Bar Tollway; Leave Canyon to Wildlife

* I read with disbelief your recent news story about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s shortsighted opinion about the impact of the toll road on wildlife (“Tollway No Threat to Birds, New Report Says,” Feb. 1).

The San Joaquin Hills toll road should not be built through Laguna Canyon so the area can best recover from the recent fires. Hundreds of wildlife species call this place home, including threatened species like coastal cactus wrens, California gnatcatchers, horned lizards and orange-throated whiptail lizards, along with yellow-rumped warblers, red-tailed hawks, mule deer, cottontail rabbits and a myriad of others.

According to Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/biologist E.O. Wilson, in the next three decades, fully a fifth of the Earth’s species could vanish forever. For example, in recent decades, populations of migratory songbirds in the mid-Atlantic United States have dropped 50%. And about one-fifth of the world’s freshwater-fish species are extinct or seriously threatened. The main culprit is habitat destruction.

Protecting the world’s species starts in places like Laguna Canyon, with birds like the gnatcatcher. It’s vital that we not further fragment the habitat that remains. Restoration of habitat is not the answer; it simply doesn’t work.

These animals deserve to live, for their own sakes, as well as for the richness they’ve brought to our lives for millennia. Wilson argues that nature soothes both body and soul. He argues further that species’ extinction threatens our human spirit, Clearly, such valuable contributors should be protected.

DEBRA CONKEY

Laguna Beach