Songbird of Peace : Plan to Save Gnatcatcher, Other Wildlife May Be Model for Protecting Environment, Jobs

The California gnatcatcher would seem an unlikely candidate for the role of peacemaker.

After all, this is the same infamous songbird that transformed Orange County into a major battlefield of the endangered species wars. Only five years ago, the once-innocuous gray-blue bird seemed destined to become Southern California’s answer to the spotted owl of the Pacific Northwest, pitting developers against conservationists in an ugly test of wills.

Now, in gnatcatcher country, peace seems to be breaking out.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is poised to vote on a plan that is being hailed for striking a historic balance between business and environmental interests.

Initially forged as a truce in the gnatcatcher debate, the voluntary plan has mushroomed into one of the most ambitious experiments of its kind nationwide--one that some believe will prove a model for other regions grappling with how to save both wildlife and jobs.

It calls for carving out a 37,000-acre preserve system in central and coastal Orange County, designed to protect rare species while freeing participating landowners from strict endangered species permit review outside the reserve’s boundaries.

Although the plan was triggered by the gnatcatcher, which lives in coastal sage scrub on some of the nation’s most valuable real estate, it has swelled to include protections for 39 plants and animals, from the cactus wren to the coastal rosy boa.

In an era when the federal Endangered Species Act has come under rigorous attack on Capitol Hill by some who call it unreasonably restrictive on business, the Orange County plan is being touted by unlikely cohorts--developers and environmentalists, Republicans and Democrats--as an enlightened means to protect land as well as landowners’ rights.

“To get a general consensus on this, it’s really quite extraordinary,” said county Supervisor Marian Bergeson, who plans to support the proposal.

In fact, a key environmentalist who earlier faulted parts of the plan said last week that his group will offer general support--albeit with some reservations--after recent changes by plan designers.

“The point is, we’re not expecting a perfect plan. We have to look at something on balance,” said Dan Silver, coordinator of the Los Angeles-based Endangered Habitats League. “At this point, the pluses are tremendously more important than the minuses.”

The plan is one of the first crafted under the state Natural Community Conservation Planning program, launched by Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration five years ago. Officials predict that it will be the first major plan under the program to win local approval.

What makes the plan even more remarkable, officials say, is that it has taken shape in one of the nation’s most populous metropolitan areas, amid the pressures of a major recession, shifting political bases and a county bankruptcy.

Said Michael Mantell, state undersecretary of resources: “This plan is as farsighted a one as has been done in the United States, and the county deserves an enormous amount of credit for pulling it through.”

The sprawling nature of the preserve can be seen clearly from atop a ridge high in Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, most of which lies inside the preserve boundaries.

Open land stretches for miles around, speckled with the gnatcatcher’s favored coastal sage scrub--normally a study in browns, but this time of year a striking spring green. Along the horizon is an unmistakable smudge of smog, office towers and red tile roofs.

Environmentalist Elisabeth Brown describes the preserve system as a cluster of wildlife islands ringed by civilization.

Ideally, she said, the plan offers the public some assurance that some of Orange County will stay open--”that you’ll still be able to look up and see green hills, and go and stroll, and see plants and animals.”

Spread out in two major swaths, the preserve will total 37,378 acres--nearly nine times bigger than L.A.’s 4,200-acre Griffith Park, dwarfing the 1,017-acre Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and New York’s 840-acre Central Park.

A crucial component of the plan is how it pulls together large pieces of land to be linked and managed in a way to protect coastal sage scrub, chaparral and other native habitat.

Inside its borders are thousands of acres of parkland plus some parcels in need of replanting and restoration. It also encompasses what Trish Smith of the Nature Conservancy calls “the best of the best” of Orange County’s wilderness.

Building the entire preserve system is expected to take 15 years or longer, but in the interim, land is to be managed according to reserve guidelines. In the end, it will be owned by public agencies.

Other natural community conservation plans are evolving in Southern California, where coastal sage scrub was chosen to test the new state program. A southern San Diego County plan could face local review and approval this spring.

Participating landowners who contribute reserve land or money will be allowed to develop outside the reserve’s boundaries with the assurance that they have complied with the Endangered Species Act through the state program, meaning they will not have to undergo the act’s strict permitting review.

But the plan does not offer them carte blanche to build wherever they wish, developers say, noting that they will still be subject to other standard development approvals.

A major player in the preserve’s creation is the Irvine Co., Orange County’s largest private landowner, which has been widely credited for its role in helping launch the plan. About 21,000 acres of the proposed preserve is Irvine Co. land, most of which had been identified as open space by previous development agreements.

Said Monica Florian, Irvine Co. senior vice president: “When I look at that map, it seems to me that just about everything I have ever heard coveted by others for protection is in there, preserved in the map.”