LOS ANGELES (AP) Federal officials want to remove more than 40,000
acres of California land from the critical-habitat list for the arroyo toad but
the plan would have little impact on the survival of the endangered species, a
biologist said Wednesday.
The proposal won't
provide ``any dramatic change'' to the toad's survival, said Creed Clayton, a
biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Much of it is based on
more precise mapping of the 23 areas where they live to exclude urban
regions where the toads don't breed anyway, he said.
The wildlife agency is under court order
to replace a 2001 critical-habitat plan that was struck down two years ago by a
judge in Washington, D.C., in a lawsuit brought by the building
industry.
``There has been no critical habitat in
place since that time,'' Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Lois Grunwald
said.
July 30 is the deadline to finalize the
new plan, which first will undergo public comment. An economic analysis of the
plan's impact also is in the works.
The arroyo toad is a 3-inch buff-colored
amphibian that lives in and around streams in coastal and desert areas of
Southern California and Mexico's Baja California. It's unclear how many toads
remain, scientists say, but the species has lost about 75 percent of its
historical habitat because of urban development, farming, mining, dams and the
introduction of nonnative species such as bullfrogs that prey on it, federal
officials said.
``Overall, I think the species is
relatively stable'' even though its habitat is much reduced, said Clayton, the
federal biologist.
In a proposal published in Wednesday's
Federal Register, the wildlife service said it would designate 138,713 acres of
critical habitat for the toad in portions of Monterey, Santa Barbara, Ventura,
Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Orange, Riverside and San Diego
counties.
The proposal would remove 43,647 acres
that were in the original habitat designation.
That angered Peter Galvin, California and
Pacific director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which had fought for
the original 2001 designation.
``We believe that the Bush administration
continues to do everything it can to undermine endangered species recovery,''
he said.
``It appears that this proposal will not
prevent the extinction of the species'' and the center will look at legal
action if it goes through, Galvin said.
Some of the land is at Fort Hunter
Liggett in Monterey County and is considered essential to military training
missions, according to the federal proposal.
However, the toad population in that area
has survived there despite decades of military use, it added.
Clayton said about a fifth of the
excluded land, mostly in Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties, is or will
be covered by habitat conservation plans. Such plans permit development
projects that destroy habitat and harm threatened or endangered species to
proceed if the developer agrees to set aside other land or otherwise mitigate
the damage.
Galvin called such plans ``a license to
kill endangered species.''
But federal wildlife
officials contend they are a better conservation tool than designating critical
habitat. The agency, which has fought many court battles over such
designations, says they provide no additional protections to the species and
affect private landowners only when federal permits are
required.
Last year, the service
began inserting new language into its critical-habitat action plans that are
published in the Federal Register.
``In 30 years of
implementing the Endangered Species Act ... we have found that the designation
of statutory critical habitat provides little additional protection to most
listed species,'' the agency said.
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