Babbitt Reaffirms Gnatcatcher Protection Plan : Environment: Orange County stop made to show personal commitment to ‘keep everybody talking’ and help ensure national experiment works for all concerned.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt visited Orange County on Friday to assure developers and environmentalists that he is personally committed to ensuring the success of a national experiment for protecting the nesting grounds of the California gnatcatcher.

In what he described as an effort “to keep everybody talking,” Babbitt met privately with a small group of developers, environmentalists and local government officials under a canopy of sycamores in a canyon owned by the Irvine Co. He later addressed an audience dominated by local business leaders, and won strong praise from both developers and environmentalists for his approach to the region’s conservation issues.

“The outcome is by no means clear, but we’ll be writing history with this process,” Babbitt said, “and I want to do everything in my power to make certain that the federal government is doing everything it can, along with the state of California, all county governments, municipalities and the private sector, to make this thing work.”

Babbitt promised to find federal funds needed to make the conservation plan work and to keep in touch with all sides involved in the project.

In March, Babbitt designed an innovative compromise that largely defused a fierce debate over the gnatcatcher.

In listing the songbird as a threatened species, Babbitt proposed special conditions that make it the centerpiece of an experiment to create preserves for entire ecosystems instead of lone species. The rules allow developers to build on some land without delay as long as they are part of a project led by Gov. Pete Wilson and local governments to set aside preserves of sagebrush habitat for the gnatcatcher and other rare species.

In recent months, developers, environmentalists and local governments have worried that the project is going slowly and that there is too little funding and attention from the federal government and state Legislature.

Babbitt said his mission Friday was to ensure that the experiment doesn’t fall apart. The alternative, he said, is years of litigation like that which has paralyzed the Pacific Northwest, home of the spotted owl.

“We can’t let that happen again. There’s too much at stake in environment terms and economic terms,” Babbitt said. “It’s for all those reasons that I am committed to keep coming back to Orange County and Riverside County and San Diego County to make it work.”

Babbitt also announced that his department has rejected a request by environmentalists to overturn the federal decision to allow the San Joaquin Hills tollway to be built in south Orange County. Babbitt said his Fish and Wildlife Service staff reaffirmed its earlier decision because the road poses “no jeopardy” to the gnatcatcher.

“Our word, once given, has to be kept,” Babbitt said.

Environmentalists said Friday that they strongly disagree with Babbitt’s decision on the tollway and will keep fighting to persuade him to change his mind.

Babbitt said his visit was triggered by President Clinton’s recent town hall meeting in San Diego, where a local developer told Clinton that the Interior Department is delaying housing developments and roads in Southern California because the conditions of the federal gnatcatcher plan are not yet final.

“You were provoking a presidential phone call to the effect of ‘Bruce, I thought you had that under control, what’s going on?’ ” Babbitt said. “I said ‘Mr. President, I’m on my way to Orange County right away to see if we can keep this project moving.’ In all seriousness, that’s the reason I’m here.”

Babbitt said he expects the special rules for the gnatcatcher to be adopted in September. Until then, all projects that harm the bird or its sage scrub habitat are subject to a thorough review by federal biologists. At stake are about 400,000 acres of land in Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties, and the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County.

Babbitt’s speech in Irvine, devoted to solidifying local support for the conservation plan, was arranged by the Orange County Forum, a group dominated by the county’s developers and business groups that brings in monthly speakers to discuss controversial topics.

His talk was interrupted several times with loud applause--especially when he announced the decision to stand behind the tollway approval--and hearty laughter when he described Orange County as “the incipient hotbed of support” for his short-lived presidential campaign in 1988.

His appearance, however, also attracted two small groups protesting the toll road and a proposed low-level radioactive waste dump in the California desert. Several environmentalists in the audience also told him they thought he was being too accommodating to development.

Babbitt’s private, informal discussion in Irvine was with three environmentalists, four Orange County and San Diego County developers, California Undersecretary of Resources Michael Mantell and several state and local government officials. They are all key players in efforts to create preserves of sage scrub.

Babbitt told the group he would seek $1 million in Interior Department funds and a matching $1 million in wildlife foundation grants to help local governments plan permanent preserves. He also told Mantell he would pressure California legislators to set aside about $800,000 that Mantell wants for the program.

It was Babbitt’s first trip as Interior secretary to urban Southern California. Orange County might be considered enemy territory for a conservation-minded Democrat like Babbitt, so local leaders were surprised that he wanted to hear their concerns in person.

Irvine Co. Vice President Monica Florian, one of the developers in the private session, said she was “flabbergasted that someone at the secretary level was interested in keeping track of this. There was a sincere interest on his part. It’s comforting to hear that he agreed that a sense of urgency is needed here.”