Precautions Taken to Protect Wildlife : Environment: Although the spill is heading away from the wetlands, officials are taking steps to safeguard migratory birds and endangered species.

The oil spill that threatened Orange County beaches Thursday night appeared to be headed away from the Bolsa Chica wetlands, where thousands of birds nest and breed in one of California’s largest ecological reserves.

But officials Thursday took no chances on a shift in sea and wind conditions, because if the oil was to reach the environmentally sensitive salt marshes along Pacific Coast Highway, the result would be disastrous for migratory birds, including one endangered species: the California brown pelican.

Booms designed to block oil were secured at the waterway openings to the 120 acres of tidally influenced Bolsa Chica wetlands near Pacific Coast Highway and Warner Avenue as well as three other environmentally sensitive coastal areas in Orange County: the 700-acre Upper Newport Bay, the roughly 70-acre Huntington Beach wetlands at the mouth of the Santa Ana River, and the Seal Beach National Ecological Reserve.

The oil would have to somehow get past the booms and enter the estuaries to threaten those endangered species, officials said. Only the brown pelican forages at sea for its food.

Brooks G. Harper, acting supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southern California office, said: “We have a particular interest in migratory birds and endangered species.”

The California brown pelican, California least tern, the light-footed clapper rail, and the salt marsh bird’s beak, an upper marsh coastal plant, are all endangered species found in these four refuges, Harper said. In fact, 70% of the clapper rail’s population in the country is found in Upper Newport Bay.

But only the brown pelican is here now, Harper said. The three other species are not nesting or breeding in Orange County’s estuaries. A crew of volunteers cleaning and nursing injured birds has reported no brown pelicans.

“There are a limited number of (brown) pelicans migratory to the area but (the species) is in the area now . . . and it is susceptible to injury from the oil,” Harper said. The pelicans, of which there are typically “thousands along the coast, and hundreds” in the general area of the spill, “plunk out anchovies (from the sea) and small bait they dive for. If we should lose the clapper rail, it would be big trouble, but these birds are strictly a marsh bird. So the oil would have to get into the estuaries.”

“In terms of brown pelicans, there are typically thousands along the coast,” Harper said. The birds like to roost in the Long Beach Harbor area and fly south to forage, he said.

“The least tern won’t be straggling in until late February,” said Lorraine Faber, past president of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, the environmental group that fought for restoration of the wetlands. “But the pelican and the scoter ducks go out to the ocean so we may see them coming back with oil.”

The Bolsa Chica wetlands reserve totals 1,600 acres. However, there are only 120 acres of wetlands that the tide now reaches and which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service considers active wetlands. Oil, ironically, continues to be pumped from under many acres of the Bolsa Chica area, just as it is throughout the coastal area of the city.

A 20-year battle between conservationists and developers over the estuary appears to have been settled with an agreement calling for the development of hundreds of homes in the area and restoration of nearly 1,000 acres of wetlands. If the restoration is accomplished, the Bolsa Chica wetlands.