Environmentalists oppose FBI’s firing range plan

Southern California environmental groups have criticized an attempt by the FBI to build a permanent shooting range on land near the retired El Toro Marine base that once was designated to become part of a national wildlife refuge.

The land -- which has been used as a temporary training facility by the FBI since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- was included in a 1996 agreement that created a 37,000-acre nature reserve stretching from the Santa Ana Mountains to the Orange County coast.

The area where the FBI wants to build the permanent shooting range is on more than 1,000 acres owned, in part, by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Although the acreage was designated to become part of the refuge, it never did, said Dan Silver, Endangered Habitats League executive director in Los Angeles.

“A lot of work went into creating the reserve,” Silver said, “and it’s now under threat to become a dumping ground for a noisy, destructive shooting range.”

The parcel is home to cactus wrens and is the site of the county’s highest concentration of gnatcatchers, said Lyn McAfee, executive director of the Nature Reserve of Orange County. Those wrens and gnatcatchers are rare and endangered species.

Environmentalists say the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to convert the area into a refuge.

The agency has been in meetings with the FBI and FAA, said a wildlife service spokeswoman who referred further comment to the agency’s Northern California office, which did not return phone calls Wednesday.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the FBI has used the area’s facilities for tactical training and shooting under an agreement with the FAA.

The bureau is in negotiations with the FAA to build a permanent facility on the land, which is adjacent to land once used for Marine housing. An FBI spokeswoman did not provide details but said the site was a preexisting gun range used by the military and now by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies she declined to identify.

The base, which was closed eight years ago, is set to become a residential and business community encircling a vast park. The park alone is expected to cost more than $1 billion.

One of the planned features of the Orange County Great Park was a wildlife corridor -- in the midst of suburban sprawl -- that would act as a connector, allowing coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions, deer and other animals to roam from the coastal foothills into the mountains.

Technically, the park ends at Irvine Boulevard, a major thoroughfare separating the old base property from the land the FBI wants to use to build permanent facilities.

“The proposal calls for a vastly enlarged shooting range ... and this is an incompatible use for a wildlife corridor,” said Elisabeth Brown, president of Laguna Greenbelt Inc.

Brown, who worked to help forge the preserve plan, joined with other environmental groups and signed a recent letter listing concerns that was sent to Steve Thompson, manager of the California-Nevada office of the fish and wildlife service.

Although the agency did not explain why the land had not been added to the refuge, environmentalists suggested it was because of budget cuts and a White House that did not give high priority to environmental issues.

The preserve was created through the Natural Community Conservation Plan, a state and federal program meant to streamline the granting of state and federal environmental permits for development projects in ecologically sensitive areas.

Under the program, landowners and government agencies plan development and conservation areas over large swaths of land to avoid piecemeal planning.

Without the preserve, the county would have had a patchwork of small wildlife refuges but no block of land as big as the hills-to-sea nature reserve, Silver said.

The proposed shooting range “makes a mockery” of the reserve,” he said.

After the base’s closure, the FAA acquired the acreage from the Navy in 2001, because the agency had a radio receiver at the site for aircraft navigation, said Ian Gregor, an FAA spokesman.

Gregor said the site is contaminated from an underground jet fuel storage tank and pipeline, two landfills, and ordnance exploded during training.

david.reyes@latimes.com