COUNTYWIDE : County to Consider Gnatcatcher Plight

The County Board of Supervisors today will consider adopting a resolution opposing efforts to list the California gnatcatcher as a state endangered species and instead support voluntary negotiations to protect the bird.

The staff of the county Environmental Management Agency recommends that the board join the Irvine Co., Santa Margarita Co. and other major Southern California developers who oppose the bird’s listing, which is up for consideration by state officials next week.

Thomas Mathews, the county’s planning director, said the songbird doesn’t need to be listed because more study is needed and other efforts are being waged to save the species.

Mathews said listing would create an “adversary process” with landowners, so he is advising the supervisors to support and assist efforts between developers and Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration to negotiate a voluntary plan to preserve the bird’s habitat.

The gnatcatcher, which inhabits Orange, San Diego and western Riverside counties, is the most controversial species to be considered for listing in California because of the sweeping effects its protection could have on development.

Local environmentalists have criticized the Board of Supervisors and EMA for approving development without adequate protection of the bird’s habitat. County planners, however, say they have required developers to set aside large open-space areas, including 20,000 acres of regional parkland.

The petition asking the state to list the gnatcatcher was drafted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group, and an ornithologist who has studied the birds for 10 years.

On Aug. 1 the California Fish and Game Commission postponed its decision on whether to declare the bird a candidate species until a meeting on Aug. 30 in Long Beach.