Project May Threaten Butterflies’ Sanctuary : Ecology: Key West Coast roosting spot is in midst of planned luxury housing tract. The developer vows to protect monarch migration destination but environmentalists are skeptical.

It’s not nearly so well-known as the swallows that return to San Juan Capistrano, but the annual migration of monarch butterflies to Laguna Beach can be just as awe-inspiring.

Every winter for as long as anyone can remember, the orange and black butterflies have descended by the thousands over a secluded pine grove on the northern outskirts of Laguna Beach.

And they have remained there, nestled snugly among the limbs and needles of the tall pines, until it is warm enough for them to return to their summer homes throughout the western United States and Canada, where the butterflies cannot survive the subfreezing winter temperatures.

“They hang from the trees like grapes,” marveled Jeanette Merrilees, who lives near the winter nesting area. “They’re beautiful.”

But Laguna Beach’s role in this cyclic event may soon come to a screeching halt. A luxury home project is planned on the very spot where the butterflies roost, and the pine grove is tentatively scheduled to fall under the developer’s ax to make way for 27 homes on a 10-acre bluff-top estate known as Smithcliffs.

Outraged environmentalists, who just recently learned of the developer’s plans, are now pleading with county planning officials to salvage what they call a precious biological resource. They want development to skirt around the pine grove.

“Development as proposed will completely destroy one of the few remaining winter roost sites for monarch butterflies in Southern California,” wrote Peter Bryant, a UCI biological sciences professor, in a letter to county officials.

A county environmental impact report prepared for the project acknowledges the development will eliminate the monarch’s roost as it now exists.

“The results of this displacement of butterflies is unknown,” the report says.

A spokesman for the developer, Brinderson Real Estate Group of Irvine, said most of the butterflies cluster on just three trees in the grove and that those trees will be spared.

“They’re just trying to be as responsible as possible,” said Steven Fink, president of Lexicon Communications in Los Angeles, which handles media inquiries for Brinderson.

County officials also emphasized that the project is still being reviewed and that plans could change. The county Planning Commission is expected to make a final decision on the plan this fall, with hearings tentatively scheduled to begin in mid-September.

The brouhaha over the monarch butterfly--so popular nationwide that a bill is pending in Congress that would designate it as America’s national insect--is not the first in California, which is the only place in the United States where the butterflies spend the winter.

Every monarch butterfly west of the Great Plains wings its way to California for the winter, biologists say, while the monarchs living east of the Plains migrate to eastern Mexico to escape the cold. They fly thousands of feet in the air, navigating by the position of the sun and traveling up to 80 miles a day.

Laguna is one of about 100 known monarch roosting locations along the California coastline. At least six of the locations are in Orange County, with Laguna considered among the largest. The majority of the state’s roosting sites are located in Northern and Central California.

The monarchs find their favorite grove of trees by seeking specific humidity and temperature conditions, said Chris Nagano, an entomologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento. The number of butterflies varies greatly, with as many as 100,000 at some roosting spots along the Northern California coast and between 3,000 and 5,000 at the Laguna Beach location, Nagano said.

“They need trees because they provide wind protection,” said Walt Sakai, professor of biology at Santa Monica College. “The trees also provide a thermal blanket that maintains temperature and humidity. Come spring, they will migrate back inland and lay their eggs in milkweed.”

The number of roosting locations has been steadily dwindling both in California and Mexico, Nagano said. According to estimates by the Monarch Project, a private conservation group based in Portland, Ore., at least 21 monarch roosting sites have been destroyed or severely damaged in California, primarily because of development projects.

Because the entire population clusters in small groves of trees along the coast, the loss of these wintering sites endangers future migration, said Katrin Snow, director of the Monarch Project. And because these habitats continue to be lost, Snow said, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources responded a few years ago by labeling the monarch’s migration an “endangered phenomenon.”

Mexico has responded by establishing monarch reserves. In California, Gov. George Deukmejian signed legislation in 1987 that mandated a statewide survey of monarch habitats and encouraged the protection of its routes. The state Department of Fish and Game is still drawing up regulations to enforce the legislation.

On the local level, meanwhile, the counties of Marin and Santa Barbara, along with the cities of Santa Cruz, Pacific Grove and Capitola, have adopted or are in the process of adopting land-use policies and guidelines protecting monarch habitats.

Orange County’s general plan, on the other hand, does not recognize monarch roosts as a “significant resource” and makes no provisions for their conservation, county officials said. Officials added that monarch butterflies are not an endangered species and that there are no state or federal regulations protecting them or their habitat.

County planners first learned that the Smithcliffs property was a roosting spot for monarch butterflies several months ago.

At the time, the county was fielding far more criticism over the nature of the development itself. About 200 surrounding neighbors signed a petition protesting Brinderson’s plans which, they contended, would block views and increase traffic by building too many homes on too little property.

Although a private consultant was retained by the developer to study the butterfly situation, the monarchs rated only two paragraphs in the county’s 100-page-plus environmental impact report. Local environmentalists seized hold of the monarch issue, however, after that report was circulated around the county two months ago for public comment.

Bryant, the UCI professor, said he immediately telephoned friends at the XercesSociety, an invertebrate-preservation organization that serves as the umbrella group for the Monarch Project.

At the Monarch Project in Oregon, Snow raced to assess the situation. She became infuriated, she said, because county officials minimized the biological impact from the project in the environmental impact report.

“That is absolutely preposterous,” Snow said. “They are destroying a monarch habitat. That is a biological impact.”

Fink, the spokesman for Brinderson, disputed that and said that besides the three trees where the monarchs roost, a total of 70 pine trees on the property are to be spared. There are about 165 trees on the property. Planners said in an environmental report the developer had not specified whether the trees would be preserved as they are or relocated on the property.

“I can’t see that it (the development) would have a significant impact,” Fink said, adding that even if it did the monarch is not an endangered species.

Snow maintained, however, that there is no guarantee the monarchs would return during the winter once their roost has been disturbed. She added that monarchs choose their roosts based on a number of factors that include trees and grasses and their orientation to the ocean and wind.

“The most significant problem with this environmental impact report is there is no analysis of the monarch habitat, period,” Snow said. “They have to do that kind of background work.”

Kenneth C. Winter, manager of Orange County’s Land Planning Division, said he was not yet in a position to take sides on the issue.

“Will this development destroy the butterflies’ (roost)? It’s really unknown,” Winter said. “We will be looking into this much more thoroughly as we respond to the comments received. Now, we don’t have any details. It’s a new issue.”

BUTTERFLY BATTLEGROUND

Monarch butterfilies are orange butterflies with black markings and very short front legs. They are large and slow-flying

Monarchs can be found throughout the United States and in southern Canada.

They are one of the few butterflies found in the United States that migrate. Monarchs fly south in fhe fall, often in highly concentrated groups. They reappear in the north following spring.

Monarchs are part of the milkweed butterfly family, which also includes the viceroy butterfly. They are so called because as caterpilllars they feed on milkweed.

Source: Peterson Field Guides’ “Insects,” by Donald J. Borror and Richard E. White.