Wider tiger salamander protections restored

<p>Environmentalists and federal wildlife regulators have settled a federal lawsuit on tiger salamander habitat, agreeing to roll back the clock to 2005 and return to the days when all 74,000 acres of the Santa Rosa Plain were considered as protected.</p><p>The agreement reverses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s 2005 attempt to limit habitat consideration to 21,000 acres west of Highway 101. It also renders moot a locally inspired attempt to craft building permit procedures and mitigation banks in lieu of any habitat designation.</p><p>The agreement approved April 10 by the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco was hailed by environmentalists, who feel it saves the salamander. But it was criticized by real estate interests, who said it could bar already-restricted development, particularly in southwest Santa Rosa.</p><p>“If anywhere near 74,000 acres is adopted, the housing industry in Sonoma County might never recover,” said Paul Campos, vice-president and general counsel at the Home Builders Association of Northern California. “It is on life support now, this might just pull the plug.”</p><p>But Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the federal government to force full habitat designation, said development interests are using the slumping economy to justify bad environmental practices.</p><p>“It is am important victory because we wanted to make sure the tiger salamander stayed on the list of endangered species, that recovery plans for habitat protection remain and that the process is re-energized,” Galvin said. “Developers tried to take environmental protections away and they failed.”</p><p>The 74,000-acre plain stretches from the Laguna de Santa Rosa to the eastern hills of Santa Rosa and from Windsor Creek to Skillman Road in northern Petaluma.</p><p>The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group based in Arizona, filed the legal challenge to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in late 2005 to reduce from 74,000 to 21,000 the number of acres to be considered for critical habitat designation.</p><p>Such designation would require developers to study whether salamanders are present and to mitigate impacts if the nocturnal amphibians are adversely affected by construction.</p><p>The agreement effectively puts an end to the group of industry, environmental and government leaders called Santa Rosa Plain Conservation Strategy, which attempted to streamline the permitting process and establish mitigation banks for habitat preservation. That effort was put on hold about a year ago when Sonoma County supervisors and Santa Rosa council members said they could no longer fund it.</p><p>County planning director Pete Parkinson said the effort has not gone to waste because developers have been getting project approvals by agreeing to fund mitigation banks that are increasing the extent of salamander habitat.</p><p>“Although the conservation strategy was never adopted by anybody, the city and the county are still using the guidelines because it shows where mitigation can take place and shows the way projects can move ahead,” Parkinson said. “Frankly, critical habitat designation is not going to change anything very much.”</p><p>Al Donner, assistant field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agreement calls for his agency to repropose the 74,000 critical habitat designation by August. The federal agency would then begin public hearings, take new public comment and conduct an economic analysis of the impact.</p><p>By July 2011, the agency is supposed to announce a decision, he said.</p>