Gnatcatcher Habitat a Costly Idea, Report Says

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.

But environmentalists on Wednesday criticized the report, calling it a predictable developer response.

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

The report’s supporters, on the other hand, say the findings made public this week should not be quickly dismissed.

“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.”

The new study, conducted by an Orange County group called Empire Economics, was commissioned as part of the public comment on the proposed designation, under which any developers in the affected area--which would cover portions of Orange and four other counties--would have to show that 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 several quarters including the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, which have road projects in the designated areas, and Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Assn., which says it will lose the 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.

In order to do that, the transportation agencies and Forest Lawn commissioned the study by Joseph T. Janczyk, a Capistrano Beach consultant and former university economics professor. To tackle the subject, Janczyk tracked probable new housing developments in the designated region over the next 20 years.

His findings: Designating habitat as critical for survival of an endangered species could result in the loss of 159,659 housing units--or 8.5% of the total--which, in turn, would cost 175,933 construction-related jobs, or 5.6% of the total amount of job growth in the region.

“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’s figures.

“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 by the end of next month.