Biologists Take On the Builders

Saying Rancho Mission Viejo contains the last, best stretches of certain unique habitats and species, a consortium of environmentalists, biologists and elected officials Wednesday launched a campaign to preserve vast stretches of the land.

Rancho Mission Viejo Co. recently rolled out plans to build 14,000 homes on the 23,000-acre ranch in southern Orange County, as well as preserve 14,000 acres. The ranch sprawls roughly from San Juan Capistrano to the Cleveland National Forest.

But conservation biologists commissioned by the Endangered Habitats League said in a report presented Wednesday that four core biological areas on the ranch were in such pristine condition that they should be preserved at all costs, including buying them if necessary.

“This is the heart and soul of . . . one of the most intact biological areas in Southern California,” said Dan Silver, head of the Los Angeles-based league.

Wayne Spencer, lead author of the report, said data provided by Rancho Mission Viejo consulting biologists and others showed the core areas include more than half of the world’s total remaining population of rare cactus wrens, the nation’s largest contiguous population of the threatened gnatcatcher, portions of the last remaining undammed creek in Southern California, and a tremendous diversity of hawks, golden eagles, mountain lions and other species that require large contiguous wild lands to survive.

“Most Americans think of the Amazonian rain forest” when they think of species going extinct, said Spencer of the Conservation Biology Institute, a nonprofit research institute based in Oregon and San Diego. “Here in Southern California, we’re sitting in one of these globally unique hot spots as well. . . . If we don’t protect this from the degradation of large urban sprawl, we will lose these remaining resources.”

A ranch spokeswoman disputed the findings, saying the biologists had not done detailed field surveys of the ranch.

“To call Rancho Mission Viejo a pristine wilderness area is simply incorrect,” Diane Gaynor said. “This is an area that has been in active use for 120 years, whether it be mining operations, research and development, or agricultural use--at one time the ranch had the largest wheat fields in Orange County.”

She also said “the goal of the family has always been to create a comprehensive land use management and open space preservation plan. The word comprehensive is important, because the opposite would be the piecemeal development.”

As for using the biological core areas as the basis for determining where to build, she said: “We have to look at a multitude of different issues. One, continuing ranching and farming. Two, preserving open space and habitat. And three, meeting needs in this county for homes and jobs.”

She pointed to a Cal State Fullerton study showing that 22,000 homes were needed in the Rancho Mission Viejo area because of expected population growth.

Spencer said the Conservation Biology Institute had been allowed to “briefly review” the company’s development plans, which have not been formally filed yet. He said the review convinced him and his fellow conservation biologists that there was a “very large difference” between the company’s planned preservation areas and the unique biological areas the report identified.

“What I remember clearly was many scattered development ‘bubbles’ in the middle of these areas . . . with roads, power lines and sewer lines.”

He said putting such development in the areas of highest biological diversity would fragment the now largely unbroken expanses of habitat that have allowed the area’s ecology to remain so intact.

He said the land is one of five key areas in Southern California that contain large populations of endangered and threatened species. The others are in central and northern Orange County and San Diego County.

Wednesday’s news conference and the report essentially kicked off a public education and lobbying effort to counteract a similar public outreach effort being undertaken by ranch officials. Although they have yet to file any formal plans for development, ranch staff members have been meeting with selected groups and soliciting their feedback on plans.

Both sides agree that the state’s Natural Communities Conservation Plan process, which allows the destruction of rare habitat and species in exchange for setting aside other fragile lands, is the key to finding a solution.

Ranch officials met with federal and county officials Wednesday to discuss the planning process, Gaynor said. But the environmentalists said it is moving too slowly, and behind closed doors.

Begun in 1991, the southern subregion Orange County Natural Communities Conservation Plan is incomplete, even though developments originally intended to be part of the area already have gone forward.

Gaynor said the economic downturn of the early 1990s had stalled costly, required biological studies but that the process was moving forward again. Federal and county officials agreed that the process is back on track, albeit in the “early stages,” according to Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the Carlsbad office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Others who urged the ranch to preserve the areas included San Juan Capistrano Councilman John Gelff, San Clemente Councilman G. Wayne Eggleston and Joan Irvine Smith, onetime heiress of the Irvine Ranch.