Open Space Plan Flawed, Environmental Group Says

A much-heralded program to save large swaths of open space for endangered plants and animals in Orange County and elsewhere in Southern California is flawed by inadequate scientific scrutiny, funding uncertainties and murky controls, a national environmental group concludes.

Although widely touted as a national model, the program needs retooling and better science if it is to live up to its promise, the Natural Resources Defense Council cautions in a report to be released today

The report contrasts with the rosy picture painted by Clinton and Wilson administration officials and some landowners and environmentalists who have hailed the experiment as a historic balance of business and wildlife interests.

“While we applaud its aspirations, we find the program wanting in several important respects: in clear standards, in adequate funding, and, above all, in the fulfillment of its scientific promise,” says the report, which the NRDC calls the first comprehensive analysis of the state program.

The report critiques the Natural Community Conservation Planning program, forged by the Wilson Administration in 1991 and spurred on by the furor over the California gnatcatcher. The rare songbird lives in Southern California’s coastal sage scrub, on some of the nation’s most valuable real estate.

Fearing a political and legal showdown, state and federal officials worked together to launch the “NCCP” plan and garner the support of unlikely allies--landowners, regulators and environmentalists. Their goal was to create preserves for the gnatcatcher and other rare plants and animals, while freeing landowners who contribute property or money from strict endangered species laws when building outside the preserves.

In Southern California, the program may spawn as many as seven separate plans, including two in Orange County, two in San Diego County and one on the Palos Verdes Peninsula of Los Angeles County.

The first major plan was approved in 1996 in central and coastal Orange County, where a 37,000-acre wildlife preserve was set aside to protect nearly 40 troubled plants and animals. A second plan is being designed for southern Orange County.

Despite the harsh wording of its report, the NRDC does not condemn the program, but praises its goals and makes recommendations for improvements.

To illustrate the fragility of Orange County’s endangered habitat, the group plans to release its report this morning near the proposed route of a major toll road in south Orange County. The region contains a wealth of coastal sage scrub frequented by the gnatcatcher, and environmentalists question the wisdom of building a major highway there.

State and federal officials took issue Wednesday with many of the report’s conclusions, maintaining that conservation plans being launched in Southern California have received sound scientific review.

“We had a lot of science. It may not be absolute perfection, but that’s not the case anywhere,” said Larry Eng, acting chief of environmental services at the state Department of Fish and Game.

At the Irvine Co., the major private player in Orange County’s only completed plan, a top official praised the program’s scientific foundations and its overall merits.

Monica Florian, senior vice president, corporate affairs, suggested that instead of taking a real-world approach, the report’s perspective was instead, “If NRDC could shape the universe, here’s how endangered species issues should be dealt with.”

She questioned how the NRDC could fault the program for murky regulatory standards. The Orange County plan, she said, went through the required reviews of the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Maybe NRDC doesn’t like the existing law, but that’s the standard that’s used,” Florian said.

Nationally, the report is being released at a time when many environmentalists and scientists have become disenchanted with the Clinton administration’s attempts to create conservation plans for endangered species that live on private land.

Since 1993, in an attempt to avoid what Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt calls “economic train wrecks,” federal officials have switched from strict enforcement of the Endangered Species Act to creating such plans. Almost 400 have been developed over the last four years.

But some environmentalists and scientists have remained skeptical, as the NRDC report shows.

The report applauds a number of the conservation program’s features, but it also calls for improvements, such as independent scientific review panels, to assist in each region where reserves are being designed.

The report also recommends more public participation, noting that “working groups” for Orange County’s plans have met in private.

It calls for a more secure source of funding for land acquisition and management and clearer standards for reserve design.

“We think that the potential benefits are worth the risk, but we can’t ignore the fact there are significant flaws, and there are solutions we believe should be put into place,” said Joel Reynolds, NRDC senior attorney.

One environmentalist closely involved in the conservation program said the report makes valid criticisms.

The report “is a good starting point for a serious assessment of the program, to see where it’s on the right track, where it needs improvement,” said Dan Silver, coordinator of the Endangered Habitats League, made up of 20 conservation groups in Southern California.

Michael O’Connell of the Nature Conservancy noted that eight scientists have been enlisted to help with the southern Orange County plan.

Concerns similar to those outlined in the NRDC report have been raised about other conservation plans around the country. Many of the nation’s most prominent biologists have complained in recent months that federal officials are relying too much on political expediency and too little on legitimate science.

In a March 31 statement, nine scientists, led by Stanford University’s Dennis Murphy, said many plans “lack scientific validity” and “remain largely untested.” The Interior Department, they said, should create an independent panel of scientists to develop minimum standards to assure the preserves created actually protect the animals involved.

One of the main reasons the Clinton administration has been trying to make endangered species laws more “landowner-friendly” is to deflect criticism from Congress.

Under pressure from developers, farmers, the timber industry and others, Congress for several years has debated whether to overhaul the act and waive many restrictions on private land. Last year, 167 zoologists, fishery experts and other scientists wrote Congressional leaders that such changes “can be disastrous” to protecting the nation’s diversity of ecosystems and wildlife.