Environmentalists Assail State Policy on Gnatcatcher : Wildlife: Court filing by Fish and Game director called ‘double talk’ to thwart protection. Agency says it’s neutral.

Environmentalists are charging the state with abusing its power in supporting a local plan that could keep the California gnatcatcher off the federal threatened species list.

“It’s a reprehensible violation of their mission to protect wildlife,” Dan Silver, coordinator of a Los Angeles-based group called the Endangered Habitats League, said Wednesday of the state’s position. “I think it’s double talk.”

The controversy was sparked by a court declaration submitted this week by Boyd Gibbons, director of the California Department of Fish and Game. In it, Gibbons outlined an extensive habitat conservation program being developed in California called the Natural Communities Conservation Plan under which developers voluntarily preserve crucial habitat in exchange for permission to develop on land considered less essential to various species including the gnatcatcher.

“This approach ultimately may forestall the need for additional species to be listed under the Endangered Species Act,” the director wrote.

The statement was submitted to the U.S. District Court in Washington on Tuesday along with other documentation provided by the building industry aimed at persuading Judge Stanley Sporkin to keep the bird off the threatened species list. Sporkin ordered the gnatcatcher removed from the list last month, saying that the federal government had failed to make available to the public all of the raw data it relied upon when it declared the songbird threatened.

The judge’s decision was immediately challenged by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, who promised to provide evidence that the bird needs federal protection.

A hearing on the matter is set for Tuesday.

Gibbons was out of town and unavailable for comment on Wednesday. But Craig Manson, a lawyer representing the department, said Gibbons’ court declaration was not intended to take a position on the litigation in question.

“What we’ve done,” Manson said, “is provided a statement to the court which is purely factual and neutral on the main issue” of re-listing. “It is designed to assist the court in understanding what is going on on the ground in Southern California.”

The statement was submitted by lawyers representing the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, the Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency and the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency.

Manson acknowledged that the effect could well be a bolstering of the building industry’s argument against listing the small songbird as a threatened species.

“It’s no secret that our original desire with the program was to avoid listing the gnatcatcher,” he said. “The program was originally conceived--and still has the aim--of getting away from species-by-species listings” in favor of a broader site-oriented approach to species protection.

Silver, however, disagreed.

“The state is trying to remove protection,” he said.