Spineflower Won’t Get Protected Designation

The San Fernando Valley spineflower, until recently considered extinct, will not be declared an endangered species on an emergency basis, according to federal officials.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials cited staff and budget shortfalls in announcing they will not be able to come to a decision on the spineflower--found last year on land earmarked for the Ahmanson Ranch project--within the one-year period mandated by federal law.

In light of the decision, opponents of the Ahmanson Ranch residential development said last week they will probably go to court to force the agency to make a determination.

Foes of the 3,050-home project said the development would wipe out 100,000 of the flowering plants, a species that was once believed to be extinct. Last spring, biologists for the developer, Washington Mutual Inc., found more than 1.4 million of the plants on the hilly property in Ventura County, just west of the Los Angeles County line.

In a letter to Fish and Wildlife officials, the attorney for Calabasas, which is fighting the development, said up to 24% of the total spineflower population could be destroyed by the project, which is near Calabasas.

Tim McGarry, a vice president for Washington Mutual, said those projections were “just plain wrong.”

More than 90% of the plants would be protected under conservation plans the developer submitted to Ventura County in September, he said.

Project opponents filed a petition with Fish and Wildlife last December seeking emergency protection for the spineflower. Under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials must rule within a year of receiving a petition.

But faced with a torrent of lawsuits, and limited budget and staff, Fish and Wildlife officials said last week they would have to stop putting new species on the agency’s endangered and threatened lists for fiscal 2001, except for emergencies.

“As far as we are concerned there is no emergency,” said Michael Spear, the federal agency’s California-Nevada operations manager. “The developer is working with us to develop a plan that will meet the needs of the species.”

If bulldozers were to begin grading, Spear said “we would find the money to emergency list it.” Instead, he said, the agency will likely stop all work on the petition because of its backlog.

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Putting the petition on hold is “unfortunate,” said John Buse, a senior staff attorney for the Environmental Defense Center, an advocacy group working with the California Native Plant Society and the National Resources Defense Council to protect the spineflower. “Apart from the emergency listing, they still have a deadline approaching in early December to decide what do with the normal course of the listing process,” Buse said. “If they want litigation to set their priorities, that’s what we will have to do.”

A key power of the Fish and Wildlife Service is to list species, said David Magney, a past president of the California Native Plant Society. The California red-legged frog, which had also been found on the ranch property, received federal listing.

Agency officials “have received a petition and are doing nothing,” Magney said. Listing is important, he said, because the plant is so fickle that one year it may bloom by the thousands, only to dwindle the next.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) said the current Ahmanson Ranch tract map indicates that enough of the spineflower would be destroyed that it could lapse into extinction.

Fish and Wildlife, he said, should attempt to finish all pending cases.

“They ought to work as hard as the Florida vote-counting specialists to certify that which should be listed,” Sherman said.