Weighing Habitat, Homes on 131,000 Acres

By DEBORAH SCHOCH

May 12, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

It is the last large chunk of privately owned, undeveloped and unplanned land in the county, an island showing what Southern California looked like before the arrival of malls and freeways.

It is home to the nation’s largest population of a threatened songbird called the coastal California gnatcatcher as well as a bevy of other plants and animals that dwell in few other places on Earth.

“There’s nothing like it,” conservation biology expert Dennis Murphy said. “It’s that important.”

The future of this land is to be decided in coming months in an ecological give-and-take on a massive scale involving the Rancho Mission Viejo company, government regulators, scientists and environmentalists. In short: The plan being crafted will decide what land within the sprawling 131,000-acre region can be developed and what can be earmarked as natural preserve.

“I would describe it as critical to the future environment of Orange County,” research biologist Pete Bloom said.

Yet despite such high stakes, surprisingly little debate has occurred in public view in the four years of sometimes tense, sometimes stalled talks over preserve planning in south Orange County.

All that promises to change. A public meeting Thursday night in San Clemente will kick off what appears to be a newly reinvigorated effort to craft a compromise. Planners face an ambitious schedule over the next year: a draft preserve plan by late July, full-scale environmental review starting in late autumn and final approval next year.

If all goes well, a massive expanse from the beaches of San Clemente north to Cleveland National Forest and east to Camp Pendleton will be divided up, with as much as 48,000 acres labeled as preserves and open space and other land deemed eligible for future development sites.

Hanging in the balance are building plans in one of the fastest-growing regions of Southern California as well as the future health of a long list of plants and animals.

But many potential land mines lie in wait:

* The possible extension of the Foothill toll road through some of the most ecologically sensitive portions of potential preserve land.

* A widening division between those environmentalists who endorse such habitat-saving plans and those who view them with suspicion. Some environmentalists praise the plan as a pragmatic approach to saving endangered species while others say it concedes far too much to developers.

* Increasing pressures for lines to be drawn and decisions made as the building boom gathers steam in South County. Unlike the first conservation plan in Orange County’s central and coastal areas approved during the tail end of the recession in 1996, the current plan is being drawn up in the midst of a surging housing market.

Five maps of conceptual plans offer a glimpse of compromises that lie ahead. The plan with the richest allotment of preserve land and other open space--48,022 acres in all--offers what Laguna Beach environmental leader Elisabeth Brown dubs the “died-gone-to-heaven-and-come-back-green scenario.”

At the other extreme is a plan with only 41,233 acres of preserve and open space that would permit the possibility of development in parts of a large swath of near-pristine wilderness east of San Clemente owned by Rancho Mission Viejo LLC.

Rancho Mission Viejo owns nearly 30,000 acres of the 131,000 acres now being studied. Another 36,000 acres is in Cleveland National Forest, and much of the remaining land is either privately owned or part of existing parks.

The preserve effort is part of an experiment led by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Gov. Pete Wilson to balance wildlife demands with the needs of developers.

The so-called Natural Community Conservation Planning program, or NCCP, has drawn widespread national attention as a way to make the 1973 Endangered Species Act more palatable for landowners by avoiding what they denounce as bureaucratic “bush-by-bush, beak-by-beak” enforcement by federal regulators.

Instead, environmentally sensitive land is to be saved in blocs that theoretically are large enough to assure the survival of a number of rare plants and animals. In return, federal and state regulators free participating landowners from tough endangered-species laws on land within the planning region but outside the reserve blocs, saving them time and money during development.

“It brings something that both sides want,” said Murphy, a research professor at University of Nevada at Reno who has been deeply involved in NCCP policymaking. “It’s the best way to take care of the species and the most efficient way to deal with regulation.” He calls Orange County an ideal area for building such plans, since so much remaining land is contiguous and held by a few large landowners.

In the county’s only such conservation plan--approved amid national attention in 1996--the Irvine Co. helped spearhead the creation of a patchwork totaling 37,000 acres in preserve land in central and coastal Orange County.

Two other large-scale pioneering projects have been completed in San Diego County, and more plans are now being crafted in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Looking ahead, state officials talk of launching similar projects in the Ventura County area and around Monterey.

But the so-called “southern subregion” of Orange County presents new opportunities and risks.

For one thing, so much of this land is undeveloped that conservation planners talk optimistically of a “blank slate” where habitat may be saved for such animal rarities as the gnatcatcher songbird, arroyo toad and southwestern pond turtle and rare plants such as many-stemmed dudelya, intermediate mariposa lily and southern tar plant.

But the slate is not entirely clean. The prospect of slicing the land with the Foothill South toll road has some environmentalists and scientists wondering how precious habitats can survive when flanked by bulldozed hillsides and whizzing cars.

Officially, two routes are being considered for the toll road, the “CP” alignment closer to Camp Pendleton and the “BX” alignment farther west. The CP route is favored by leaders at the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which would build the road, but it has been denounced vehemently by a number of environmentalists.

Most maps for the proposed preserve show only the CP alignment, prompting concern from officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is still studying the toll road’s potential environmental effects. In fact, planners are moving ahead with designing the preserve even though no final decision has been made where--or even if--to build the road.

After critics faulted similar conservation plans for what they called insufficient scientific review, eight scientific advisors were named to assist in the South County plan. The advisors compiled a report, still in draft form, offering guidelines for designing the preserve and conserving plants and animals. But there currently are no formal plans for the scientists to reconvene to review the pending design.

“We felt very strongly that would be a good idea,” said one advisor, gnatcatcher expert Jonathan Atwood of Manomet Observatory in Massachusetts. “Certainly, the sentiment was that we thought it was a little limiting to just provide suggestions and then have no formal review of the final plan.”

Despite the hurdles ahead, landowners and environmentalists alike expressed hope that the plan would produce a workable compromise.

Rancho Mission Viejo is dedicated to the effort, spokeswoman Diane Gaynor said. “They have worked very hard to keep it alive,” she said

“To me, this is a test case of the whole NCCP,” added environmentalist Dan Silver, who has been involved in the planning. “It’s as clean a slate as we’re going to find.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Public Input

Plans for a major South County land preserve will be reviewed at a public meeting Thursday in San Clemente.

MEETING:

Thursday, 7-9 p.m.

San Clemente High School

Little Theater

700 Avenida Pico

COMMENTS:

Oral and written comments about the plan’s scope and content will be taken at the meeting. Written comments also can be sent to federal officials and should be received by June 8:

* U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Attn.: Jim Bartel, assistant field supervisor

Carlsbad field office

2730 Loker Ave. W.

Carlsbad, CA 92008

Fax: (760) 431-9624

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Background material is available by contacting:

- County of Orange

Planning and Development Services

Attn.: NCCP, Room 356

300 N. Flower St.