Pendleton Wages Peace on Songbird : Environment: The Marine Corps takes pains to preserve habitat of the endangered gnatcatcher from ravages of mock battles and brush fires.

Maybe the oddest neighbors in California live at Camp Pendleton, where a tiny songbird coexists with 36,000 Marines, 54-ton battle tanks and other war machines that go thundering and thrashing about the nation’s busiest military base.

It’s little wonder that this bird, a 4-inch, blue-gray gnatcatcher that munches on bugs and settles into coastal sage scrub, is considered an endangered species.

As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seeks federal protection for the bird throughout Southern California, the Marine Corps is striving harder to train its troops how to seize ground and destroy the enemy without making the gnatcatcher a casualty of mock warfare.

The Marines are gingerly maneuvering around the bird’s habitat as if it were a bristling fortress rather than a place where the defender’s only offensive capability is against the local insects.

And the base command is taking greater steps to prevent another threat to the gnatcatcher--fire--like the one last November that burned 7,000 acres on base, causing Interstate 5 to be closed and 300 nearby residents to be evacuated.

According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, at least 170 pairs of gnatcatchers live at Camp Pendleton, roughly 11% of the bird’s entire population. And experts believe there are probably more.

“If somebody wants to go in with heavy tanks where there’s a known population of gnatcatchers, we’ll merely shift the exercise to go around and not march through,” said Col. Nick Hoskot Jr., assistant chief of staff for operations and training at Camp Pendleton.

Hoskot concedes it’s “bothersome” to avoid the gnatcatcher, which lives in low-lying areas “where we have foot-mobile troops, tanks, LAVs (light armored vehicles), assault amphibians, Humvee and truck driver training.”

On a base with 3,500 to 4,500 requests each month to use training areas, peacefully coexisting with the gnatcatcher “is going to take some work, there’s no denying it,” said Slader Buck, supervisory wildlife biologist for the Environmental and Natural Resources Management Office on base.

Camp Pendleton is only one battleground, albeit an important one, in the controversial effort to save the gnatcatcher, which used to abound in the Southland until its numbers were diminished by urban development.

On Sept. 5, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the horror of builders, announced it was proposing the California gnatcatcher for the federal endangered-species list, a status that has major consequences for land-use choices.

That action, coming just days after the California Fish and Game Commission rejected similar status for the bird, will undergo up to a yearlong review before a final decision is made.

But, for Camp Pendleton, a 125,000-acre expanse that has been dedicated to training Marines since 1942, the likelihood of the gnatcatcher being placed under federal protection has been expected.

The base has been through this drill before, already having six federally listed species to help manage. They are the Peregrine falcon, light-footed clapper rail, California least tern, least Bell’s vireo, brown pelican and Stephens’ kangaroo rat.

Orders to take environmental matters seriously came from the top, when, in late 1988, then-Marine Commandant Al Gray informed his generals, “We operate daily in a maze of environmental laws.”

“We cannot allow ignorance or misguided motives room to maneuver in the environmental law compliance arena,” he said.

So far, the base’s conservation efforts seem to have impressed environmentalists.

Barbara Bamberger, conservation coordinator for the San Diego chapter of the Sierra Club, said, “environmental protection has become another element in their military practices. Camp Pendleton has done a good job on that.”

Two years ago, Camp Pendleton received funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a census of the gnatcatcher, a study that located the 170 pairs living in coastal and inland areas.

“There’s a strong possibility we have more birds,” said Buck, adding that the Marine Corps will seek additional funding for another survey of the gnatcatcher population.

Meanwhile, Buck’s office, the base command, and federal fish and wildlife officials are holding discussions on how to best manage the gnatcatcher if it’s approved for the endangered-species list.

The gnatcatcher also has helped spur the base to hire consultants for a fire-management plan that could affect training and show how the base could more quickly and decisively respond to fires.

“The emphasis now is greater, considering the gnatcatcher has been proposed for listing as endangered,” said Larry Salata, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

One thing is certain. The Marines, whose activities aren’t exactly dainty, are becoming more cautious about training and reducing the risk of habitat-destroying fires.

“What you really don’t want is for a tank to run over a nest,” Buck said.

To avoid that and other lethal prospects, commanding officers in recent years have asked the base’s military and civilian experts in water, wildlife, and range conservation to help craft their training plans.

The Marine Corps also expects all ranks to be aware that they’re training in some sensitive areas, and the base is preparing 3-by-5 inch laminated cards for troops containing information about the environment.

“The real point is education down to the lowest man,” said Col. Rich Walls, assistant chief of staff and staff judge advocate.

Still, it’s an unnatural juxtaposition, all this military commotion in such a delicate environment.

Gnatcatchers don’t dwell near the base firing ranges, which absorb countless explosions from bombs, artillery, mortars and light arms. However, the birds do nest in low-lying areas that are also large enough for men and equipment.

“To train infantry Marines, we need maneuver space,” said Hoskot. The need for such wide areas means that Marines can’t simply yield to the gnatcatcher and move military operations elsewhere on base.

“People look at us as a big preserve out here but forget our primary mission is to train Marines,” Walls said.

These days, training increasingly involves tactics to avoid fires, which in 1989 and 1990 claimed 15,000 to 20,000 acres of natural vegetation, including coastal sage scrub where the gnatcatcher lives at Camp Pendleton.

“Our biggest concern is the increased incidence of fire-related to training,” Salata said.

Yet the potential for fire is enormous as Marines practice with every kind of ordnance, from smoke grenades to tracer rounds. “There’s no way you can conduct military training without starting fires,” Buck said.

Besides developing a fire-management plan, the base is taking the simple step of printing small cards with fire danger ratings for Marines in the field.

As elementary as that seems, memories are long when it comes to an October, 1989, fire that burned 10,000 acres in parts of San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties and cost $2 million to extinguish.

The blaze, which took 900 firefighters five days to contain, was started by Marines on a training exercise illegally shooting flares and smoke grenades into an area that was restricted because of high fire danger.