Cooperation Is Gnatcatcher Key

The battle to save the California gnatcatcher has been a bitter one. When it comes to protecting endangered species, confrontation has always been the rule. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

With the California gnatcatcher, we have a rare opportunity for the environmentalists, the building industry and the resource agencies to work cooperatively toward achieving protection for the gnatcatcher and its coastal sage scrub habitat.

In May, the California Resources Agency announced its intent to spearhead a prototype regional natural communities conservation planning program designed specifically to preserve and manage coastal sage scrub. In the short time since, virtually every major landowner in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties has joined in that effort, and a panel of eminent scientists has been seated to establish the criteria and performance standards for a series of regional conservation plans.

The California gnatcatcher is not yet endangered. There is still time to develop and implement a well-conceived conservation planning effort without imposing the stifling restrictions of a listing.

Listing the gnatcatcher as an endangered species now would be counterproductive. It could jeopardize the outcome of the landmark cooperative planning process that has brought builders from a broad geographic region together in a unified effort to reconcile future development needs versus protection of sensitive resources.

Any decision to list would effectively remove landowners’ options for up to five years on the small amounts of developable land that are already in the entitlement process, significantly reducing their ability to generate revenues that could be used to fund land acquisition for natural preserves.

Listing the gnatcatcher now would be a vote of no confidence in the California Resources Agency’s Natural Communities Conservation Program, no confidence in the landowners’ ability to work cooperatively with conservationists.

As history has demonstrated time and again, a listing would inevitably lead to more confrontation, to hopelessly deadlocked habitat conservation planning programs, and to significant economic hardship. Litigation would be inevitable. Efforts to weaken the Endangered Species Act itself, which are already under way since the recent listing of the northern spotted owl, would only gain momentum.

Let’s not run the risk of scuttling this unprecedented joint conservation planning effort between builders and the Resources Agency when it simply isn’t necessary. Instead, let’s make this cooperative effort the trendsetter. My vote is for cooperation--not confrontation.

LEE JONES

Newport Beach

Editor’s note: Lee Jones is a biological consultant who did a survey on the gnatcatcher for the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, which opposes the state protective listing.