Critical Habitat

The federal government has announced plans to set aside more than 2,500 acres of the fast-developing Central Coast as critical habitat for an endangered snail. Most of the land being mapped out for the tiny Morro shoulderband snail is in Montana de Oro State Park near San Luis Obispo, but 615 adjacent acres are in private hands. The designation of critical habitat, which will take effect next year, does not prohibit development.

A federal plan to preserve more than 9,000 acres of river habitat so that the threatened Santa Ana sucker fish can fulfill its complex life cycle has run into stiff resistance from critics who say it jeopardizes development and water supplies in the Inland Empire. Two cities and 10 water districts have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in U.S. District Court over the agency's decision to preserve the habitat. They say that it imposes restrictions on water conservation, groundwater recharge and flood control operations that affect water supplies for 1 million residents, and that it threatens plans to sell Santa Ana River water to thirsty communities elsewhere.

An open letter to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS): It is fortunate that the NMFS has identified the severely underutilized nature of the Calleguas Creek corridor. In its wisdom, the service has recognized that this ephemeral, effluent-dominated stream has such immense potential as a critical habitat area to a species that has never had an opportunity to enjoy the hospitality for which the good folks of the Las Posas and Conejo valleys are famous! Steelhead have thousands of square miles of habitat to call home, spawn their progeny, duck their parental responsibilities, to follow some nautical wanderlust, chasing a tramp steamer across the Pacific to some tropical paradise.

Reporting from San Francisco -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday that the Franciscan manzanita — a plant so rare that only one is believed to be growing in the wild — "warrants protection" and proposed declaring the elusive shrub endangered. The announcement kicks off a 60-day public comment period to allow the federal agency to figure out whether it is possible or necessary to designate and protect habitat critical to the plant's survival and to finalize its determination.

Your article "Habitats May Shrink by Leaps, Bounds" (Nov. 4) fails to make the distinction between conservation of habitat, which is vitally important to the recovery of threatened and endangered species, and the designation of critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act, which is not. In fact, both the Clinton and Bush administrations and 415 members of the House concluded that the bureaucratic exercise of designating critical habitat wastes...

In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government today proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears. Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change. Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in Congress through proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions, said Tom Strickland, assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated 22,000 acres in San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties as critical habitat for two rare oak woodland plants. About 17,210 acres of critical habitat are being proposed for the purple amole, most of it on federally owned military land in northern San Luis Obispo and southern Monterey counties. Another 4,770 acres are proposed for the Camatta Canyon amole in southeastern San Luis Obispo County.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Thursday designated a total of 6,870 acres in five Southern California counties as critical habitat for the Riverside fairy shrimp, an action that could hinder a proposed south Orange County toll road and a development project in Trabuco Canyon. The acreage designated to protect the small freshwater shrimp is about half what the federal agency proposed in September.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared Tuesday that more than 500,000 acres of prime Southern California real estate stretching from Los Angeles to the Mexican border is critical habitat for the tiny California gnatcatcher bird and the San Diego fairy shrimp. The ruling means developers and road builders will face another layer of government scrutiny that could cause delays and add possibly billions of dollars in new costs.

For the first time since coming under federal protection 15 years ago, the northern spotted owls' forest haven may be in jeopardy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to decrease the owls' "critical habitat" by 1.5 million acres, or 22%. The birds were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, with the habitat designation coming two years later.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday designated 1.6 million acres in California as critical habitat for the endangered red-legged frog, made famous by Mark Twain in his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The amphibian, once so plentiful that it was commonly featured on restaurant menus, eventually became endangered because of development encroaching on its habitat and the effects of pesticides and other chemicals. The habitat area is divided into 50 units across 27 California counties, including six counties that previously did not have designated critical habitat: Mendocino, Sonoma, Placer, Calaveras, Stanislaus and Kings.

Federal agencies are proposing to increase protections for loggerhead turtles, the long-lived sea creatures known for their big heads and capacity to swim thousands of miles across the Pacific. The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a rule Wednesday that would list seven distinct loggerhead populations, including two in the Pacific, as endangered. Since loggerheads were listed as threatened in 1978 under the Endangered Species Act, they have continued to decline.

Manatees may rank lower than traditional military menaces like torpedoes or air-to-sea missiles. But a proposal to protect additional habitat for the deceptively gentle, sea-grass-munching creatures could, according to the U.S. Navy, end up reducing habitat for destroyers, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service soon will make a decision on whether to expand what's called critical habitat for the manatee in Florida and southern Georgia, in response to a petition from several environmental groups.

In what would be the largest habitat zone ever established in the U.S. to protect a species from extinction, the federal government today proposed designating 200,541 square miles on the coast of Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears. Officials said the designation is not likely to further slow the pace of oil and gas development, and it crucially would not impose any controls to slow the biggest threat to polar bears, the melting of sea ice as a result of climate change. Those steps are crucial for polar bears but are being addressed separately in Congress through proposals to cap greenhouse gas emissions, said Tom Strickland, assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

On Monday, President Obama signed the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act, placing more than 2 million acres of public land in nine states under Wilderness Act protection. The new legislation preserves remote glacial valleys in Wyoming, fragile deserts in California and dense forests in northern Michigan, making these and other tracts of pristine land permanently off-limits to road building, oil and gas drilling and commercial timber harvesting.

The federal government will designate "critical habitat" for polar bears off Alaska's coast, a decision that could add restrictions to future offshore petroleum exploration or drilling. Federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely modify critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery. That probably will affect oil and gas activity, said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups that sued to get a critical habitat designation.

Regulators cut back the critical habitat for 19 species of threatened and endangered Pacific salmon and steelhead by about 80% Friday, contending that an earlier designation demanded by environmentalists was poorly executed and that voluntary habitat improvements would work better.

Wildlife biologist Aimee Byard took it as a hopeful sign when she spotted 11 bighorn lambs, including a rare set of twins, nibbling encelia and ambrosia high above the multimillion-dollar homes of Rancho Mirage this spring. But as fall approaches, biologists such as Byard are growing concerned that the peninsular bighorn sheep, an endangered species, soon may lose some of the protection that has helped them survive. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working on the final details of a map that would cut by nearly half the habitat the agency had previously considered to be critical to the species' survival.