Fairy Shrimp May Put Brakes on Toll Road

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday designated 6,870 acres in five Southern California counties as critical habitat for the Riverside fairy shrimp, an action that could hinder a proposed south Orange County toll road and a development project in rustic Trabuco Canyon.

The area designated to protect the small freshwater shrimp is about half what the agency proposed in September. Most of the land on two San Diego County military bases was excluded for national security reasons, outraging environmentalists.

Besides the 900 acres in Orange County, the designation includes 4,355 acres in Riverside County, 1,075 acres in San Diego County, 480 acres in Los Angeles County and 60 acres in Ventura County, but no major projects appear to be affected in those areas, according to the wildlife service.

“This is not a critical-habitat designation; it’s an environmental drive-by shooting,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity based in Tucson, Ariz. The center filed the lawsuit that led to Thursday’s critical habitat designation.

“It’s a disaster, . . . a land giveaway to developers and a one-way ticket back to court for the Fish and Wildlife Service,” said Suckling, whose center has prevailed in other lawsuits that forced the beleaguered federal wildlife agency to designate many other critical habitat areas.

Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the wildlife service’s Carlsbad office, disagreed, saying the designation includes all the land that is essential to the preservation of the fairy shrimp that first was discovered in 1985 and listed as endangered in 1993.

“This [decision] is based upon all of the best and most current scientific and commercial information available,” Hendron said. “It’s biologically sound.”

The fairy shrimp live in vernal pools--unique seasonal wetlands created by winter and spring rains--that have been virtually wiped out by development in Southern California. They survive only part of the year because the ponds they inhabit dry up seasonally.

The designation will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday and take effect 30 days later.

Critical habitat is perhaps the most controversial provision of the 1973 Endangered Species Act. It does not allow creation of preserves but does permit the agency to modify or prohibit activities that would severely harm the habitat on federally regulated land.

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the federal agency for failing to designate critical habitat when the fairy shrimp was listed. In February 2000, a federal court ordered the habitat designation.

The 900 acres affected in Orange County includes parts of San Onofre State Beach, which would be bisected by the proposed 16-mile Foothill South toll road. Officials of the Transportation Corridor Agencies already must consider numerous other imperiled species in their planning for the toll road.

Lisa Telles, agencies spokeswoman, said all endangered species that could be effected by the road will be addressed in the an environmental impact statement due in 18 months.

The proposed site of the 299-home Saddleback Meadows development received its second environmental blow of the week when part of its area was included in the fairy shrimp designation. On Tuesday, the Orange County Board of Supervisors voted to require that developer California Quartet Ltd. rework its environmental impact report. Attempts to reach Quartet officials Thursday were unsuccessful.

Vernal pool complexes on Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego and on the training area of Camp Pendleton just south of Orange County were excluded after Navy officials said they were concerned about jeopardizing their military mission. The wildlife service says that Miramar’s ecological management plan is satisfactory and that Pendleton will have such a plan by Nov. 17.

The Fish and Wildlife Service was sued in December by the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Los Angeles office for failing to include military land in the critical habitat designation for the coastal California gnatcatcher.

It’s one of 75 active lawsuits covering more than 400 species that the federal agency is considering. Courts have ordered the service to complete hundreds of critical habitat plans in the Pacific region alone. The crush of court orders has led the service to stop listing species as endangered or threatened because, it says, it lacks resources.