Tension Builds as Gnatcatcher Decision Nears : Environment: Status of the tiny songbird will be known sometime this week. If listed as protected, it could impede development in low-lying coastal hills and scenic canyons.

If ever there was a perfect example of how power cannot be measured solely in terms of physical prowess, it is the California gnatcatcher.

A rather ordinary-looking bird with a decidedly unglamorous name, the gnatcatcher is tiny enough to cup in your hand or swat away like a fly. It doesn’t soar like an eagle, glide with the grace of a panther or command the respect of a grizzly. The gnatcatcher spends its uneventful life flitting between silvery-green clumps of sage, dining on centipedes and singing its tune of three kitten-like mews.

Yet, within a few days, this 4 1/2-inch gray songbird that weighs a fraction of an ounce could be bestowed with enough power to impede bulldozers--something no other movement or initiative, short of the recession, has managed to accomplish in Southern California.

This week, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is due to finally decide whether the gnatcatcher will join the ranks of the Northern spotted owl, the California condor, the gray wolf and almost 400 other animals across the nation listed as endangered or threatened.

If listed, the bird would become the first protected species on urban, developable land in Southern California in five years.

At this point, anything could happen as Interior officials wrangle secretly among themselves in their cavernous headquarters in Washington. Babbitt, who was briefed last week by his staff biologists, is reportedly taking a personal role in the controversial decision.

Sources within Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service say they are leaning toward declaring the gnatcatcher a threatened species--but with qualifications. Under that scenario, the bird and its habitat would be protected, but special, tailor-made rules would then provide incentives for landowners to escape the Endangered Species Act’s time-consuming review process if they set aside large preserves.

The three-year war over the gnatcatcher, pitting California’s environmentalists against its developers, has endured so long, turned so ugly and marshaled so many forces, dollars and attorneys that Lee Jones, an Orange County biologist and consultant to builders, interrupted one of his recent discourses on the gnatcatcher to comment on its ferocity.

“I feel like I’m talking about the Israelis and the Muslims,” Jones said, still awed by the intensity of it all.

One San Diego County developer half-jokingly quoted Rodney King. “Can’t we all just get along?” he asked.

Apparently not.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t come to this--the federal government telling landowners what they can and cannot do with property in Newport Beach and Fullerton and Palos Verdes and Carlsbad.

The federal government? Whatever happened to the land of the free? What about local control? And what about the Constitution and its right to own property?

These are all hard-held notions in Southern California, particularly in conservative Orange County.

The Interior Department, though, has the authority under the 20-year-old Endangered Species Act to rule that growth patterns must change if a species is headed toward extinction.

Michael Spear, assistant director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a recent interview in Washington that Southern California finds itself in this predicament because its “unique and special habitats and development pressure” have collided.

“The endangered species issues there (in Southern California) are probably more intense than anyplace in the country--both in impacts and dollars. And that includes the spotted owl. To a great extent, it’s because land values are so high,” Spear said.

“There’s no place that comes close to the extent of the impact to endangered species, the economic implications and the numbers of people involved,” he said. “You’ve got an area where no one can turn around without hitting endangered species issues.”

The plight of the gnatcatcher shows endangered species are no longer just isolated animals in outlying areas. Instead, this bird lives amid the smog, traffic and red-tiled roofs of a sprawling megalopolis.

And unlike other recently listed animals, the gnatcatcher doesn’t inhabit wetlands or beaches already preserved or protected. It nests in the same low-lying coastal hills and scenic canyons that Southern Californians covet for their homes.

Coastal sage scrub--the brushy habitat inhabited by the gnatcatcher and about 75 other sensitive plants and animals--covers 250,000 to 400,000 acres of undeveloped land in five counties, stretching from the coast to the foothills.

Throughout the nation, landowners and developers are watching the gnatcatcher debate, since it will test how the Endangered Species Act performs when it comes to species that live on private property. If the bird is listed, a lawsuit by developers is virtually certain to test the issue on the basis of Fifth Amendment guarantees against confiscation of property.

A listing would trigger “a period of consternation and confusion and litigation,” predicts H. Pike Oliver, a senior vice president of Southwest Diversified Inc., an Irvine-based national development firm.

Developers say they are not optimistic that the imminent decision will go their way.

“I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t know of any reason to be an optimist knowing how the bureaucracy works,” said Bob Brooks, manager of acquisitions at Chevron Land and Development Co. “Anything can happen, I guess. But I would be naive to think that they (federal officials) will say, ‘Go on and (build) whatever you want to.’ ”

Builders argue that the bird is not endangered, since about 100 square miles of sage scrub is protected in public parks and preserves. They believe the decision is being driven by flawed, biased science, and they have filed voluminous objections and hired countless lawyers and biologists to persuade the Interior Department.

In the past week, everyone involved has been wrapped up in speculation and rumor-chasing. Both sides, environmentalists and developers, are trying to sort out how they will feel if the decision comes somewhere between no protection at all and complete protection as endangered.

“There’s a tremendous amount of jockeying for position and talk about whether it will be listed as endangered, or threatened, or not listed at all. But the bottom line is, no one knows what the Service is going to do,” said Dan Silver, representing a coalition of about 30 Southern California environmental groups.

“From my perspective, whether it’s done under threatened or endangered, we don’t really care. We’re more concerned with the final result.”

The effort to protect the bird is the most intensive one environmentalists have waged in Southern California in years. They see it as a symbol, and if they fail to get the bird listed, they believe they have little hope in saving the remnants of wild California.

Although the decision under law is supposed to be made purely on scientific grounds, Interior Department officials would have to be deaf to avoid hearing the fears about the economic impact on California.

The Building Industry Assn. says the bird’s listing could halt 25% of all development in Southern California, at the expense of $8 billion and 100,000 jobs. Many local economists, however, say the figures are inflated.

Contrary to the myth, an endangered species does not stop development.

It can, however, delay it, sometimes for years, and alter its course. If the bird is listed, it means no one can build houses or roads or golf courses or anything on its nesting grounds without first consulting with federal wildlife biologists and avoiding harm to the bird, or compensating for the loss of habitat by setting aside or restoring other lands.

The new restrictions would even apply to projects already approved by cities and counties, such as the Irvine Co.’s communities at Newport Coast, East Orange and Anaheim’s Gypsum Canyon, and Chevron’s planned housing development in Fullerton and La Habra.

“We’re in the middle of a deep recession and this certainly doesn’t help,” said Brooks of Chevron. “The economy of Southern California is going to be affected by this. There are a lot of projects that could be delayed--and delay could mean they won’t be done at all. As you delay, prices go up.”

It was no single road, no one housing development, that put Southern California in this predicament. Wildlife biologists say widespread building along the coast and in the backcountry--and not just a few homes, but sprawling subdivisions--was allowed with too little attention paid to natural resources.

The gnatcatcher used to be abundant from Ventura to the Mexican border. Now down to about 3,000 pairs, gnatcatchers have been purged from Ventura County, all of Los Angeles County except Palos Verdes, and most of Orange County. They remain mostly in parts of San Diego County, western Riverside County, and Orange County’s eastern foothills and coastal slopes between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.

The bird needs sage and buckwheat to survive, and only the last 15% to 35% of the scrub habitat remains, much of it so fragmented it cannot support viable populations, says Stanford University wildlife biologist Dennis Murphy, who calls it a habitat “in crisis.”

Developers and builders acknowledge that the scrub was being seriously depleted. But they say local government in 1991 began offering enough protection, and the construction collapse accompanying the recession provided more. They say enough is now left in large preserves to protect the birds and other rare species.

The recession “works both ways” when it comes to ecological protection, said Spear of the federal wildlife agency. “It give us breathing room” to help save a species like the gnatcatcher because development has slowed, “but on the other hand, when people are losing jobs, the pressure becomes more intense. . . . It’s a double-edged sword.”

Because of its unusual climate and topography, Southern California has a wide array of native plants and animals found nowhere else. The state is unequaled in natural diversity in the United States except in the Hawaiian islands.

That also means, however, there are more species to go extinct.

Spear said despite Southern California’s severe problem with vanishing species--or perhaps because of it--the region has become the birthplace of innovative attempts at solutions.

He said so many plants and animals are now at risk in Southern California--hundreds are candidates for listing--that it will take a new approach to the Endangered Species Act to resolve the problem. Listing species after species, and analyzing each development project individually, just isn’t working.

Babbitt has told Congress he wants a more comprehensive approach that will protect entire ecosystems before species are on the brink of extinction, and before the federal government must step in to regulate development.

Southern California developers, environmentalists, biologists and government planners have teamed together in just such an effort. They are trying to voluntarily create preserves of sage scrub that can sustain all of its rare species, a program which Babbitt says he has high hopes of turning into a national model.

The Endangered Species Act, despite its flaws, “brings things to people’s attention while there’s still time left,” Spear said.