Countywide : Some Money to Aid Gnatcatcher Restored

Responding to pressure from developers and environmentalists, budget negotiators have restored some funding for a habitat conservation program aimed at saving the threatened California gnatcatcher without wounding Orange County’s building industry.

Members of a legislative budget-writing committee agreed to provide $575,000 for the program, about three-quarters the amount originally requested by Gov. Pete Wilson.

The money was restored when state Sen. Dan McCorquodale (D-Modesto), a member of the budget committee, agreed to drop his opposition Monday evening after being heavily lobbied by developers, environmentalists, federal officials and several state lawmakers from Orange County.

Among those who reportedly made personal calls to McCorquodale was Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who has called the habitat conservation program a national model for protecting endangered species.

Backers of the program were concerned an absence of state money would have represented a symbolic blow and raised serious questions about the role California officials would play in the conservation effort, which was launched by the Wilson Administration only two years ago.

“It would have been pretty embarrassing for the state to renege on its own program,” said Tim Neely, Orange County planning and zoning administrator. “It would have been like walking away from a challenge.”

If the $575,000 now allocated survives the bruising budget negotiations still to come, it will be combined with $431,000 the state already has on hand for the program, $1 million from Orange County and upward of $2 million expected to come from the federal government.

The state funds were particularly important because they will mostly be used to provide staff to run the conservation effort. In addition, some boosters of the program worried that the entire effort might have unraveled if the state money had evaporated.

“A large element of this is symbolism,” said Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coaliton for Habitat Conservation, a collection of large landowners in San Diego and Orange counties backing the effort. “To have the state seemingly drop its endorsement would have been embarrassing and might have caused some reconsideration by the federal government.”

The first goal of the effort is to protect coastal sage scrub that harbors several rare species of plants and animals, including the gnatcatcher. The small gray songbird, which nests in wide swaths of sagebrush in Orange County as well as San Diego and Riverside counties, was listed in March by federal wildlife authorities as a threatened species.

Babbitt linked his decision to list the bird to California’s habitat conservation plan, which was started in 1991 as an experiment to create preserves for entire ecosystems instead of lone species. The conservation plan would allow developers to build on some land without delay as long as they set aside ecological sanctuaries.