Set-Asides for Songbird Music to the Ears : * Developers’ Agreement to Voluntarily Preserve Gnatcatchers’ Habitat a Positive Sign

Better late than never, Orange County’s three largest developers have signed up 26,000 acres of privately owned coastal sage scrub as reserves for the California gnatcatcher.

The Irvine Co., Rancho Mission Viejo Co. and the Arvida Co. have said they will preserve the enrolled land as a moratorium on most of their property, to preserve it and fund multimillion-dollar scientific surveys.

These agreements came as a shot in the arm for the tired and weary campaign of the Wilson Administration to persuade developers to voluntarily preserve habitat of the gnatcatcher, a tiny songbird.

In recent months, the governor’s Resources Agency has come under fire from both developers and environmentalists for various kinds of dissatisfaction with the program. The program is a basically good idea that surely requires the sincere commitment of all parties to have a chance to work.

The contention has been fueled by the difficulty in reaching agreements for set-asides, a tedious process that has a habit of eating up time while gnatcatcher habitat falls to the bulldozer.

The inability of the program to make headway has been serious enough to place at risk the entire effort. And there increasingly has been talk that the gnatcatcher may be headed for listing after all as an endangered species.

These latest agreements cover more than 90% of the coastal sage scrub remaining in Orange County, according to county planning officials.

And this is an unprecedented agreement in a push to find an innovative way to save habitat without falling under the mandatory measures of the Endangered Species Act, which has many unhappy.

A word of caution is in order. Environmentalists have noted that these self-imposed moratoriums are only temporary.

There also are lands important to the gnatcatcher not enrolled in the agreement. Even California Secretary of Resources Douglas Wheeler says it is only one step in a long process.

But the agreement does have the effect of making biological information about private land available, and it shows the promise of setting habitat aside.

It will take more time to see what becomes of the faltering set-aside plan overall.

But these major specific set-asides by developers have to be considered a positive sign for a tricky and troubled program.