Rare Butterfly Found at Development Site

After three long years of community meetings, furious lobbying and heated debates, officials thought they finally were ready to start development on surplus Navy land in San Pedro and Harbor City.

Two adjacent parcels were to be transformed into a shining research facility for Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, an elite private school and dormitories for another school, plus housing for homeless and low-income families.

But that was before a tiny blue butterfly fluttered into the picture.

The Palos Verdes blue, thought to be extinct until it suddenly reappeared in 1994, has migrated from its nearby 10-acre Navy preserve to one of the proposed development sites.

Or maybe it was there all along, scientists say.

Either way, the silvery-blue insect--which is no bigger than a quarter and has a five-day life span--has thrown into question many of the carefully wrought plans for the two 60-acre parcels.

The federal Endangered Species Act prohibits development on federal land without steps being taken to save the habitat of any endangered species there.

But city officials and developers say they didn’t know the butterfly was there when they began planning.

Even after they realized the butterfly was living near the property, city officials said, they were taken by surprise when the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife asked that the project be put on hold last August.

The female Palos Verdes blue butterfly lays its eggs on the locoweed and deer weed growing wild on the site among the 545 houses formerly used by Navy families. The military declared the site surplus property in 1997.

Fish and Wildlife officials have concerns about plans to knock down the houses and dig up the weeds to make way for the private school and research park.

City officials and developers say they don’t want to choose. They want to save the butterfly and move ahead with the badly needed community revitalization.

“This is certainly frustrating,” said Mark Scott, a spokesman for Harbor-UCLA’s Research and Education Institute. “This area was hit so hard in the last decade with aerospace and military stuff disappearing. This project would be really good for the L.A. region. It would add to the tax base.

“We were just so close. And then this came along.”

But some environmentalists say the city should have known all along that the butterfly was there.

“If I were going to look into re-using a parcel that was next to the only known habitat of the rarest butterfly in the world, I might look into the possibility that there might be habitat on it that couldn’t be developed,” said Travis Longcore, of the Urban Wildlands Group, one of the organizations working to save the butterfly.

Since August, Fish and Wildlife biologists have been talking to Navy officials about how to move forward with development while saving the habitat.

But they have yet to meet with city officials and developers. The first meeting of all the involved parties has been set for April 18.

The case of the Palos Verdes blue, which reappeared just as its habitat was about to be redeveloped, is unique in the history of surplus military land, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Jane Hendren.

But she said she believes a compromise between environmentalists and developers can be found.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service has a very good record of allowing economic development to continue,” she said. “It’s not always easy, and it does take effort from everyone involved. There are ways of developing areas while still protecting the native species.”

City officials and developers say they hope she is right.

“We followed all the rules,” said Daniel Cartagena, an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents the area.

“We have spent an enormous amount of time, effort and money on the development of this plan.”

Cartagena said he feared that Fish and Wildlife might ask for changes so substantial that some plans would have to be reworked.

Another worry for some officials is that if plans are changed dramatically, they may have to be re-approved by a divided City Council, which fought bitterly last year over whether to set aside additional land at the site for low-income housing.

San Pedro Enterprise Community, an advocacy group, tried and failed to get some of the former Navy houses for homeless women and children they represent.

Jim Hansen, an official of the group, said he would like to see most of the Navy houses turned over to low-income families.

Meanwhile, biologists who have been studying the butterfly say they have a more immediate problem than the development. “We appear to be losing the butterfly,” said butterfly expert Rudi Mattoni. “We have serious problems here and we don’t know why.”

Mattoni spotted the supposedly extinct Palos Verdes blue in 1994 and has been fighting to save it--and many other endangered species in Los Angeles--ever since.

On a 10-acre preserve at the Defense Fuel Support Point in Harbor City, next to some of the surplus naval housing, Mattoni and his staff say they have tried everything they can think of to save the butterfly.

They have planted locoweed and deer weed, nurtured caterpillars in captivity, tried to release butterflies into the wild and even fed the little pupae special foods.

The butterfly’s population slowly increased until this year, when its numbers mysteriously plummeted.

One day last week, Mattoni and Yvonne Marlin, a biologist who watches over the Palos Verdes blue population full time, wandered through the native scrub with nets, trying to catch a female butterfly for breeding.

Though butterflies should have been everywhere at this time of year, they said, for the first 30 minutes, they didn’t see even one. Marlin was in despair at the absence of butterflies.

“Oh, my God,” she kept saying. “I can’t believe there’s nothing flying. There’s nothing.”

Mattoni was incensed.

“It’s not just the butterfly,” he said, ticking off dozens of native plant and animal species that have become extinct.

“It’s this whole pattern of biodiversity, this whole natural, Southern California heritage that is dying,” he said. “And it will never come back again. And nobody gives a damn because everybody wants to go to shopping malls.”

A cry from another biologist who had spotted a female Palos Verdes blue interrupted him.

“Catch it! Catch it!” screamed Mattoni.

But it fluttered away. So Mattoni drove off to search elsewhere while Marlin continued to walk into the rows of old Navy houses.

She pointed to loco weed and deer weed growing in tufts among the houses.

“I don’t know how the politics work,” said Marlin.

“But what I know is the butterfly is here. How can we justify losing the habitat?”