Developer Threatens to Strip Land of Endangered Flower : Project: Company trying to break impasse over building golf course in Big Tujunga Wash invokes little-known law telling agencies they have 10 days to salvage the plants.

A corporation that has been blocked from building a golf course in Big Tujunga Wash is threatening to strip the area of an endangered wildflower that has blocked the project.

The warning from Cosmo World Corp. is the latest incident in the company’s six-year campaign to build a golf course on 355 acres it owns in the wash in Sunland. The project has been delayed, in part, by the presence of the slender-horned spineflower.

In a letter dated Oct. 6, the corporation notified state and federal wildlife officials that they had 10 days to “salvage” spineflowers in the wash before the firm puts the property to an unspecified use that would “eliminate, directly or indirectly, all or most” of the spineflower population.

The letter cited seldom-used state and federal laws for its authority.

A top attorney at the state Department of Fish and Game said the agency is trying to map out a strategy to respond to the unusual legal issues raised by Cosmo.

“We have not made any decisions about how to proceed,” said Ann Malcolm, deputy general counsel to the department. “I don’t want to speculate about what’s going to happen or what could happen.”

Malcolm said she could recall only one other case in which a developer tried to invoke a 1977 state Fish and Game Code provision that appears to give property owners the right to destroy protected plants on their property if they have first given state officials the opportunity to salvage the species. That case, involving land in San Diego County, also was filed last week.

Jack Fancher, acting supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Carlsbad, said plants are also provided less protection in federal law than endangered animals. “It’s a loophole,” he said.

Wildlife officials plan to meet with the developer next week to discuss the matter.

“It’s an eviction notice for the spineflower,” said Sylvia Gross, a homeowner activist, reacting to Cosmo’s latest move to break the logjam around its project. “It’s the most audacious thing I’ve ever heard of.”

But city, state and federal officials also predicted that even if Cosmo is successful in removing the plants, it could alienate the agencies from which it needs approvals for the golf course project, including the Los Angeles City Council and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

At present, Cosmo is entitled only to develop the property--one of only a handful of areas in the city of Los Angeles officially identified by the city’s general plan as “ecologically important”--for agricultural use, including orchards. Cosmo’s efforts to build a championship golf course in the rugged wash have been stymied since the spineflower, a species recognized as endangered by state and federal law, was found there in the late 1980s.

Cosmo is owned by Minoru Isutani, a Japanese businessman who once owned the Pebble Beach golf course and had plans to develop a casino in Las Vegas.

“I’m astounded by what they’re doing,” said Robert Rogers, chief hearing examiner in the city’s Planning Department, which is reviewing Cosmo’s application for a conditional-use permit to build the golf course.

If Cosmo removes the flowers, Rogers speculated that it would put the city’s Planning Commission in a “negative frame of mind” when it reviews the developer’s request for the city permit.

Arline DeSanctis, a planning deputy to Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the Sunland area, said she has “registered our very strong concerns that (Cosmo) not destroy the spineflower.”