest Service has a lot of land,” LaPre said, “but not a lot of eagle and plant habitat.”

“Something extraordinary, biologically, is going on at Baldwin Lake,” agreed Krantz, who conducted surveys of the area’s rare plants for the U.S. Forest Service in 1978. “It seems to have been overly endowed with unique species.”

Before cattle ranchers and miners settled the valley in the late 1800s, it was inhabited by Serrano Indians, who considered it the sacred birthplace of the world’s wildflowers, Krantz said.

Only about 1,400 acres of meadowland remain of the estimated 7,000 acres that carpeted the length of the valley before a dam was built on its western end in the 1890s to fill Big Bear Lake, Krantz said.

Commercial Growth

In later years, commercial growth occurred near the man-made lake and covered more of the area with highways, cabins, condominiums, shops and restaurants. Today, the eastern end of the valley encompassing Baldwin Lake is the last stronghold for many of the area’s most sensitive plants and animals, wildlife authorities said.

To drum up support for their cause, Krantz and others have made a point of showing off the region’s wildlife to a host of private, state and federal wildlife agencies.

The main attractions are the 25 to 30 bald eagles that arrive here each year in late October and stay through mid-April. Wildlife authorities believe that more bald eagles winter at Baldwin Lake and Big Bear Lake than anywhere else in Southern California.

The Jeffrey pine, pinion and juniper trees ringing the lakes provide good perches from which the eagles can spot prey. Wildlife authorities contend, however, that condominium development could destroy many of the trees and drive America’s national bird out of the area.

Alarmed by the threat to eagles and endangered plants, the U.S. Forest Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Nature Conservancy and local water districts have all targeted Baldwin Lake as a region where wildlife could be preserved and managed on a permanent basis.

Other Plans

Others have different plans for the region.

San Bernardino County, for example, has initiated a plan to install water and sewage lines on the eastern side of Baldwin Lake, which would allow improvements on more than 2,000 lots.

Some conservationists have argued, however, that there is barely enough water available now to satisfy the needs of the area’s wildlife. Baldwin Lake is actually a dry lake bed for about half of the year.

“One of the biggest problems for plants and eagles here is that there is not enough water to go around in the Baldwin Lake basin,” said Steve Loe, a U.S. Forest Service biologist. “The question is: Who is going to take it in the shorts? The wildlife or housing?”

In recent years, the wildlife seems to have had the upper hand.

Since 1980, the Nature Conservancy, a private environmental organization, has acquired 575 acres of property on the north side of Baldwin Lake. Most of the land has been incorporated into the Big Bear Preserve System. The system includes 15 designated preserves across the valley containing 21 species of unique wildflowers as well as eagles, migratory waterfowl and rare butterflies.

Seen as Bullies

The trend toward preservation has angered some developers and real estate agents who contend that conservationists are becoming bullies in the valley.

“If they want that land why don’t they buy it from the property owner at fair market value instead of stopping people from developing it?” Hilliard said.

Her statement was a pointed reference to a recent case in which conservationists managed to block a plan to build a cemetery on private property on the north side of Baldwin Lake.

Endangered plants are also the focus of another controversial plan to build a park and baseball diamond on the west side of Baldwin Lake.

Local officials made an urgent request for the new park last year after an airplane crashed into a baseball diamond situated near the runway of Big Bear Airport, about two miles west of Baldwin Lake. Authorities stopped play at the ballpark for fear that another crash might occur while youngsters were on the diamond.

“We’ve got 900 kids without a ballpark--Little Leaguers are an endangered species up here too,” said Jim McDill, director of the Big Bear Valley Recreation and Parks District. “I’m willing to do everything I can to save some of the (plant) habitat--but there has got to be a little give and take.”

Protection of Plants

Krantz agrees but has worked closely with local officials to ensure that patches of Big Bear checkerbloom and slender-petaled mustard near the proposed site are not destroyed or harmed by construction.

The tiny band of unarmored three-spine sticklebacks in Shay Creek may not be so lucky. The spring-fed creek has been reduced to barely a trickle, apparently because of a combination of unusually dry years and increased pumping of underground water.

The problem was discovered last summer by James Malcolm, a University of Redlands biology professor who has ended up baby-sitting 225 of the endangered inch-long fish placed in campus aquariums until the creek can somehow be restored.

Water Added

As a stopgap measure, the Big Bear City Community Services District last August was persuaded to tap a residential water line and put five gallons of water a minute into the creek. Winter rains, Malcolm hoped, would add enough additional water to enable him to return the fish sometime in April.

The rains came. But in early March, the spring suddenly reversed itself for the first time in memory and began sucking water back underground, said Michael Perry, general manager of the Big Bear City Community Services District.

With little time to spare, Malcolm and state Fish and Game officials are trying to find a way of preventing what could be the extinction of a particular variety of fish in these parts.

Saving the sticklebacks may be impossible, Krantz said, but the “war is far from over at Baldwin Lake.”