U.S. Agency Designates Toad Habitat

Federal officials designated 182,360 acres as critical habitat for the endangered Southwestern arroyo toad Wednesday, including land in the path of the proposed Foothill South toll road in Orange County.

The preferred route of the proposed 16-mile toll road would bisect San Onofre State Park and cross San Mateo Creek, part of the critical habitat for the toad.

The habitat designation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, ensures protection for the endangered species in parts of eight Central and Southern California counties. Approval was held up briefly by the Bush administration’s review of last-minute federal actions taken during President Clinton’s tenure.

The arroyo toad is only the latest in a list of fragile creatures standing in the way of the massive toll road. The coastal California gnatcatcher, tidewater goby, Riverside fairy shrimp and one of the last three known populations of the Pacific pocket mouse are all found in South County. One of the creeks also is home to the only known population of steelhead trout south of Malibu Creek.

“It’s a challenge,” said Lisa Telles, spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the agency that builds tollways in Orange County. “But it doesn’t take away the issue. . . . Southern California is growing. Traffic is increasing. We need to be responsible and plan for that. We’re serious about finding a way to balance the transportation needs of the future and the environmental issues of the future.”

She said road planners have been tracking all of the species and will try to avoid the creatures and their habitats as much as possible. They will also create habitat to minimize the harm, as they have for existing toll roads, she said.

The toad habitat, which had been scaled back from the original proposal of 500,000 acres, drew praise from builders and developers, but environmentalists said it left too much land unprotected.

Tom Goff, deputy director of Oakland-based California Alliance for Jobs, which represents contractors and the building industry, applauded the wildlife agency for using “reason and sound science.”

“We can probably use some of that land to build homes for working people,” he said.

But David Hogan, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity, said wildlife agency officials “apparently expect the public to believe that those who will bulldoze endangered species habitat are suddenly now qualified to act as wildlife guardians.”

Hogan’s group, along with Christians Caring for Creation, sued the Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to designate habitats for the toad and several other endangered species, as required by law.

Hogan and agency officials agreed that most of the areas deleted from the original proposal were not crucial to the species. More precise mapping resulted in the deletion of 202,000 acres, officials said.

But Hogan said 39,000 acres on the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton and 17,000 acres in northern Los Angeles County--including the Santa Clara River--were crucial areas that should have been protected.

The Fish and Wildlife agency concluded that Newhall Land & Farming, a major developer in the fast-growing Santa Clarita Valley, had adequately addressed the possible presence of toads along the Santa Clara River.

“We had submitted information that confirmed the arroyo toad is not present in the Santa Clara River area, and it is unsuitable for the arroyo toad,” said Newhall Land & Farming spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer.

In recent days, a Bush transition team has allowed habitats of several species to be published in the Federal Register, the final step for the designation. Among those is the peninsular bighorn sheep, which roam the deserts and mountains of Southern California.

Also Wednesday, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed designating 301,010 acres in San Diego and Riverside counties as critical habitat for the endangered quino checker spot butterfly. The tiny orange and black butterfly was once among the most common in Southern California, but only a few hundred remain.

The eight known populations are in San Diego and Riverside counties, and of those, only three consist of more than five butterflies.

Orange County was not included in the butterfly critical habitat proposal. However, wildlife service spokeswoman Jane Hendron said the species recovery plan calls for either locating or if necessary introducing two additional checker spot populations in undeveloped coastal lands that were part of its historic range--possibly the western and northern slopes of the Santa Ana Mountains.

The ruling goes into effect in 30 days, Hendron said.