By Jeremy Hay
Friday, September 9, 2005
Business and agricultural interests and environmental groups staked out opposing positions Thursday on a federal plan to designate 74,000 acres of central Sonoma County as critical habitat for the endangered tiger salamander.
At the same time, they found some common ground in an alternate plan to protect the salamander: The Santa Rosa Plain Conservation Strategy. A hearing on that plan is set for 7 p.m. Monday at the Veterans Building in Santa Rosa.
"We very much support the conservation strategy and the work that's gone into it," said Christopher Lynch, executive vice president for economic development at the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the proposed federal critical habitat designation.
He spoke at a public hearing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service held at the Flamingo Hotel.
Since the federal agency designated the salamander as endangered in 2002, the big-eyed amphibian has been center stage in a fierce debate over balancing the fate of endangered wildlife against development and economic progress.
The conservation strategy was developed by a panel of government, business and environmental representatives frustrated at the protracted legal fight over the federal plan. It would allow salamander habitat in Santa Rosa and other cities to be destroyed if wildlands are set aside for the animal in outlying rural areas.
"It's a well-meaning effort that has community support, but it still needs strengthening," Joanne Dranginis, an official with the Madrone Audubon Society, said after the hearing.
The Endangered Species Act makes it a crime punishable by fines or imprisonment to harm endangered plants or animals or to destroy their habitat.
The federal plan would designate an area stretching from Petaluma to Windsor, mostly west of Highway 101, as critical habitat. That would bar any developments that involved federal money or required federal approval without the approval of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Sierra Club member Suzanne Doyle said until the conservation strategy is put in place, habitat protection must be.
"We want to see the critical habitat. We think it should be in place while the strategy is formed," she said.
On that point, common ground evaporated.
Ronda Lucas, an attorney for the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, said the critical habitat designation would work against the "ultimate goal of the Endangered Species Act," which is to help the salamander recover.
She argued that habitat designation makes private landowners and developers reluctant to undertake conservation efforts, such as creating wetlands, for fear of breaking the law.
"We will not recover this species if this critical habitat designation goes through as proposed," she said.
Al Donner, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman, said later that Lucas correctly characterized the record of critical habitat in helping restore endangered species.
"In 35 years of administering the (Endangered Species) Act, we see little or no benefit to the species from designation of critical habit," he said.
"Why do we do it? Because the law requires it," he said.
He said animals that make it onto the endangered species list rarely make it off but noted that "we don't get a species until it's in triage state."
In the salamander's case, a decision by the agency to not designate critical habitat for the salamander was successfully challenged by the Center for Biological Diversity.
A federal judge ruled that the agency had ignored scientific warnings of the salamander's pending extinction. A Dec. 1 deadline was set for the habitat designation.
Donner said the 74,000-acre proposal is likely to be scaled back based on public response, including comments at two sessions in Santa Rosa on Thursday.
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