Dune Protection Agreement OKd : Environment: Accord will preserve 200-acre area near LAX that is home for the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly.

Environmentalists scored a major victory Friday when Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and other key city officials announced an agreement to preserve one of the last sections of Southern California’s once-extensive coastal sand dune system.

The land, 200 acres west of Los Angeles International Airport, is best known as a habitat for the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly. It is a remnant of a dune system that once stretched from Point Conception, above Santa Barbara, south to Mexico.

“I am very excited,” said Sallie Davison, president of Friends of the Dunes, a group that has worked since the 1970s to protect the dunes from development. “There are things out there that don’t exist anywhere else.”

The dunes were once dotted with ocean-view homes that were torn down as people moved away because of jet noise. Asphalt streets and fire hydrants from the old neighborhood remain inside the fenced-off area between LAX’s runways and the coast.

For years, the airport had planned to use 200 acres of the 300-acre dune system for a golf course and leave the remainder as a nature preserve. But pressure on airport officials to scale down the golf course plan grew after a study discovered that a number of insects and plants apparently exist only in the airport’s dunes.

The study, commissioned by the airport and completed this year, also concluded that 200 acres were needed to ensure animals and plants native to the dunes would flourish.

“The report clearly showed we would endanger dozens of rare species of plants and animals,” Bradley said.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and airport officials joined Bradley in a news conference at the dunes. Last July, Galanter, who represents the airport area, proposed that 200 acres be set aside for a preserve.

Struggling at times to be heard as jumbo jets roared overhead, Bradley, Galanter and airport officials all applauded the agreement, which calls for an 18-hole golf course to be built on the northernmost 100 acres. The plan still must be approved by the City Council and the California Coastal Commission.

“It . . . shows you can have an international airport and still respect the environment,” Galanter said.

“What we’ve tried to do here is strike a balance,” said Johnnie Cochran, president of the city’s Airport Commission.

The airport began work to establish a habitat for the El Segundo blue butterfly on the dunes in the late 1970s, shortly after the insect was declared endangered by the federal government. The butterfly now thrives in the area.

The airport proposal about five years ago to create the 200-acre golf course and 100-acre nature preserve stalled when the Coastal Commission questioned the development’s effect on the butterfly. A biological study of the dunes was then initiated.

The study by scientist Rudy Mattoni concluded that the native plant and animal life on the dunes had been seriously affected over the years by development and soil contamination.

The study identified more than 900 species of plants and animals on the dunes. At least nine insects and a flower apparently exist only on the dunes, and another 25 plant and animal species are found only on other Southern California coastal dune systems, the study concluded.

Mattoni said that $180,000 has been spent to restore about 40 acres of the dunes. He estimated that it would take about $2 million to restore the 200 acres earmarked for the preserve. Officials said they do not have funding.

“It depends on how thorough a job you want to do,” he said. “That is the variable.”

Mattoni said that while non-native plants must be removed from the dunes, the biggest challenge is to reintroduce species that once lived there but have vanished. He said 18 of 33 plants that disappeared have already been replanted with seeds collected from other dune areas.