Cost of Songbird Habitat Put at $5.5 Billion

Proposed federal listing of 800,000 acres in Southern California as critical habitat for the endangered California gnatcatcher could cost the state’s economy as much as $5.5 billion over two decades, according to a report commissioned by developers.

“We think it’s a good study,” said Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coalition for Habitat Conservation in Laguna Hills, which represents the interests of developers on environmental issues. “If you are going to take an area the size of Rhode Island and impose a very difficult and costly new federal jurisdiction over it, there will be a profound economic impact.”

But environmentalists criticized the report, calling it a predictable developer’s response.

“It’s a common theme to cry economic gloom and doom,” David Hogan, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson, said Wednesday. “The reality, however, is that protection of habitat from sprawl will improve the economy, as opposed to bogging it down.”

The new study, conducted by an Orange County group called Empire Economics, was commissioned as part of the public input on the proposed federal designation. Developers in the affected area--which would cover portions of five Southern California counties--would have to show they were not destroying the endangered songbird’s habitat to get federal approval or subsidies for their projects.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is proposing the designation, has until Sept. 30 to come up with its final plan.

The agency recently published a draft economic impact study predicting little or no economic impact from the designation. That finding drew criticism from the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, which have road projects in the designated areas, and Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Assn., which claims it will lose use of 195 acres of cemetery land--worth about $50 million--should the designation become final.

“When you get a federal document saying there will be no economic impact, which is ludicrous, it’s important to set the record straight,” Pearce said.

The transportation agencies and Forest Lawn commissioned the study by Joseph T. Janczyk, a Capistrano Beach consultant and former economics professor. Janczyk tracked probable new housing developments in the designated region over the next 20 years.

His findings: Designating habitat as critical could result in the loss of 159,659 housing units, which, in turn, would cost 175,933 construction-related jobs.

“Based on these two impacts, the designation would result in a financial impact . . . ranging from a most conservative $500 million to a conservative but still reasonable $5.5 billion,” the report concluded.

Environmentalists questioned the reliability of the report.

“These are obviously paid experts the building industry has hired to produce a report saying that the impact on the economy will be severe,” said Andrew Wetzler, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Los Angeles-based organization that initially petitioned the government to list the gnatcatcher and later filed a lawsuit forcing the designation of critical habitat.

Federal officials said Wednesday they would take the report and its findings into account before making a final decision.

“The comment period for the proposal just closed a couple of days ago,” said Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Carlsbad. “We have to look at the sum total of those comments before we make a final determination.”