Refusal to Destroy Defines Us, Just as Much as the Will to Create : Environment: Too many California plants and animals face extinction. For selfish reasons, we humans should worry about the consequences.

Two hundred years ago, Los Angeles County was teeming with wildlife, a veritable crazy quilt of bio-diversity. The remnants of no fewer than 23 distinct ecosystems (more than any other county in the state) tell the tale. In the Los Angeles basin, grizzly bears ate their fill of rainbow trout, the Los Angeles sunflower bloomed alongside countless other wildflowers, the long-eared kit fox trotted at night in search of prey. Today, the grizzly bear is gone, the Los Angeles sunflower is extinct and the last sighting of the long-eared kit fox was in 1906.

Although most people probably regret these losses, they still feel that extinction is somehow normal, as in “what happened to the dinosaurs.” Unfortunately, the rate at which species are now becoming extinct worldwide is estimated to be 40 to 400 times “normal.” Unless action is taken soon, it is two minutes to midnight for more than 900 species of California plants and animals, the majority of which depend on habitats in the southern part of the state.

For strictly selfish reasons, we humans should worry about the consequences of this possible loss. Locked inside these plants and animals is an uninventoried treasure chest of compounds that have the potential to cure diseases, increase the vigor of domestic species and provide new opportunities to industry and agriculture.

In Southern California, the San Diego horned lizard’s ability to diet on ants whose bites paralyze and kill other small animals could shed light on possible anti-toxins for humans. Another Southern California native, the desert pupfish, displays evidence of an evolutionary “wonder kidney.” It can adapt to fresh water or seawater within seconds. One explanation for the pupfish’s amazing adaptability is that it evolved from the glacier-fed lakes of the ice age to the desert water holes of the present environment. Research on the pupfish may be of value to the thousands of people who suffer from kidney failure each year.

Unfortunately, all this may be academic, since our plant and animal populations are dwindling. Reversing this trend is difficult because many Southern California species--the San Diego horned lizard, the southern rosy boa, the salt-marsh skipper and more than 50 others--are “candidate” species. In other words, they are imperiled but the necessary paper work to categorize them as endangered has not yet been completed. The backlog can be deadly: In America, more than 300 species have become extinct while on the “candidate” list.

One problem is that these species are often regarded as obscure or unusual evolutionary artifacts of interest only to science. They aren’t. They are life forms that, until the last 150 years, were thriving in California. They are part of our environment, and every one of them counts.

More and more Californians seem to agree. As director of the Nature’s Conservancy’s California program, I have detected a growing recognition in the state that our wildlands should be preserved and that they inestimably contribute to our quality of life. This decade, our membership has grown from 15,000 to 90,000; our land acquisition and management efforts have multiplied as a result of an unprecedented number of partnerships with the public and private sectors. By 1986, the conservancy had been around for 25 years and had saved about 150,000 acres. At the end of this year, 400,000 acres will be protected. This exponential growth is the result of the conservancy working with the Bureau of Land Management, the Wildlife Conservation Board of the Department of Fish and Game and with the Department of Defense, as well as with countless individuals.

Lacking Europe’s centuries of art, architecture and urban life, the California’s settlers regarded the natural world as their culture as well as their livelihood. No surprise, then, that in California you find the first and strongest passion for the land as it is. Yosemite, Big Sur, Sequoia--all are testament to this celebration of nature. Now, a similar passion must be ignited in Southern California, one that can embrace such subtle landscapes as vernal pools, oak woodlands, river forests and coastal marshes.

This campaign can show that economic prosperity is not synonymous with wholesale species extinction. For starters, “Sliding Toward Extinction,” a federal report commissioned in 1987 by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildlife, should be reviewed. It underscores the need to increase acquisitions of critical habitats, to offer private landowners tax incentives to preserve and restore habitats and to establish legal protection for rare natural communities.

In the long run, maintaining the health of our plant and animal populations is far less expensive than waiting until intensive care is required to save a threatened species. For example, more than $27 million has been spent to nurse the condor back from the brink of extinction.

The yellow-billed cuckoo could be the next condor. A magnificent bird cursed with a wallflower name, more than 70,000 cuckoos once populated California’s river forests each summer. Forty nests were counted in the city of Los Angeles at the turn of the century. Last summer, fewer than 90 birds were sighted in California. To save the cuckoo will require a series of actions, from acquisition and restoration of river forests in California to the elimination of toxic pesticides from its winter habitat in South America.

Unlike most post-industrial societies, we have the opportunity to value and preserve examples of our primeval natural world. In the end, what we as a society refuse to destroy will define us as much as what we decide to create.