‘Critical Habitat’ Status Withdrawn for Western Salmon and Steelhead

The Bush administration announced an agreement Monday to withdraw “critical habitat” designations for 19 species of threatened and endangered salmon and steelhead in California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Builders said the administration’s action would remove a significant deterrent to construction in many areas of the four states. It signaled that economic considerations would receive more weight than before as the administration decides what habitats will be protected to help endangered and threatened species recover.

The agreement will not change the designation of the 19 species as endangered. But the loss of “critical habitat” status could make it easier for developers to get permission to go ahead with projects ranging from single-family home additions to entire subdivisions.

The accord was reached with the National Assn. of Home Builders, which had sued the government’s National Marine Fisheries Service over the “critical habitat” designations.

The home builders had argued that the designations were excessive and unduly vague, and that they lacked required analyses of environmental impact.

The agreement will take hold only if approved by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington. It stems from an order by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requiring federal agencies to analyze the economic impact of decisions to protect “critical habitats” of endangered species.

The Marine Fisheries Service said fish would not be harmed by the action.

“We will continue to use other tools to protect that habitat as best we can,” said Jim Lecky, the service’s assistant northwest regional administrator for protective resources. “It still is illegal to harm endangered species.”

But Craig Wingert, a supervisory fisheries biologist for the service’s southwest division, said the agency would forfeit some ability to protect the fish where small numbers of fish have been found.

“There were some places where having critical habitat has given us leverage that we would not have had just with the listing,” Wingert said. “We’ll lose a little bit, but I don’t think it’s real significant.”

California Areas Will Be Affected

Environmentalists, however, decried the decision as an unjustified voluntary removal by the federal government of important protections for prized species.

“It’s outrageous,” said Mike Senatore, litigation director for Defenders of Wildlife. “It reflects an administration that is not concerned at all about protecting listed species.”

“I think it shows a real lack of support for salmon restoration in salmon-dependent communities in the Northwest,” said Nicole Cordan of Portland, Ore.-based Save Our Wild Salmon.

The “critical habitat” designated in 2000 for the 19 populations of chinook, chum and sockeye salmon and steelhead covered most of the country’s Pacific coast from northern Washington stretching into Los Angeles County. It also covered inland streams and creeks in all four states. California’s Central Valley and about half of the coast were included as critical habitat for the fish.

In areas of critical habitat, many building permits require environmental reviews, which can stall, change or cancel projects.

“They named every blasted watershed as a place that the fish might be, which meant that any activity on land that might deliver sediment to a stream or otherwise impact the habitat of the fish is forbidden,” said Ernie Platt, a developer and vice president of the Oregon Building Industry Assn., the state branch of the National Assn. of Home Builders. “Good Lord, that covers everything.

“If you had a piece of property in any proximity to a stream, you had to go through such a horrendous process to ensure that what you contemplated doing would not kill a fish. How do you do that?”

Monday’s decision veered from the federal government’s recent practice of retaining habitat designations in settlements while making adjustments to reflect court decisions.

Todd True, an attorney for Earthjustice, disputed the legal grounds for the government’s decision to rescind a designation without going through a lengthy rule-making process that would be open to public comment.

Developers and builders hope, and environmentalists fear, that Monday’s decision will set the stage for overturning critical habitat designations for other species designated during the Clinton administration.

A Way to Settle Lawsuits by Builders

The effect could be especially great in California, which has more endangered species than any other state except Hawaii. Several of the species’ habitats are under review, including the red-legged frog, the Riverside fairy shrimp, the Alameda whipsnake and the Southwestern arroyo toad.

“This is good news, because it shows the agency is willing to reconsider critical habitat designations,” said Phil Serna, a vice president of the Home Builders Assn. of North California, which is suing to block critical habitat designation for the red-legged frog.

The Bush administration said it reached the agreement because a federal judge recently ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had failed to conduct adequate economic analysis in the designation of critical habitat for another threatened species, the Southwestern willow flycatcher.

True said the action fit a pattern by the Bush administration of compromising environmental protections to settle lawsuits filed by business groups rather than fighting.

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Times staff writer Kim Murphy in Seattle contributed to this report.