ENVIRONMENT / HILL COUNTRY HAVOC : A Tiny Songbird Foils Developers’ Big Plans : Just a hop ahead of builders’ bulldozers, the vanishing Golden-cheeked Warbler makes it to the protection of endangered species status.

Consider the case of the Golden-cheeked Warbler, whose fate has caused a bit of havoc in the Texas Hill Country.

Last May 4, the small insect-eating bird was placed on the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Almost immediately, a firestorm erupted, with hundreds of citizens attending public meetings, developers howling in protest, headlines blaring and environmentalists declaring a great victory.

The Golden-cheeked Warbler has joined the red squirrel of Arizona, the Colorado squawfish and the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest at the center of a heated debate over whether the endangered species law should be relaxed to allow development at the expense of habitat.

The listing of the warbler means that the bird’s habitat may not be destroyed. And, if that is the case, developers will not be allowed to build in much of the nesting area, which happens to be on some of the choicest real estate in this part of the country. The designation has led a number of people, particularly those with money on the line, to mention that Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. was right when he said recently that the Endangered Species Act may be unnecessarily restrictive.

“I think there needs to be some equity in the Endangered Species Act,” developer Don Bosse said. “There needs to be a balance between endangered species and development.”

That the warbler is moving toward extinction is not terribly new news in these parts, but it was becoming clear that the day was approaching when the wildlife service would begin the process of categorizing the species as endangered.

Then members of Earth First!, the radical environmental group, started noticing that warbler habitat was being bulldozed--something that was perfectly legal so long as the species was not protected by law.

The environmental activists brought their findings to the wildlife service, which acted immediately under an emergency provision of the Endangered Species Act after it found the habitat to be “threatened by urban expansion and the widespread clearing of Ashe junipers.” The wildlife service went on to say that perhaps 45% of the warbler’s home had been lost over the last 10 years and that 50% more of it could be destroyed by the year 2000.

So began the crisis of the warbler. The Austin American-Statesman newspaper said development was being stopped on 67,000 acres, a figure that environmentalists call vastly inflated. A little more than a week after the bird was added to the list, the wildlife service brought in representatives from Albuquerque, San Antonio and Ft. Worth for a hearing on the matter. So many people showed up that a second session had to be held.

People complained bitterly that a winding stretch of road on which a number of fatal accidents had occurred over the years could not be straightened because the work might interfere with the warbler habitat.

The 3M Co. announced that it was delaying a multimillion-dollar expansion of its research and development center until the question of the warbler habitat was settled. Work on a major shopping center was stopped.

The wildlife service has been working for weeks now to establish who may and may not build on their land.

“We’re staying busy,” Doug Fruge of the wildlife service said.

Earth First! has been busy as well, trying to monitor the Hill Country to make sure no further bulldozing goes on.

Neal Tuttrup, spokesman in Austin for the loosely knit organization, called the warbler a prime example of what can happen when environmentalists take on developers.

“It’s an interesting little microcosm,” Tuttrup said. “It’s the abstract issue in reality.”

However, the conflict need not have happened at all. Environmentalists and developers have been working together for 18 months to work out a regional plan that would afford protection for the warbler and other endangered species, which include another bird and a number of bugs. Ideally, the warbler would have been given legal protection at about the time the plan was approved, but that was short-circuited by the stepped-up clearing of land.

The regional plan is expected to be ready for wildlife service review by summer’s end.

Thousands of acres of habitat are already in the hands of the federal government because of takeovers of banks and savings institutions that made bad loans before the oil bust. The land in question belonged to developers whose plans were stymied by a falling real estate market. It has been suggested that the government property be part of the solution in the plan.

“It makes all the sense in the world,” said developer Bosse, who is also on the commission drawing up the plan.

“But rarely is one part of government able to talk to other parts of government.”