Emergency Protection Sought for Songbird in Path of Tollway

Fearing that Orange County road builders are about to begin bulldozing the Laguna Greenbelt for the San Joaquin Hills tollway, environmentalists asked federal officials Thursday for emergency protection of the California gnatcatcher.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to decide within six weeks whether to list the tiny songbird as endangered. But environmentalists say that may be too late, so they want immediate protection.

“We have reliable information that they are about to proceed with grading for the toll road,” said Joel Reynolds, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group in Los Angeles that is leading efforts to protect the bird.

“That’s the entire length of the Laguna Greenbelt, through one of the best remaining areas of coastal sage scrub in Orange County, so we don’t think we have any choice but to file for an emergency listing.”

The gnatcatcher, one of the smallest birds in North America, nests only in coastal sage scrub, a depleted mix of sagebrush and other plants that grows in Orange, San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties as well as on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The Transportation Corridor Agencies, the county agency planning Orange County’s tollways, called the latest action “a hysterical attempt to create fact from fiction” because plans for the road were made long ago.

Tollway agency spokesman Mike Stockstill said construction of the road through Laguna Canyon will probably begin in late March, but he declined to say when grading of its path would begin.

John Fay, chief of endangered species listing for the federal wildlife agency, said Thursday that the decision of whether to grant emergency listing “could easily be made within a week.”

Fay said his staff must decide whether grading for the six-lane tollway, combined with other recent construction, would pose a “significant risk to the well-being” of the gnatcatcher. If so, he said, “we are virtually required to take emergency action.”

Top officials within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have told The Times that they plan to declare the bird endangered, probably just before their March 17 deadline. Once a species is listed, projects that damage its habitat are halted, at least temporarily.

Southern California developers and builders have waged an intense battle against the listing, saying that the scientific data on the bird is flawed. They say the bird is not imperiled because development has slowed considerably and large parcels of its habitat are already protected in parks.

Federal as well as independent wildlife biologists say the Laguna Greenbelt--in the coastal mountains between Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Irvine--provides some of the richest nesting grounds for the gnatcatcher.

The 17.5-mile San Joaquin Hills tollway would damage about 150 acres of coastal sage scrub occupied by about 40 gnatcatchers, according to a field study by Jones & Stokes Associates, a consulting firm hired by Orange County. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 pairs of the birds exist.

County road builders say the $1-billion tollway is necessary to alleviate traffic jams along the San Diego Freeway.

Times staff writer Jeffrey A. Perlman contributed to this report.