Development Perils Wildlife, Study Says

One of Southern California’s richest natural habitats--home to a dwindling wildlife population of deer and rare California birds--is being polluted and destroyed by surrounding subdivisions, according to environmental consultants hired by county planners.

And unless a development on the drawing boards of the Santa Margarita Co. is moved hundreds of feet farther back than proposed, the consultants contend, much of the remaining natural resource will be lost.

In a report issued Friday, the consultants charged that the company’s Las Flores Planned Community could tarnish an adjacent 5-mile stretch of lush creek-bed canyon, known as the Arroyo Trabuco, just east of Mission Viejo. It was made part of the O’Neill Regional Park in 1982 and later declared a protected wilderness area. But the consultants say county planning officials have consistently allowed developers to build too close to the fragile canyon.

Santa Margarita executives dismissed the findings, noting that the report’s chief author, biologist Karlin Marsh, has already testified against the Las Flores project.

In an earlier interview, Santa Margarita Co. President Anthony R. Moiso complained that critics of his project are extremists.

“This is not Yellowstone, this is not some pristine wilderness,” Moiso said. “This canyon is beautiful, but it’s surrounded by a half-million people. . . . It’s just nutty.”

Even as the county considers approving the development, federal officials are investigating whether Santa Margarita violated fish and wildlife laws by destroying 154 acres of the property’s coastal sagebrush, which provides nesting for the San Diego cactus wren and the California gnatcatcher.

Santa Margarita executives acknowledge that the ground was plowed, but say an employee mistakenly thought that barley was to be planted there, as it is on some adjoining agricultural fields.

The executives say Santa Margarita has a generous record of setting aside natural habitats as parkland, and they reject any suggestion that the land--now designated to hold houses--was deliberately harmed to make way for the development. They complain that federal interest in their project is being driven by an increasingly strident minority of county residents who are intent on stopping all development.

“Where do they get the idea that I represent the minority?” asked Peter DeSimone, the National Audubon Society’s manager of the Starr Ranch Sanctuary in South County. “People in Orange County are starting to become much more environmentally sensitive. I think they (company executives) are living in the past.”

The consultants’ report, compiled by Marsh and two other wildlife biologists for the Environmental Management Agency’s division of Harbors, Beaches and Parks, is only the latest salvo in what has been a 20-month war over Las Flores. Santa Margarita executives say the 1,000-acre planned community, more than half of which would remain open space, would both protect the delicate arroyo and provide desperately needed affordable housing for another rare species: the first-time home buyer in Orange County.

The development debate is expected to prove to be a pivotal one. Company executives cast it as a test case for future growth in the county, while environmentalists see it as a last chance to rescue one of the region’s richest habitats by blocking suburban encroachment.

Both sides also say the county’s handling of Las Flores thus far stands as a textbook example of how Orange County’s system of planning works or fails, depending on who offers the assessment. The next hearing on the issue is scheduled for Tuesday when the Planning Commission will consider a staff report.

“The process is a good one,” said Moiso, the silver-haired, cowboy-booted great-grandson of wealthy landowner Richard O’Neill. “The plan is better now than when it was first submitted.”

Environmentalists complain, however, that the Planning Commission process has been heavily weighted in favor of the developer.

At a hearing last month, DeSimone--who stresses that he does not oppose “reasonable” development--complained that commissioners seemed more eager to justify the project than seriously evaluate its environmental impact.

DeSimone’s comment came during verbal sparring with Planning Commission Chairman Stephen A. Nordeck, who complained that commissioners were being asked to protect deer and other wildlife in the arroyo “when we don’t technically know what’s left.”

DeSimone responded: “If we had enough information for the arroyo, then we could make a real sound decision. If the commission feels we don’t have enough information, then why are we to this point?”

Other commissioners displayed impatience with the opposing environmentalists.

“I just don’t think deer and an urban development mix,” said Commissioner Roger D. Slate. Then he quipped, “Why don’t we plant some apple orchards and put some salt licks out there, and issue some hunting licenses?”

Commissioner Earl Wooden suggested that the project could be fine-tuned later in the process.

“We’ll get down to real precise planning down the road,” Wooden said, “and there’ll be another time to talk about ‘so many feet’. . . .”

DeSimone replied: “My experience has shown me when you get to that stage it’s kind of impossible to do anything, it’s kind of an 11th-hour thing and it doesn’t really work.”

Las Flores would lie immediately south of the company’s Rancho Santa Margarita development, a still growing community of 15,000 residents and 3,500 jobs.

As envisioned, it would be a collection of 2,500 homes dotted with schools, parks and offices. About half the land, 555 acres, would remain as open space.

And about half of the homes would sell for less than $200,000, at least $50,000 below what is now the average selling price for a house in Orange County, company executives say. The project also provides some light industry and research and development job sites, so residents could go to work without having to commute on clogged highways.

Company executives have said the development would at various points be from 300 feet to 1,800 feet from the bluff top edge of Arroyo Trabuco, a distance they describe as ample to protect the fragile ecology there.

In fact, Donald Moe, Santa Margarita’s senior vice president for corporate affairs, argues that the project represents “a new generation of urban planning” that is highly sensitive to the environment.

The county’s environmental consultants dispute that.

According to their report, Las Flores would provide at most a buffer of 200 feet of natural habitat and another 100 feet of landscaped transitional area. At some spots, the project would leave only 15 feet to 65 feet of natural habitat along with a transition area of 100 feet from the Tijeras Creek, which branches off of Arroyo Trabuco.

The consultants conclude that a buffer of at least 400 feet is needed to protect remaining deer in the arroyo, from 400 feet to 900 feet to protect predatory birds and from 400 feet to 800 feet to protect the gnatcatcher, which is expected to be added to the federal endangered species list within the next year.

“The probable future listing of this bird makes adequate gnatcatcher (protection) particularly crucial,” the consultants said. In a section written by Marsh, the consultants chided county officials for failing to demand wider buffer zones from Santa Margarita and other developers, noting that experts warned as far back as 1980 of the danger of placing houses too close to the arroyo.

“Housing visible from the arroyo floor, graded slopes, a golf course unnaturally green with irrigation, traffic noise and span bridges all detract from the wilderness aesthetic setting the arroyo was intended to preserve,” the consultants say.

”. . . The impacts of encroaching residential development took their toll on several of the arroyo’s wildlife species.”

Deer appear to have declined in the arroyo by about 90%, largely because of development from nearby Mission Viejo, the consultants say.

The consultants also say that storm drain runoff, including “oil, grease and other pollutants” from Mission Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita, appear to be degrading the arroyo and endangering “clean-water dependent” wildlife that lives there.

The report suggests that the company be required to replace the lost coastal sage shrub by setting aside a similar amount elsewhere in the area.

Company executives note that while 253 acres of Las Flores sage shrub would destroyed by the development, 379 acres would be saved. Only 10 pairs of cactus wren and 4 pairs of gnatcatchers would be lost, while that many or more of the birds would be saved.

“We pay all the bills” for highways and other public amenities needed by county residents, Moiso concluded. “I think that we really are responsible citizens. The development community is not the problem. It’s the solution.”

Threatened Birds At Los Flores Cactus wren Average 8.5 inches long. Dark crown, streaked back, heavily barred wing and tail, densely spotted breast. Black-tailed gnatcatcher Average 4.5 inches long. Blue-gray above, grayish-white below.