Sides Hold Their Ground During Gnatcatcher Showdown : Nature: Developers and conservationists do, however, agree to form panel to study the dilemma.

Taking a step toward a political truce, developers and conservationists locked in a fight over the California gnatcatcher met Monday and agreed to form a scientific panel responsible for collecting information about the bird’s vanishing Southern California habitat, coastal sage scrub.

But both sides remained far apart on the key issue in the brewing gnatcatcher controversy--whether conservationists would be willing to drop their petitions to have the 4 1/2-inch-long, gray and black songbird listed as an endangered species, said an environmentalist who attended Monday’s meeting.

“Our position is that we’re participating because we believe cooperation is useful,” Joel Reynolds, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said about the daylong meeting at Los Angeles International Airport. “(But) we do not believe it is necessary to withdraw or defer the petitions, and we have not done so.”

While Reynolds downplayed the significance of Monday’s meeting, a Wilson Administration official said that enough progress was made to announce the members of the scientific panel within days. He said the informal group of major Southern California developers, environmentalists and government officials also agreed to schedule additional meetings about the gnatcatcher over the next two weeks.

“We’re breaking new ground,” said Michael A. Mantell, undersecretary for resources. “This is unprecedented, and it takes time to work these things out. There is a continual process to talk openly, candidly, about policy and scientific issues.”

Monday’s meeting was the second under a Wilson Administration plan--announced in April after urging by the Irvine Co.--to bring all sides in the gnatcatcher controversy to the negotiating table. The aim is to head off a political war over vacant land in Southern California that some predict could be as nasty as that over the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.

The NRDC and a Massachusetts-based bird observatory has asked for the listing because they say only 1,200 to 2,000 pairs of gnatcatchers are left. Development has chewed up 70% to 90% of the bird’s coastal sage scrub habitat, they say, and the bird could become extinct in 20 years if official protection isn’t imposed on 250,000 acres of remaining scrub in Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties.

The state’s Fish and Game Commission has scheduled an Aug. 1 public hearing on the request, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should decide by September about the gnatcatcher listing.

Prospects of a listing have worried developers, who say the bird’s listing could ruin or retard plans for billions of dollars in roads, public projects and subdivisions. The Irvine Co., with about a third of its 63,000 acres at stake, has insisted that conservationists drop their gnatcatcher petitions in exchange for landowner willingness to set aside enough scrubland for the bird.

In pressing that point Monday, Mantell said the Irvine Co. and officials from the Santa Margarita Co., Baldwin Co. and a consortium of San Diego County landowners argued that only 3,500 of their collective 65,000 acres of scrubland were scheduled for development in the next two years.

But NRDC’s Reynolds said he and other environmentalists are unconvinced. “We looked at some maps,” he said, “but it was not anything approaching the kind of protection that the Endangered Species Act contemplates.”

Reynolds said the next meeting will be June 19.