Whose Habitat? : UCI’s Proposed Hilltop Residence for Its Chancellor Would Endanger Rare Bird, Plant Life, Survey Finds; Planners Say There’s Room to Coexist

A controversial, hilltop home for UC Irvine’s chancellor would have “unavoidable adverse impacts” on an extremely rare bird, a new environmental survey concludes.

But campus planners say the survey findings have enabled them to design the $3-million home and entertainment facility to permit peaceful coexistence with California gnatcatchers and other sensitive species found on the four-acre plateau of rare coastal sage lands near the campus’s southern edge.

A group of faculty biologists, however, fear that the proposed 13,500-square-foot facility and accompanying driveway and parking lots will wipe out what they regard as the campus’s most environmentally sensitive spot. They say it will drive away nesting gnatcatchers, which federal wildlife officials say are disappearing so rapidly in Southern California that they are being studied for possible emergency listing as an endangered species.

“It would be very bad for our public image if we developed a large ‘entertainment facility’ in such a manner that it eliminated the habitat of a species on the verge of listing as an endangered species,” wrote evolutionary biology professors Richard E. MacMillen and Timothy J. Bradley in a letter to campus planners and the chancellor asking that the project be moved.

Joseph F. Di Mento, UCI’s director of long-range campus development, said he is confident that new plans for University House will avoid 95% of the sensitive habitat, and the remainder can be restored at the nearby ecological preserve.

There has been no official response to the professors’ Aug. 7 letter.

But Di Mento, a professor and environmental attorney, said he met informally with Bradley last week, showed him the new site drawing and assured him of the administration’s intent to protect bird and plant habitat.

“I said that we’re certainly going to mitigate as we promised, but that there is no intention to move the site,” Di Mento said. He added that he hoped to allay faculty concerns when he presents the plan at the next meeting of the Academic Senate’s land-use committee.

Bradley, who is chairman of the committee, could not be reached for comment.

UCI is the only University of California campus without an official chancellor’s residence on or near the campus. From the university’s beginnings in the mid-1960s, its leaders have resided in a home about six miles from campus in Newport Beach.

But long-range plans have always called for construction of an official residence, entertainment facility and guest quarters on the panoramic hilltop site. And in 1989, the university launched a private drive to raise $3 million in donations for University House. Campus officials say fund raising, which was at $800,000 in pledges last June, is going better. Groundbreaking is targeted for spring, 1991.

Even the project’s staunchest critics agree that the home--with a commanding view of Upper Newport Bay, the Pacific Ocean and the campus below--could be designed to protect a very rare spring-blooming plant, Dudleya multicaulis, and nesting habitat for the cactus wren. That is not possible for the gnatcatchers, they say.

In their letter to Di Mento and Chancellor Jack W. Peltason, MacMillen and Bradley urged that UCI set a public example and build University House elsewhere on campus. They asked that the habitat be upgraded and added to an adjacent environmental preserve. They further recommended that the university cancel plans to cut a road through a ravine at the plateau’s southern foot, citing intense nesting activity by gnatcatchers and cactus wrens on the opposite hillside.

“This valley and the hills on either side are the focus of the greatest diversity of wild plants and animals remaining on the campus,” the professors wrote, citing the findings of the environmental survey. “This area is a biological gem which requires preservation . . .”

The study by the Santa Ana-based Chambers Group was commissioned by the university to determine what sensitive species of plants and wildlife live in the project area. Di Mento emphasized that the survey was only advisory.

The most serious concern is the California gnatcatcher, a small darting bird that nests and forages for food in coastal sage scrub that once covered much of the arid hills, mesas and washes of coastal Southern California. The birds once were abundant throughout Southern California. But over the past three decades, development has replaced as much as 70% of their habitat in San Diego County, and an estimated 90% of it in Orange County, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists in Laguna Niguel.

A federal survey of gnatcatchers is nearing completion. If it shows a serious decline in the state’s gnatcatcher population, the agency could move to place the species on the federal lists of threatened or endangered species. And if there is evidence of widespread threat to the bird, biologist Loren Hayes said the agency “cannot discount the possibility of emergency listing.”

Such status could delay or threaten projects where gnatcatchers are known to nest.

The Chambers’ report estimates that five to seven California gnatcatchers live on the University House site or in the nearby reserve, a slope filled with buckwheat, coastal sage and other vegetation that once covered the hillsides of much of coastal Southern California. The report mentions the sighting of a nest with four newly hatched gnatcatchers by campus residents during a bird walk last June.

The Chambers’ study also identified specimens of D. multicaulis on the western edge of the University House site and recommended that the project be designed to avoid disturbing the plants. Like the gnatcatcher, the plant is a candidate for listing as a federally endangered species, but Chambers’ biologists concluded that is not imminent.

Three pairs of cactus wren were found on or near the University House site, where there are stands of prickly pear cactus favored by the blue-gray bird with white and cinnamon-colored underbellies, according to the Chambers report. The state Department of Fish and Game has listed it as a species of “special concern,” and is actively monitoring its status.

The Chambers report recommends a series of mitigation measures:

* A 100-foot-wide fenced buffer zone between the project and the environmental reserve.

* Use of native plants useful for wildlife foraging in the project landscaping.

* Replacement of any lost coastal sage acreage on campus or elsewhere.

* Monitoring of replacement efforts for at least five years.

But the report warned that loss of as little as five acres of coastal sage scrub could have a “devastating effect on the future status of this species.” And it predicted that even if all mitigation efforts are taken, “there will continue to be significant, unavoidable adverse impacts to the California gnatcatcher.”

Di Mento described the report’s conclusions as a “worst-case scenario.” Its recommendations, he said, have been incorporated into the project. And because of the findings, a new site plan calls for far less grading of the hilltop, and a configuration of parking lots, driveways and the house itself to avoid most of the environmentally sensitive areas.

He declined to release the new site plan until after he has shown it to faculty at the next land-use committee meeting, expected sometime in the next several weeks. But he expressed confidence that the new plan would overcome any lingering objections of the biologists.

He also said that no full environmental impact study is required for the project, which already has been approved in concept by the UC Board of Regents. As a state university, the campus is exempt from local zoning review.

RARE BIRDS AND PLANTS POSE DILEMMA FOR UC IRVINE CHANCELLOR’S RESIDENCE

Long-delayed plans are under way to build a 13,500-square-foot official home and entertainment facility for UCI’s chancellor on a four-acre hilltop parcel. But the coastal sagebrush habitat is home to at least two rare birds and a rare plant species, prompting calls to move the house.