Unlikely Allies Seek Peace in Gnatcatcher Wars : Wildlife: Environmentalists, landowners and biologists forge plan that could save species while allowing new construction in Orange County.

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA —  They first gathered quietly in Bell Canyon more than two years ago, these emissaries in a high-stakes mission to resolve the Orange County gnatcatcher wars.

Month after month, they met in a small wood-frame cabin in gnatcatcher country, armed with maps and a shared sense of urgency.

Landowners sat elbow to elbow at the table with environmentalists, wildlife biologists, and state and federal officials. The Irvine Co. sent a representative; so did the Endangered Habitats League.

The mission of this unlikely panel: to help build a plan striking a balance between the pressures of economic development and the preservation of rare wildlife such as the California gnatcatcher, the tiny songbird that helped spark a regional battle over endangered species laws.

Now, a plan could be unveiled by mid-November that would earmark 39,000 acres in central and coastal Orange County as reserves for rare plants and animals.

The plan’s basic premise: landowners would be allowed to build on land that is home to the gnatcatcher and other troubled species as long as other land is set aside in a reserve planned and managed to assure those species’ survival.

But even as the plan is readied for public review, no one can predict if it will usher in a peaceable kingdom in Orange County--or Chapter II of the gnatcatcher wars. Already, some environmentalists are questioning if landowners have taken the lead role in planning, if science has fallen prey to politics.

“We’ve yet to see if the results live up to the promises,” said Dan Silver, coordinator of the Endangered Habitats League, which is made up of about 30 environmental groups.

Landowners too say the task is not easy.

“We’ve been supportive of this plan and this concept from day one,” said Richard Broming, vice president of the Santa Margarita Co. “Getting there has been a painful process.”

This experiment is known in government circles as Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP), or the “gnatcatcher plan.” It is being forged by a mix of people--consultants, landowners, planners and government officials.

Two “working groups” have met at Starr Ranch to discuss the plan, including representatives of the Irvine and Santa Margarita companies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game, other landowners and cities, and several environmental groups.

The program was launched by Gov. Pete Wilson’s Administration in 1991 and gained national attention when U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt hailed the approach as a means to avoid “environmental and economic train wrecks”--the collisions that can occur in places such as Southern California, where endangered species and prime real estate overlap.

The Orange County program has received little public attention locally since planning began. One official joked that the title--NCCP--sounded like some Eastern European country.

But interest is expected to build when the first of the two county plans is made public this fall.

The stakes are high in a region where pricey new red-tile-roofed housing developments take shape alongside swaths of the coastal sage scrub where the gnatcatcher dwells.

Fittingly, the National Audubon Society’s Starr Ranch wildlife sanctuary, where the working groups met, is home to 24 pairs of gnatcatchers. But the road to the ranch passes through a gated community, and panel members watched as new houses rose, new lawns were planted and new fences were erected.

Across California, a total of 161 species are listed by the federal government as endangered or threatened, more than in any state except Hawaii.

In Orange County, at-risk species include the gnatcatcher, the arroyo toad and a tiny plant called the Laguna Beach liveforever, which is found in only six spots on Earth.

The county also contains some of the nation’s most sought-after real estate.

So Southern California was a fitting laboratory for a new approach to protecting endangered species.

For landowners, the plan would seem to provide an escape route from what they label as the excruciating “bush by bush, beak by beak” permitting process of the Endangered Species Act. They praise the plan for moving away from the species-by-species approach to the act that they say burdens them with costly red tape.

“The beauty of this is you get some closure and certainty on the species issue,” said Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coalition for Habitat Conservation, which is made up of major Orange County landowners and developers.

For environmentalists, the plan offers the attraction of saving whole ecosystems, including thousands of acres of the coastal sage scrub where the gnatcatcher and other troubled species live. That allows for better biological planning than can be done in a project-by-project, species-by-species approach, conservationists say.

In theory, this would appear to make the program the Camp David for environmental discord, the ultimate exercise in compromise.

But some conservationists and scientists question whether the plan deserves its billing as a national model.

Several environmentalists who were part of the Starr Ranch meetings complain that they had a back-seat role, with landowners and consultants in the lead. While not condemning the program outright, they believe that it cries out for more scientific review.

Pete DeSimone of the National Audubon Society, a member of the working group, said the real starting point for the plan appeared to be, “This is what the developers want and how we work around that.”

“There really has not been the independent scientific review that we were promised and really should be necessary,” said Elisabeth Brown, president of Laguna Greenbelt. “If there’s one big gripe, that’s it.”

Jonathan Atwood, the ornithologist most closely identified with efforts to have the gnatcatcher declared endangered, is one of six scientific advisers named to assist with the process.

But last week, Atwood could recall only two times when he formally was asked by state or federal agencies to give advice on such a project in Southern California. He said he has “no idea at all” if he will be asked to review the Orange County central/coastal plan before it is made public.

Supporters spring to the defense of the process.

“This isn’t academe. This isn’t being funded by the National Science Foundation,” said Dennis Murphy, director of Stanford University’s Center for Conservation Biology and a designer of the NCCP approach. “[But] the kind of science necessary to make some pretty good land-use decisions can be done.”

Pearce said the project is being helped by “very capable biologists” with the state and federal wildlife agencies, who “are hard negotiators who are standing up for the survival of the species.”

“The calls by environmental groups for more science are common in things like this, and we see them as a delaying tactic,” he said.

Now, the stakes may be higher than anyone suspected.

With the federal Endangered Species Act facing a precarious future in Congress, some hope that the plans being drawn up in Orange County and elsewhere in Southern California will emerge as much-needed proof that landowners and conservationists can reach accord within the confines of the act.

“Anyone who’s critical of this program should think twice because this is a way to get de facto protection for unlisted species in an anti-environmental political atmosphere,” said Murphy, who chaired the program’s original scientific review panel.

The first plan focuses on the county’s central and coastal areas where the Irvine Co. has large holdings. The second plan, which deals with the southern region where the Santa Margarita Co. owns much of the land, is months away from completion and is proving more troublesome, officials say.

The key to creating the reserve is habitat conservation--assembling enough coastal sage scrub and related habitats that the gnatcatcher and its wildlife colleagues will survive.

Outside the reserve, participating landowners would be able to build without having to abide by the Endangered Species Act.

The number of plants and animals to be covered by the central/coastal plan is still under study by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Department of Fish and Game.

“From the standpoint of a biologist, it’s very important that we have proper protection for the critters we sign off on,” said Gail Kobetich, field supervisor at the Fish and Wildlife office in Carlsbad.

Landowners and environmentalists alike are still hesitant to declare the experiment a success.

“Conceptually, we have been an early and optimistic participant in a process that we hope will work,” said Irvine Co. spokesman Larry Thomas. “Conceptually, we think it has great merit. We have not yet reached an agreement with respect to our specific land. It has been a long, arduous process.