Protected Status Rarely Rescues Dying Species : Ecology: Biologists warn that when an animal like the gnatcatcher is deemed endangered, it’s often too late.

Every year, the health updates on California’s endangered species read more and more like obituaries.

Bank swallows are still vanishing. Kit foxes can’t find places to feed and breed. Chinook salmon aren’t spawning. Desert tortoises are succumbing to disease and predators.

Despite being declared endangered by state or federal officials, most of California’s rare animals and plants are teetering closer to the edge of extinction.

Wildlife biologists say some of the creatures are so far gone by the time they are listed that it’s too late to save them. For other species, survival takes money, manpower and time--rare commodities at the financially strapped federal and state agencies that are empowered with protecting wildlife.

“We have over 600 species on the national list and we have approved recovery plans for only half of them. . . . We have a very overwhelming job in front of us and very limited resources to do it,” said Robert Ruesink, chief of listing and recovery for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s western office in Portland.

The long battle between Southern California developers and environmentalists over the fate of the gnatcatcher climaxed last week when the Interior Department proposed that the tiny songbird be added to the national endangered species list. The announcement kicks off a long public review process that could lead to federal protection of the bird next year.

But wildlife biologists warn that listing would be far from a cure for the gnatcatcher. They say ensuring survival means more than simply setting aside land protected from bulldozers; it means carefully managing the species to safeguard it from a whole host of threats, from domestic cats to disease.

“Listing is not a panacea. It is the beginning of the long road,” said Richard Spotts, California representative of Defenders of Wildlife. “With the gnatcatcher, we’re all fighting to the death over something that could largely be a symbolic outcome.”

In California, over 200 plants and animals have been designated as endangered or threatened by the state or federal government. Of those, 70% are still in decline, according to an annual status report published in March by the California Department of Fish and Game. Since California’s statehood, 64 plant and animal species are known to have been wiped out.

“Listing the gnatcatcher is not necessarily going to save it from extinction,” said Glenn Black, a biologist who coordinates the state Department of Fish and Game’s natural heritage section in Southern California.

“When you look at the record, not just for the state but even nationwide, there are very few, if any, species that are taken off the list or downgraded to a threatened status. That shows the act really only red-flags those animals that are in trouble at a late stage, and often there isn’t enough money to recover them.”

Compounding the problem, the national and state lists grow longer every year. Federal wildlife officials have called Southern California the nation’s worst battleground for endangered species, since more animals are jeopardized there than anywhere else.

Because of its diversity, the state is one of the most biologically rich areas in the world, with many species found nowhere else. But population growth, water management and agriculture combine to put unusual pressure on animals and plants, national and state wildlife officials say.

“Many endangered species survive as small, fragmented populations, and under these conditions there is no certainty they will survive for long,” the Fish and Game annual status report says.

Some listed animals and plants have already been lost forever despite being protected by federal or state officials. The only clusters of Palos Verdes blue butterflies, a species added to the federal list in 1980, vanished three years later when the city of Rancho Palos Verdes bulldozed its last known locoweed habitat to build a baseball field.

Soon, it may be too late to rescue the light-footed clapper rail, a marsh bird known as Orange County’s premier endangered species, jeopardized by a variety of threats.

“If a species is half-dead, it’s not enough to be listed. We wait so long and put such a burden of proof on the listing, that they are too far gone,” said Steve Johnson, director of stewardship of the California Nature Conservancy, a group dedicated to preserving and managing habitats for endangered species.

“If we ran our emergency wards like this, we’d only treat those people who have been run over three times,” he said.

California’s developers and builders, however, say that listing a species actually hinders its protection, since it fosters an adversarial, cumbersome process instead of reasonable negotiations for protection. It also wrongly emphasizes each species, instead of the ecosystem at large, they say.

“I fault the whole Endangered Species Act for being so narrowly focused. If you can get the group together and talk about the impact on the environment as well as the impact on economics and the social environment, you come up with a much better plan,” said Frank Panarisi, president of the Construction Industry Federation in San Diego.

“Rather than being adversaries, we should work together to find a solution. But it has to be a balanced solution to work. Reasonableness is not part of the equation once something is listed,” he said.

Despite some gloomy forecasts for listed species, wildlife officials stress that it is not hopeless. When species are given proper attention and oversight by biologists, they flourish.

More California least terns, a gull-like bird, exist today than 10 years ago because their main predators, red foxes, are being trapped. And the bald eagle and peregrine falcon are also on the road to recovery because of active management to release captive-bred birds and protect them from threats, mostly pollution, state officials say.

When it comes to the gnatcatcher, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is optimistic.

“The chances for the gnatcatcher are good,” said Jeff Opdycke, Southern California field supervisor for the federal agency. “There is an attitude among the larger landowners and especially the municipalities in (saving) this species regardless of whether or not it needs listing. There is a real interest in fashioning something that works.”

Pete Bontadelli, director of the state wildlife agency, said recently that “drastic measures are needed” to stop many of California’s listed species from going extinct.

Saying that “preventative government and active stewardship” of lands is the key to saving species, Bontadelli said funding levels for their protection have not kept pace with the state’s development and population growth.

He has urged the Legislature to pass a bill that would provide emergency money, as well as a bill that pursues conservation planning for entire ecosystems, instead of a species-by-species approach.

Wildlife biologists and environmentalists say that protecting the gnatcatcher will take not just time and money, but cooperation from Southern California builders and developers.

Black said many of the areas that are valuable to the gnatcatcher are on privately owned land, so the government must ensure that they not only remain undeveloped but are publicly owned and permanently managed as sanctuaries. And that, he says, takes cooperation from developers as well as state and federal money and commitment.

“To save the gnatcatcher from extinction, we have to bring the developers seriously to the table,” Black said.

Orange and San Diego county developers pushed for a statewide agreement to protect the gnatcatcher’s habitat without invoking the Endangered Species Act. Under the proposal, which originated with the Irvine Co. and now is being coordinated by the Wilson Administration, a scientific panel will identify the habitat needed to save the bird.

Wilson’s undersecretary of resources, Michael Mantell, is seeking agreements between environmentalists, landowners and local governments to set aside and manage preserves containing high-quality coastal sage scrub, the vegetation used by gnatcatchers as well as about 35 other threatened species.

Federal officials are impressed with that plan, and say they are pleased that Southern California’s largest developers vowed during trips to Washington to help with conservation planning for the gnatcatcher.

“You have a very sophisticated development community in Southern California. . . . I think there are creative solutions if you can get people moving together, and I’m hopeful because the development community and environmental community have been working together already,” said Ralph Morgenweck, the federal government’s assistant director for wildlife enhancement.

Helping an endangered species recover--especially one in an urban area--is considered one of the most complex issues that wildlife managers face because the animals or plants encounter multiple threats.

While listing means no one can harm a species or bulldoze its nesting grounds without permission, it does not necessarily correct current problems or ensure that the animals and plants are managed so they can rebound.

Sometimes a species vanishes because it takes not just preservation of property, but costly improvement and management of the land to ensure its survival. It’s not just bulldozers, but fragmented habitat, unwanted predators, urban noise, trespassing, fire, floods and disease that can kill off a rare species.

“Listing is a powerful tool to stop (harm to) a species, but it’s not at all a powerful tool to actually do the management necessary to save them,” Johnson said. “If the red fox is eating them, then it doesn’t matter if their land is filled or not.”

For example, Johnson said, the San Joaquin kit fox, found in the vanishing prairies of the state’s Central Valley, was declared endangered but remains in serious jeopardy largely because its habitat is so fragmented.

“Even though people are prohibited from killing them directly or building parking lots on top of their dens, they are still going down the tubes,” Johnson said. “Their habitat is fragmented, so they don’t have enough land to forage on and their reproductive success goes down. Their offspring have no place to live and they just disperse and die.”

The plight of the light-footed clapper rail, a chicken-sized marsh bird which resides almost exclusively in Orange County and was added to the federal list in 1973, is another case in point.

Only 163 pairs of the long-legged birds, which nest in thick cordgrass of saltwater wetlands, were found in a 1989 survey, 116 of those at Upper Newport Bay. That is a long way off from the 800 pairs that a federal recovery plan says is needed for the birds to be considered merely threatened, instead of on the edge of dying off.

Dick Zembal, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, wrote in a recent essay that despite 18 years of federal protection, the rail remains in “imminent danger of extinction.”

“Its habitat has been fragmented, reduced, isolated, fill, subjected to heavy predation by introduced species, trespassed upon by people, their pets and chemicals, cut off from the ocean and even sunk,” he said.

“These problems are not insurmountable, just complicated, time-consuming and expensive to deal with effectively.”

Saving the clapper rail means, at the very least, finding ways to ward off their main predator--red foxes imported to Southern California by hunters--and restoring the food chain at Newport Bay and Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge.

Such work “will take study and time,” Zembal said. But, like many rare species, he said, “the light-footed clapper rail doesn’t have a lot more time.”

Orange County’s Endangered Species

These are animals found in Orange County that have been designated endangered or threatened by federal or state officials. All of them live in wetlands. The state has listed some animals as threatened, which affords them the same protection as an endangered species, even though it is not considered as close to extinction.

Light-footed clapper rail (Rallus longirostris levipes)

Status: State and federal endangered species.

In the United States, these secretive and sedentary birds of the coastal salt marsh are found only in Southern California, and almost entirely in Orange County. A 1989 count estimated 163 pairs, with about 70% living in the dense cordgrass of Upper Newport Bay. A nesting population at Anaheim Bay in Seal Beach has declined because of foxes and other predators. Federal wildlife officials say these chicken-sized birds, added to the federal list in 1973, are coming perilously close to extinction because most of their wetlands habitat is gone, and they are attacked by cats and other predators.

California least tern (Sterna antillarum browni)

Status: State and federal endangered species

This 9-inch bird with a forked tail is a beach nester, also vulnerable to predatory foxes. It nests on state-protected, man-made islands at Bolsa Chica, Upper Newport Bay and a preserve at Huntington State Beach. It comes to Orange County from its home in Baja California around April to nest in small depressions on white-sand beaches. Common throughout beaches 70 years ago, there are now about 1,200 nesting pairs in California. Listed in 1970, the least tern was one of the first species in the nation to be protected. Their numbers have about doubled since the mid-1970s because state officials monitor their nests and protect them from predators.

Least Bell’s vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus)

Status: State and federal endangered species

This elusive bird depends on rapidly declining riparian habitat (the wooded wetlands found along creeks and rivers) and is a victim of brood parasitism by cowbirds. The cowbirds lay their eggs in the Bell’s vireo nest, and often the cowbird chicks eventually displace the smaller vireo chicks. Its main habitat is in the Prado Basin, just over the county border in Riverside County. Some are found in Orange County and on Camp Pendleton. They arrive from Baja every spring to breed. It was added to the federal list in 1986. The population fluctuates at about 300 pairs but is not considered stable.

Belding’s savannah sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis beldingi)

Status: State endangered species; candidate for federal endangered species

These year-round residents of Southern California’s coastal salt marshes are found in the pickleweed of the Bolsa Chica wetlands just above the high-tide line, where they chase sand flies. Most have disappeared because of wetlands development along the coast. These birds have a loud, buzzy song and a boldly streaked breast and live in the same habitat as least terns and light-footed clapper rails. Their population has increased from the 1977 estimate of 1,600 pairs to a 1986 estimate of 2,200 pairs.

California black rail (Laterallus jamaicensis cotorniculus)

Status: State threatened species; candidate for federal endangered species

These sparrow-sized marsh birds were spotted on rare occasions in Upper Newport Bay, but they are now considered absent from all of coastal Southern California. This black bird with white speckling, once found throughout the state, now mostly inhabits San Francisco Bay salt marshes. The population is considered to be either stable or declining.

Source: California Department of Fish and Game; March, 1991, report on endangered species.