COMMENTARIES ON ENDANGERED SPECIES : State Program Proves That Birds and Buildings Can Coexist : Governor’s voluntary new program brings together all parties involved to ensure the necessary balance.

Wildlife controversies are making news even in this political year. At the center of the controversies is the Endangered Species Act-- both the 20-year-old federal statute and its 7-year-old state analog.

About half of all potentially threatened or endangered plants, birds and animals in the United States exist in California. In each of our 58 counties, at least one plant or animal is listed as threatened or endangered under the state or federal endangered species acts. In all, 155 species in California are listed or proposed for listing as threatened or endangered, including the California gnatcatcher, the northern spotted owl and the delta smelt.

Each of these cases indicate a state under severe environmental stress. Many also have the potential to bring economic and social dislocation by restricting the agricultural use of water, restricting logging over millions of acres of timberland or halting coastal development.

Take the case of the gnatcatcher. It’s a four-inch songbird that inhabits about 250,000 acres of coastal sage scrub habitat in San Diego, Riverside and Orange counties--much of it in private ownership, including some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Petitioned for listing as endangered under the federal act, the gnatcatcher has declined in number to about 2,000 nesting pairs. As a result, some environmentalists are urging an emergency listing of the species and an immediate moratorium on development that could affect it. At the same time, some landowners and builders contend that a moratorium would affect more than 20,000 jobs and effectively shut down the construction industry of Southern California.

However, the picture is not so open and shut as these combatants contend. In addition to the gnatcatcher, there are as many as 60 other potentially threatened or endangered species in the same coastal sage scrub habitat. Conceivably, these plants and animals could also become endangered and, listed separately, could each produce their own cycles of stalemate and frustration.

Rather than arguing over whether to list a particular coastal sage scrub species, the critical need is to protect the habitat that these species share. Only by proceeding with a habitat-focused approach to protection can we possibly hope to meet the legitimate needs of all parties. Last year Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law a bill authored by Assemblyman David G. Kelley (R-Hemet) that has created a program--Natural Communities Conservation Planning (NCCP)--that does exactly that.

Under the program, which is being applied in the coastal sage scrub habitat, voluntary agreements among landowners, developers, conservationists and public officials at all levels of government--based upon the work of a nationally renowned panel of scientists--will identify strategies for conservation of valuable habitats and for compatible development.

Such a pioneering approach is highly complex and difficult to implement. It takes months to collect scientific data on the habitat and to encourage private landowners and public agencies to participate.

Nonetheless, we will soon know the extent of enrollment of land in the program and the degree to which interim controls will be in place. Then we can begin to responsibly assess the program’s prospects for success.

While very important, interim controls are but one of the beginning tools of this 18-month-long process. Conservation programs such as Natural Community Conservation Planning are ultimately judged by what they accomplish on the ground over the long term, not by what uses of land were controlled during the planning process.

Underlying the NCCP program are three principles that must guide efforts to conserve the rich variety of species in California and throughout our country.

First, we must direct more of our conservation efforts toward prevention. Placing a species on an endangered list is an admission that past protection has failed, and the policy options for saving it are akin to artificial resuscitation.

By instead focusing on distinctive ecosystems and natural communities, we may avoid the eleventh-hour crises that force choices between losing species and shutting down regional economies.

Second, a transition must be made from wildlife conservation based on single “threatened” or “endangered” species to that which is focused on ecosystems or natural communities. Since the enactment of the Endangered Species Act, tools such as minimum viable population size, gap analysis, and computerized geographic information systems have been developed that allow for more informed management decisions incorporating a broad array of wildlife and habitat concerns. Nonetheless, our conservation efforts--and, not coincidentally, public sentiment--remain focused on individual species.

Finally, essential to reconciling conservation conflicts are locally based, collaborative processes. Most wildlife and natural communities exist on private land and are thus most directly affected by the planning, zoning and other permitting decisions made daily by local governments.

The conservation community and state and federal officials must actively engage landowners, developers and local governments before wildlife issues get to the crisis point.

Although application of the federal Endangered Species Act is increasing across the country, it is a law with a very narrow focus that is being called upon to do too much.

The debate needs to be reframed from the listing of individual species to maintaining and recovering key habitats.

Only then will we be able to both successfully sustain multiple species of plant and animal life and allow for compatible economic development. In California--through Natural Community Conservation Planning--we are taking the first necessary steps toward this new generation of wildlife conservation.