Kern County Builders Press to Take Squirrel’s Ground : Wildlife: State ruling today could cut desert species from endangered list. The prospect alarms environmentalists.

Harry and Jo Mertz have a squirrel problem.

They want to build a light industrial park on 20 acres near the Inyokern Airport, in the Mojave Desert northeast of Los Angeles. But they are in a pitched battle for the site, fighting for dominion with the threatened Mohave ground squirrel.

To use their land, they would have to set aside 60 acres elsewhere as a squirrel habitat or shell out $49,000 to help preserve the rodent they love to hate. So far, they have decided to do neither and may just go ahead and build. “You’ll probably next hear about me getting arrested,” Harry Mertz said. “I’m serious as a heart attack.”

Today, however, their problem may be solved for them, in an action that would appease the Kern County construction community and alarm the state’s environmentalists.

For the first time since the state Endangered Species Act became law in 1970, the state Fish and Game Commission will rule on whether to take an animal--the Mohave ground squirrel--off the endangered list and open its habitat for development.

Although a plant once was taken off the list after scientists determined that it was not a distinct species, the only animal to leave the state list literally died off: The Tecopa pupfish is now extinct. Until the Mohave ground squirrel burrowed its way under the skin of Kern County’s developers, most controversy surrounding the state endangered species list occurred when species were recommended to join the 73 animals already there.

Under the law, to gain permission to build in an area that is home to an endangered plant or animal, developers either must set aside land elsewhere as habitat or pay the state to help preserve the species and mitigate the effects of construction.

Although animals and plants ostensibly are placed on or taken off the list based on the danger of their extinction, Kern County is fighting to declassify the Mohave ground squirrel largely because of economics--about 200 development projects have languished in the desert over the past several years.

“Projects have died. It’s frustrating,” says Cheryl Casdorph, associate planner for the Kern County Department of Planning and Development Services. “This affects Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County, Inyo County too. I know the other jurisdictions are watching.”

Environmentalists fear the precedent that could be set if the commission were to strip the squirrel of its legal protection. The state Department of Fish and Game contends that the squirrel remains at risk and has recommended that it remain on the list.

“Economic issues should not decide whether something stays listed or not,” said Elden Hughes, chairman of the Sierra Club’s California Desert Committee. “If the (commission) were to delist the squirrel, it would make the Department of Fish and Game totally ineffective in the future.”

Hughes said “pure science” should dictate when a species is no longer endangered, science that proves the animal has recovered from the threat of extinction. “We have the opposite,” he said. “We know we’re losing (the squirrel).”

To John Gustafson, an endangered-species biologist with the state Department of Fish and Game, the decision scheduled for today “has overtones that are larger than the Mohave ground squirrel.” He fears that “this will encourage others to file petitions in the hopes of delisting species that are supposedly causing problems of development.”

The squirrel, cinnamon-gray with a white belly, lives in burrows on 7,000 square miles of the western Mojave Desert. It dines on the fruit, leaves and seeds of desert plants, and spends most of its time in areas rich in creosote and shadscale bushes and Joshua trees.

The major threat to its existence, Gustafson said, is the destruction or degradation of its habitat. Drought is another problem; when there is no rain, the squirrels do not reproduce. Although accurate squirrel counts are impossible, the long drought that plagued California has led to a decrease in the animal’s population, biologists say.

“The (squirrel) population trend is considered to be declining due to loss of habitat to urban and agricultural development, overgrazing by livestock, highway construction and off-road vehicles,” Gustafson wrote in the department’s report on the status of the state’s endangered animals and plants released last October.

The Mohave ground squirrel is a charter member of the endangered species list. Because of previous habitat loss, it was designated as a “rare” animal when the first list came out in 1971. The designation was changed to “threatened” when the state act was amended in 1985.

“That habitat loss has accelerated in the past 10 years as housing costs became prohibitive in Los Angeles and people moved to the desert,” Gustafson said.

At the same time the terminology was changed to conform to federal law, the Legislature created the first mechanism for animals to be taken off the list, a petition process that could be used by state agencies, interest groups and local governments.

Petitions were rapidly filed with the Fish and Game Commission to list a variety of animals and plants as endangered; most were rejected.

Until Kern County officials, fed up with what they saw as a fecund rodent impeding their progress, petitioned in late 1991 to have the squirrel taken off the list, no one had ever tried to strip an animal of state protection.

Environmental groups were outraged when the commission agreed in April, 1992, to hear the petition. The state Department of Fish and Game had informed the Commission that Kern County’s petition should be rejected, contending that the petition was slim at best, providing insufficient scientific evidence that taking the Mohave ground squirrel off the endangered species list should even be considered.

“Any petition coming in like that to list a species would be rejected,” Gustafson said. Representatives of the commission, which heard testimony in Bakersfield Thursday and are scheduled to decide the squirrel’s fate today, did not return telephone calls for comment.

Kern County officials and developers do not think the squirrel should ever have been protected. In their petition, they argued that so little information was available about the animal in 1971 that a “quantitative scientific judgment” could not be made.

They say no reliable studies have surfaced since to show the animal is in trouble. Besides, they say, the squirrels live on land that is largely public--and unlikely to be developed--so why do they need protection?

“We’re saying, look, you have over 90% of their range that is not even developed or disturbed,” said Kern County’s Casdorph. “We feel the numbers aren’t there. . . . Our board of supervisors is pro-development. And this does affect our desert area.”

Although it lists no dollar figures for squirrel-caused losses, the county contends that between 230 and 250 development projects of various sizes have been stalled, including residential subdivisions.

“Other forms of development activity which are important to the economic prosperity of eastern Kern County have also been delayed or stopped as a result of the state listing and resultant mitigation requirement,” the petition says. “This listing is having an impact on a property owner’s ability to use their land.”

John H. Gregory, a Ridgecrest-based builder, is one property owner who pins his problems on the Mohave ground squirrel. In 1986, his company began the planning and engineering process for a 120-acre subdivision called Heritage Ranch, which he hoped would turn into a semi-rural tract with lots ranging from 1 to 2 1/2 acres in the Ridgecrest area.

He began grading the land in May, 1990, only to be stopped by the city of Ridgecrest a month later and told for the first time that he would have to pay the state Department of Fish and Game $400,000 to provide for ground squirrel habitat elsewhere.

After two years of negotiating with the department, Gregory worked out a solution. He bought 640 acres in a remote canyon and donated it to Fish and Game. Because Sand Canyon--where Gregory hiked and caught squirrels as a child--was not good Mohave ground squirrel habitat, the department traded the land to the Bureau of Land Management for a piece that was better suited.

A squirrel preserve was set up, and the Sand Canyon site also was turned into a preserve, named after Robert Ellison, Gregory’s best friend in seventh grade who was killed in Vietnam. By then, it was 1992, and Gregory got the go-ahead to build Heritage Ranch. But the recession hit, the bottom fell out of the real estate market, waiting had cost the project $1 million and the development was put on hold.