ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Getting Caught in the Gnatcatcher’s Net

Though said to be endangered, the California gnatcatcher is proving to be a feisty inhabitant of the coastal sage scrub in Southern California. While most people are not familiar with this bird, both the development community and environmentalists are well aware of its growing symbolic power in the future of development. Already, the gnatcatcher has become a key player in wrangling over toll roads and development.

Now comes an interesting proposal from Gov. Pete Wilson, at the very time that federal and state petitions are pending to grant the gnatcatcher endangered species status. As part of the environmental agenda he released last week, Wilson proposed a scientific panel to work out a comprehensive plan to set aside selected coastal sage scrub habitat. Everybody would then have a better idea what land would be spared and what would be available for development.

The idea was floated by the Irvine Co. in a letter last month to Douglas P. Wheeler, secretary of the state Resources Agency. Developers increasingly have been outspoken about their frustration over the gnatcatcher issue, arguing that red tape and conflicting guidelines have made it extremely difficult to proceed.

But this is not just a developer-driven scheme. There is a sense among some environmentalists that species preservation may lie in cooperative efforts to protect tracts of land from encroachment. Bill Dempsey, a field representative for the Nature Conservancy, says the proposal shows that the governor recognizes that time is wasting.

The Nature Conservancy’s support is based on the discouraging premise that is it so late in the game that even an “endangered” designation may be of little practical value to some species. So why not find, in the literal and figurative sense, common ground? The idea makes sense.

A state plan will not necessarily satisfy the federal government, which has its own review process. Moreover, the Irvine Co. wants to put endangered species classification on hold, a suggestion that ought to be regarded with healthy skepticism. And the question of who will pay to set aside land from development must be answered. But the proposal offers the seed of a cooperative approach for interest groups that may not always have the same point of view.

So this plan rests on a sound premise: that the preservation of the ecosystem is in everybody’s best interest.