Song Is Not Over for Gnatcatcher : Environment: The songbird was denied endangered species protection by the state. But the federal government will decide its fate. Developers are fighting the special status.

Round one is over. But do not count the California gnatcatcher out just yet.

The tiny bird was denied state endangered species protection last week, but now the spotlight shifts to a bigger arena--Washington.

Federal wildlife officials are expected to make a decision within three weeks that will determine the fate of the four-inch songbird, a Southern California native that lives in the region’s coastal brush.

Petitioned a year ago by environmentalists, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has until Sept. 21 to decide if the gnatcatcher is threatened with extinction and should be added to the national endangered species list. The agency has several choices: It can reject listing as unnecessary; it can conclude that it is warranted and initiate a yearlong process of public review, or it can invoke a rare emergency listing.

Although federal officials have remained tight-lipped, experts say that the most likely choice is the middle one. Given the consequences of the decision, many speculate that it will likely be made at the very top, in the office of Secretary of the Interior Manuel Lujan Jr.

One federal wildlife official who asked to remain anonymous said the scientific evidence to support listing is “overwhelming,” but that political influences in the Interior Department may overrule biology.

Environmentalists say Southern California developers exercise considerable influence in Washington, and they worry that builders have pulled out the stops to oppose designation for the bird because the decision could disrupt billions of dollars in proposed construction projects.

The Irvine Co., Santa Margarita Co. and Lusk Co. in Orange County are among the developers and builders that have written to the Interior Department. Twelve members of California’s congressional delegation have joined them in complaining about the validity of the scientific data and in warning of the “devastating economic impact” that they say the listing would create.

Listing would be a “tragedy, not just for the thousands of individuals who depend on the jobs and houses generated by the industry but for all the people of California,” Donald Steffensen, executive vice president of Lusk Co., a national builder based in Irvine, said in a letter to the Interior Department.

Environmentalists, who suffered a major defeat Friday when the state Fish and Game Commission refused to protect the bird, say they have just begun to fight.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation’s most powerful environmental groups, says it will go to court to overturn the commission’s decision. In the meantime, supporters remain confident that the federal government will do what California refused to do--grant the gnatcatcher protection under the law.

“This is a disappointing loss in an early skirmish in a long battle,” Jonathan Atwood, an ornithologist who has studied the bird for 10 years and filed petitions with the state and federal governments to protect it, said after Friday’s decision. “But I think we will still prevail here.”

In the development community, Southern California landowners and builders believe they have at least gotten a reprieve.

Even if the Interior Department announces this month that the bird qualifies for endangered species status, it will be months before the process of review and public hearings is concluded. That means it will be about a year before landowners would have to protect the bird, which lives only in Orange, San Diego and western Riverside counties.

An emergency listing, which invokes immediate federal protection, is rare, usually done only if an animal faces an extreme, unusual threat such as disease.

“I think the chances of an emergency declaration is off the table for now,” said Allen Haynie, an attorney representing a coalition of 20 San Diego County developers embroiled in the gnatcatcher issue.

Even without emergency protection, “there is a value in the federal process,” Haynie said. “If there’s the potential for listing looming out there, it motivates (developers). People are going to work hard to try to avoid the need for the ultimate listing.”

The Interior Department is required to make its decision solely on scientific grounds and cannot consider such issues as economic impact. Listing, according to federal law, is necessary if there is “present or threatened destruction, modification or curtailment” of a species’ habitat.

The gnatcatcher lives in coastal sage scrub, a mix of brushy plants found in Southern California’s coastal canyons. The scrub once grew throughout the region, but now two-thirds to 90% of it is gone.

Larry Salata, a federal wildlife biologist who conducted the agency’s three-year review of the gnatcatcher, declined to discuss what recommendation he has made to Washington. He did say the birds have suffered “a significant population decline.”

The gnatcatcher’s terrain is “one of the most depleted habitats in the United States. . . . Any further losses are a significant threat,” said Salata, who works in the federal agency’s Laguna Niguel field office. According to Atwood’s estimates, no more than 2,000 pairs, and possibly fewer than 1,200 pairs, exist.

Federal officials say developers’ concerns about a possible endangered designation for the bird are mostly unwarranted.

“Listening to some of the developers, you’d have to believe that the sky is falling if it’s listed, but I don’t think that will be the case,” said David Klinger, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman.

He acknowledged that things could change for the development industry, causing delays in projects and increasing the cost and uncertainty of completing them.

Federal law makes it illegal to harm or disturb an endangered species.