Irvine Co. Urged That Governor Undertake Environment Project

With thousands of acres of its own land at stake, the Irvine Co. was instrumental during the last month in persuading the Wilson Administration to undertake a pilot project that would set aside prime, developable land in Orange County and elsewhere for endangered species.

The program, part of Gov. Pete Wilson’s 14-point environmental agenda unveiled Monday, is designed to help the Irvine Co. and other developers avert an impending political war with environmentalists over the fate of the California gnatcatcher, a tiny songbird that nests only in vanishing coastal sage scrub in Southern California and northern Baja California.

Environmentalists blame rampant development for wiping out much of the scrub so vital to the gnatcatcher, and have filed an emergency petition with the federal government to have the bird declared an endangered species--a move that could pose an obstacle to development plans throughout large stretches of Southern California.

They also filed a petition in Sacramento for a similar designation under the state’s endangered species act, but a decision by the state’s Fish and Game Commission will take at least a year.

The pilot project urged by the Irvine Co. and ultimately proposed by Wilson seeks to head off a politically bloody battle between environmentalists and developers by asking an independent scientific panel to determine just how much land in Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and possibly San Diego counties should be set aside to preserve the gnatcatcher habitat.

The trade-off for developers would be reasonable “certainty” that they could build on other coastal sage scrub land left off the list.

“Time is money to them,” said Doug Wheeler, Wilson’s resources secretary. “They have to obtain financing for their projects with the certainty that they’re not going to encounter undue delay.”

Wheeler said the idea for the pilot project was first proposed to him by the state’s Department of Fish and Game, which is currently reviewing the state endangered species application for the gnatcatcher.

Wheeler said he also received a telephone call from Monica Florian, Irvine’s vice president for strategic planning, who urged him to include the pilot program on Wilson’s environmental agenda.

“The Irvine Co. is one of those large landowners which has expressed frustration about the current methodology” of dealing with endangered species, Wheeler said Monday. “They encouraged us to participate.”

Wheeler said the pilot program was designed to test a new, proactive approach to saving endangered species that relies on scientific judgment and doesn’t begin after a developer has graded or built on a sensitive site.

The pilot program, which has the backing of the Nature Conservancy, is aimed for Orange and surrounding counties because the brewing fight over the coastal sage scrub and the gnatcatcher, if left unchecked, would yield “another confrontation of the magnitude of the problems with the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest,” Wheeler said.

For the Irvine Co., the fight involves about 20,000 of its 63,000-acre empire, Florian said.

Since the company has already agreed to dedicate half to two-thirds of its 20,000 acres to open space, the gnatcatcher question affects only the remaining acres, land that is carpeted by the sage scrub but would otherwise be developed in Orange County, she said.

Concern about the gnatcatcher has reverberated throughout the development community, and Florian said she has been talking to environmentalists and other builders for more than a year to find a solution like the pilot program.

“We are interested in finding a way that the environmental objectives can be met in a way that is less disruptive to the economics of the area and the business, obviously, of the Irvine Co.” she said.

Wheeler said it will take 30 to 60 days to convene the first meeting of a “consensus” group of developers, environmentalists, governor’s officials and scientists to begin the work of picking the scientific panel.

The panel, however, may have no authority if the gnatcatcher joins the national endangered species list. That list is governed by federal law that requires landowners to avoid harming habitat and compensate for any loss.

If the gnatcatcher is added to the federal list, it doesn’t mean development of the habitat is prohibited. It simply means developers must go through a time-consuming process of obtaining permits from federal biologists and coming up with mitigation plans.