U.S. Begins Experiment to Save Songbird : Wildlife: Conservation of gnatcatcher goes to state and local governments. Landowners can get quick approval of projects by helping create preserves.

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt on Wednesday put the final stamp of approval on a precedent-setting experiment designed to protect the threatened gnatcatcher and other rare wildlife in Southern California while softening the economic blow to developers.

In what Babbitt called an extraordinary, historic move, the federal government put conservation of the tiny songbird into the hands of the cities, counties and the Wilson Administration rather than under the rigid control of the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

In March, Babbitt’s Interior Department listed the California gnatcatcher as a threatened species, virtually halting development on large stretches of valuable land in Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties. At the same time, Babbitt proposed special conditions, and on Wednesday, his staff and Gov. Pete Wilson’s top resources officials completed negotiations over the final touches.

“It is admittedly going to be a long and complicated and sometimes frustrating process,” Babbitt said. “But the alternatives are all worse. The alternative is a train wreck that results in stalemate and no development, and a decade of litigation like we’ve had in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.”

State and community leaders, developers and environmentalists, who met with Babbitt in Carlsbad on Wednesday, welcomed the long-awaited federal rule, which will be published Friday.

“This is reinventing the way we all do business,” said Monica Florian, a vice president of the Irvine Co., a major Orange County development firm that has led the effort.

Without the special rule, developers have had to undergo the rigorous process of seeking federal reviews of each new housing development, building or road they construct on the gnatcatcher’s coastal sage scrub habitat.

Now, in what Babbitt’s staff calls “one-stop shopping,” the landowners can instead choose to participate in the Natural Communities Conservation Planning program, established by the Wilson Administration to create large regional preserves of sage scrub.

In exchange, landowners will obtain swift approval to develop the rest of their property. Those who refuse must undergo the normal endangered species process, which can drag on for several years.

The special conditions were tailor-made for Southern California because hundreds of urban development projects are at stake.

The songbird, which is 4 1/2 inches long and weighs less than an ounce, lives exclusively in coastal sage scrub, a mix of arid shrubs found only on 300,000 acres of valuable undeveloped real estate, largely in the coastal hills from Newport Beach to San Diego.

Coastal sage scrub, scattered from Rancho Palos Verdes to San Diego, also provides a habitat for about 100 other wild animals and plants that are under consideration for federal protection.

California Resources Secretary Douglas Wheeler said 39 landowners and 33 city and county government agencies already are involved in the state’s conservation program, adding that the federal approval will encourage many more to participate.

The program still has a long way to go. None of the cities and counties has completed long-range conservation plans to identify where the preserves will be and how the land will be acquired and managed. Until the plans are approved, at least a year from now, developers and municipalities are allowed to destroy no more than 5% of sage scrub left in Southern California.

Babbitt is hoping to use the gnatcatcher as a national model to try to prove that the Endangered Species Act, which is under fire from landowners across the nation, can protect wildlife without causing economic growth to suffer.

Babbitt acknowledges that leaving protection of the gnatcatcher in the hands of the state and local governments is risky, since there is no guarantee that the experiment will succeed. But the federal government retains authority to step in, which puts strong pressure on the Wilson Administration and local agencies.

The goal of the program is to switch the emphasis from saving each species on the verge of extinction to an approach that protects whole ecosystems.

The project began in 1991, when the Wilson Administration, at the urging of the Irvine Co., drew together an alliance of developers, environmentalists, scientists and local officials to begin work on creating preserves.