Finding Middle Ground

There were times when U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt thought this unorthodox ecological compromise might never come to pass.

He admits he was not overly optimistic when he met with Irvine Co. and government officials more than three years ago about forging an all-new approach to habitat conservation in Southern California.

“I went away from those early meetings thinking the chances were probably about 30%,” Babbitt said in a Wednesday interview. “But I also saw, very clearly, the importance of it . . . [that] we may never again have another chance like this.”

The plan survived, and Babbitt returned to Orange County this week to help inaugurate the first major preserve created under California’s Natural Community Conservation Planning program.

Less than an hour before the start of Wednesday’s ceremony, Babbitt sat in a restaurant at the Hyatt Regency Irvine amid the clatter of breakfast dishes and traced how government and landowners worked together to create the plan despite a gauntlet of political uncertainties.

In 1994, he said, “a real anti-regulatory, anti-environmental wave [was] crashing across this country,” and he wondered whether the plan would survive.

“What I learned,” he recalled, “was that although my interests under the law [involved] the protection of biodiversity, what was on people’s minds here was open space. What Orange County really taught me was [that] I needed to show how this could be meshed right in with people’s desire for open space. . . .

“There are thousands [of people]--everyone who wants to buy a home--who are thinking, ‘What’s the place going to look like 20 years from now?’ ”

Fortunately for the California conservation program, he said, “there was this nice kind of overlap between open space and the protection of natural values.”

And he talked about offering “no surprises” assurance for home buyers that “no one is going to move in and develop the horizon and ruin your expectations. You get what you see.”

The plan also survived Gov. Pete Wilson’s presidential bid, a potential political land mine for the plan’s dependence on state and federal regulators working together. Babbitt works within the Clinton White House, while his counterpart, state Resources Agency Secretary Douglas P. Wheeler, works with Wilson.

Babbitt recalled how he and Wheeler came to a tacit understanding: “Look, we all recognize this opportunity, and there’ll be enough credit for everyone to claim without worrying about all these things.” He also praised the Irvine Co. and its senior vice president, Monica Florian, saying that she worked relentlessly on the project.

Some biologists critical of the new plan have said that it did not receive adequate scientific review. And in recent weeks, environmentalist Leeona Klippstein has questioned whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service inflated the gnatcatcher population in its biological review of the plan, a criticism the service denies.

Babbitt said he believes that the Fish and Wildlife review is valid and that the criticisms aimed at it are unfounded. But while he said the plan has had “the best science,” he added that discussions may be pending about finding ways “of institutionalizing the science and to formalize the peer review process.” He suggested that the National Biological Service may assume a role in future planning, offering credibility and serving as a bridge to the academic community.

In describing what he sees as the importance of the Orange County plan, Babbitt noted the preservation of the “great wild spaces” at Yosemite and other California wilderness areas far from the cities where people live.

With the California conservation program, he said, “we’re, in a sense, coming full circle, saying it’s not enough in our lives to protect it way out there. We need to establish a relationship with the landscape in our daily lives, where we live and work. And that’s what this is about, saying it ought to be possible to raise our children in a natural environmental right where we live.”