Offering the Other Side of Saddleback Story

Re “Fighting for Serenity,” Dec. 22:

I read with interest the latest in a long line of articles about the Saddleback Meadows project. I represent a nearby landowner also proposing development, so I am familiar with the area and interested in the media’s coverage of it. The basic angle of the story was an interesting and legitimate one: development pressure pushing into previously remote areas.

The quotes from people with different viewpoints seemed to try to look at the issue with some balance. However, the article implies that the site is relatively pristine, when in fact it is highly degraded (the endangered fairy shrimp present are found in disturbed stock ponds, not natural vernal pools, and no gnatcatchers are present). The most troubling “factual” assertion is that the Saddleback Meadows site is the “only remaining wildlife corridor connecting thousands of acres of open space.” Have the editors of the paper ever pressed the reporters who keep repeating this claim as fact? Sure, the attorney who keeps suing the project has made this claim (he may even believe it), but is Diane Wedner (or her editors) aware that Dennis Murphy, a professor of conservation biology and former president of the Society for Conservation Biology, recently analyzed this assertion and found it fallacious?

Mark R. McGuire

San Clemente