Gnatcatcher Study Rebuts Finding That It’s Imperiled : Environment: Report by firm hired by developers says 100 square miles of habitat remain. But biologists point to many other reports indicating that the songbird is endangered and needs protection.

The environmental war over the California gnatcatcher turned into a battle of biologists Tuesday as Southern California developers released a new study concluding that the songbird is in no danger of extinction and should not be granted special protection.

The study, commissioned by the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, maintains that 100 square miles of gnatcatcher habitat have been set aside in Orange and San Diego counties for regional parks and other public, protected reserves. It also maintains that large populations of the bird live in Baja California.

Hugh Hewitt, an Irvine attorney representing the developer group, said the study will “devastate the credibility of the (proposal) and lead to its rejection. . . . The species is not even remotely imperiled.”

The state Fish and Game Commission will meet Aug. 1 in Newport Beach to decide whether to accept or deny the petition to protect the bird, which was filed by Massachusetts bird biologist Jonathan Atwood and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Other gnatcatcher studies by government and university biologists have concluded that the bird is at risk of extinction, Those findings have been filed with the commission to support the petition.

H. Lee Jones, a biologist with Michael Brandman Associates, the firm hired by the developers, said his study is more complete and up to date than those of other biologists because he had access to information from private landowners about gnatcatchers on their land.

Atwood, author of several studies on the gnatcatcher in the past 10 years, said he has not seen the new study but that its key arguments are old ones refuted by mainstream biology.

He also said the developers’ consultants and attorneys are playing a “psychological game” to confuse the Fish and Game commissioners, who are not scientists.

“If that’s all the ammunition they’ve got, I’m not worried,” Atwood said. “They are just grasping at straws. All we have to do is present straightforward, credible science.”

Under state law, the commission must declare the bird a candidate for protection if the information in the petition shows that such measures “may be warranted.”

If the bird is declared a candidate, its habitat would be immediately protected from development for one year. At the end of that year, the commission would review all scientific evidence and decide whether to list the bird, which would give it full protection.

“We have experts and they have experts . . . but the standard the commission has to consider is whether listing may be warranted, and there is no question in this case that that standard has been met,” said Joel R. Reynolds, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Hewitt said he will urge the commission to reject the gnatcatcher proposal because its main assertion--that nearly all of the bird’s remaining habitat in California is threatened with destruction within 20 years--is “patently false.”

“That single statement is chronically inaccurate. . . . It lurches into extremism. . . . There are hundreds of thousands of acres that have not been touched and will not be touched in the future,” Hewitt said.

Environmentalists and wildlife biologists point out that the developer study has not been published in a scientific journal or reviewed by peers, so there is no way to verify it.

“The developers have all kinds of highly paid people running around doing studies for them,” Atwood said, “yet they . . . have been so closed with their information, and they have not let us on their land to collect our own. That does not look like good science.”

Included in the 100 square miles of permanently protected habitat outlined in the new report are about 15,000 acres dedicated to the public by the Irvine Co. and about 8,000 acres set aside by the Santa Margarita Co.

Atwood argued that the land in public ownership may not prove suitable for large numbers of gnatcatchers, which are very selective about the elevation and vegetation mix of their nesting areas.

For example, he said, Crystal Cove State Park represents a large block of coastal sage scrub, but it is not home to many of the birds.

Jones, who produced the study for the developer group, said he cannot estimate yet how many of the acres cited by his report support gnatcatchers or how many pairs exist there.

“I can’t say there are gnatcatchers on every bit of that,” he said. “But we can say that a very large amount contains gnatcatchers.”

Past scientific reports have concluded that the bird needs protection, because 70% to 90% of its habitat in California has been destroyed, wildlife biologists said. The new study asserts, however, that the losses were overestimated and that 47% of the songbird’s habitat remains.

Another main finding of the Jones study is that 2.5 million gnatcatchers live in Baja.

Ornithologists, however, have long considered those a different subspecies than California gnatcatchers. The developer group maintains that the subspecies issue remains arguable and uncertain, so it is illogical to dismiss millions of birds.

But Atwood said the state commission should not consider what is in Mexico. “They are supposed to look only at the flora and fauna of California,” he said.

Hewitt said the developer group hired its own biologists because “the campaign to list the gnatcatcher has been fundamentally dishonest from the beginning. . . . There is a history of abuse, rhetoric and hyperbole.”