The scrubby, rock-filled drainage ditch at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport might not look like much, but to scores of endangered shrimp, it's home.
The little depression, surrounded by a chain-link fence with signs warning "Los Angeles World Airports -- Endangered Species -- Keep Out," is part of a 108-acre area at LAX that federal officials want to designate as a preserve for the tiny creatures, which at the moment exist in egg form.
The proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced earlier this year, took both Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that operates LAX, and the Federal Aviation Administration by surprise. The agencies have spent years trying to persuade federal wildlife officials to allow them to move the airport's Riverside fairy shrimp population.
At many airports in California, including LAX, rare birds and animals have found refuge from relentless coastal development. But the desire to provide a haven for endangered species at these airports often conflicts with aircraft safety.
"The obligation of LAWA to provide safe and efficient air travel makes it physically and socially impossible to improve, expand or conserve habitat for Riverside fairy shrimp on the LAX airfield," Jim Ritchie, a deputy executive director at the city's airport agency, wrote to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
LAX officials argue that creating a preserve for the shrimp poses a risk because the crustaceans require standing water, which attracts birds and other wildlife. Birds, in turn, can be sucked into aircraft engines.
The airport logged 632 "wildlife strikes" -- in which a bird or other animal collided with an airplane -- from 1990 through 2004, FAA officials said. Those encounters caused severe damage to some planes and endangered people on board and on the ground.
In the most serious incident at LAX, a seagull was sucked into one of the four engines of a KLM jumbo jet as it was taking off in August 2000 with 449 people aboard. The collision threw the engine's spinning turbine blades out of balance, sent chunks of metal flying and knocked off the tail cone.
The heavy tail cone landed on the beach a few feet away from a family. The plane made an emergency landing. No one was hurt.
