A century and a half ago, California's red-legged frog graced the menus of gourmet restaurants in San Francisco and helped launch a young American writer named Mark Twain, who immortalized the leaping Gold Rush wonder in his first published short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County."
Humans have not repaid the favor since, gobbling up not just the long-legged amphibian but nearly all of its wetland habitat for crops and homes, threatening it with extinction.
On Thursday, as part of a continued, far-reaching rollback of protected landscapes for scores of imperiled species around the country, federal officials proposed cutting 82% of the celebrated frog's critical habitat.
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would eliminate federally protected critical habitat on 150 million acres of largely undeveloped public and private land. The Senate could act on the legislation by year's end.
But even without legislative action, the Bush administration is eliminating critical-habitat designations around the country. Administration officials say that habitat protections cost landowners billions and that voluntary plans work better for landowners and wildlife.
In numerous cases, Interior Secretary Gale Norton and her top deputies, citing their own cost estimates, have agreed with builders and property owners that the financial burden of habit protections outweighed any benefit to species.
The frog is a case in point, they said. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a study that showed nearly $500 million in costs to homebuilders for protecting the frog's habitat.
But conservationists say voluntary plans are unproven and should be used to supplement government regulations, not replace them. And some economists and biologists say senior Interior Department officials are deliberately ignoring the economic, scientific and social benefits of preserving habitat.
Many threatened plants and animals won't make it, biologists say, if their sanctuary continues to shrink as part of a rollback of habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act. Among the California species that environmentalists are most concerned about, if the rollback continues, are the peninsular bighorn sheep, Steller sea lions, desert tortoises and northern spotted owls.
The critical-habitat provision of the Endangered Species Act requires government scientists to identify items such as soil, vegetation, water quality and temperature that a vulnerable species needs, and then to map areas where those conditions still exist.
