Critical Habitat for Shrimp Proposed

Federal regulators are proposing to designate as critical habitat for the endangered Riverside fairy shrimp 12,060 acres across Southern California, including a small patch in Ventura County.

The proposed habitat here includes a 4.7-acre vernal pool west of California 23 and north of Tierra Rejada Road in Moopark, said Rick Farris, an ecologist in the Ventura office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which announced the designation Thursday.

Mission Viejo-based Lennar Communities is building a 522-home development on 388 acres around the pool using a conservation plan agreed upon last year by the developer and state and federal regulators.

That plan includes keeping homes out of an upstream area that funnels rainwater into the pool, diverting flows from an adjacent area into the pool and setting aside the pool and most of its watershed as permanent open space, Farris said.

The proposed critical habitat designation will have little effect on the development, he added. Because a population of fairy shrimp already exists in the Moorpark pool, Lennar officials already have had to comply with the Endangered Species Act.

Moorpark’s site is the county’s only remaining vernal pool that sustains a fairy shrimp population. Federal regulators are proposing the habitat designation in response to a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.