Judge Halts Lake Elsinore Project to Protect Gnatcatcher

RIVERSIDE —  Moving to protect the California gnatcatcher, a threatened songbird, a federal judge has issued an injunction blocking construction of a housing development in Riverside County, wildlife officials said Friday.

The injunction, at least for now, halts plans by Granite Homes to build 30 homes in Lake Elsinore in the hills that hug Interstate 15 between Corona and Temecula.

Joan Jewett, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman in Portland, Ore., said 21 of the proposed homes have already been sold. The development company could not be reached for comment Friday.

The property, which officials said is at least 66 acres, has been slated for development since the early 1990s. When the recession hit, plans were pushed aside. Native vegetation took over and created a breeding and feeding site for the gnatcatcher, said Jim Bartel, an assistant field supervisor at the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Carlsbad office.

Granite Homes bought the site in 1998 and began construction, he said.

After a disagreement over the gnatcatcher habitat, the company entered into a settlement with federal wildlife officials in November 1998. The company was fined, Bartel said, and was ordered to develop a conservation plan.

Although the company, under another part of the settlement, appears to have set aside land that will remain untouched, Bartel said, it has only filed a draft of its conservation plan with the government. Federal officials have not had time to rule on it--and have not given the company permission to continue construction.

However, the company told the government that it planned to start clearing new sites anyway. That’s what prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to seek this week’s injunction, he said.

“We thought we had a resolution,” Bartel said. “This is something that we would just as soon not do. But we had no alternative.”

In 1993, the gnatcatcher was listed as a threatened species, a designation that requires the federal government to protect the bird’s habitat. Much of the bird’s sage scrub habitat in Southern California has been wiped out by development.

The development comes five months after the federal government proposed designating nearly 800,000 acres in Southern California as protected habitat for the gnatcatcher.

Developers and government officials disagree over what that will mean for future building on those 800,000 acres.

Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coalition for Habitat Conservation, a group of developers including the Irvine Co. and the Rancho Mission Viejo Co., called the designation ridiculous. More and more developments like this one, he said, could run into legal tangles because the land designation, scheduled to go into effect in coming months, is so broad.

Ultimately, he said, it could result in a moratorium on development, especially in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Environmental officials, including Bartel, disagree and say the development companies are being alarmists. Instead, they said, the proposal only affects projects that receive federal funding or require federal regulatory approval.

“The designation does not affect private development,” Bartel said.