Study OKd on Saving Songbird Threatened by Flood Control Plan

The Assembly on Tuesday approved spending $250,000 for a study aimed at maintaining and restoring the habitat of an endangered songbird that nests in the way of a proposed Santa Ana River flood control project.

The measure, by Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), would grant the money to the San Diego Assn. of Governments, the lead agency coordinating plans to protect the habitat of the least Bell’s vireo, a bird once as common as the sparrow but now represented by only about 300 pairs in the wild.

The Assembly approved Stirling’s bill unanimously and without debate and sent it to the Senate.

The least Bell’s vireo migrates from Northern Mexico to the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County, building its nests in the dense woodlands along rivers and streams. More than a dozen public works projects in Southern California have been proposed in areas now inhabited by the species.

The biggest Orange County project affected by the bill is a $1-billion plan to control flooding on the Santa Ana River, which includes raising Prado Dam in Riverside County by 30 feet.

But because some of the birds build their nests in the wetlands upriver from the dam, that project cannot be built without a plan to minimize disruption of the endangered bird’s habitat and to mitigate any damage that is unavoidable, said Rick Alexander, a planner with the San Diego Assn. of Governments.

The San Diego-based program, which is already working on three habitat plans in that county, would use the new money called for in Stirling’s bill to finish those plans and begin one for the Santa Ana River, Alexander said.

“The idea behind it is to put together a comprehensive management plan which is going to save the bird, address its needs from Santa Barbara County to the border and make sure that all the mitigation efforts practiced by public and private proponents are being taken collectively,” Alexander said.

The Santa Ana River plan will be incorporated into the agency’s master plan for saving the bird throughout Southern California, Alexander said. He said more than 100 Southern California agencies are involved in the project.

“We’re creating an umbrella piece of information, communicating with everybody, and then you incorporate that into the particular project and negotiations proceed from that base, rather than a base of ignorance,” Stirling said.

The $250,000 called for in the bill would come from the state’s Environmental License Plate fund.