Just how many acres does the tiger salamander need?

<p>Sonoma County officials say the 74,000-acre expanse of the Santa Rosa Plain is far too large — perhaps four times too big — an area to receive federal protection as critical habitat for the endangered tiger salamander.</p><p>The county's objections to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to designate the entire plain — from Windsor Creek to northern Petaluma and from Highway 116 to Petaluma Hill Road — are outlined in a letter issued by county supervisors.</p><p>County officials say environmental studies have turned up evidence of tiger salamanders only in a much smaller zone, about 17,000 acres from Guerneville to Pepper roads and from Llano Road to Highway 101.</p><p>“The county believes that the proposed rule would designate an area that is far broader than can be justified by the current scientific information on the distribution and abundance of the species,” board chairman Paul Kelley wrote in a letter to federal officials.</p><p>The county's statement on critical habitat designation is one of many being filed in advance of an Oct. 19 deadline for public comment on the federal proposal. The federal agency was forced, by settlement terms of a lawsuit filed by an environmental group, to roll back local attempts to create a smaller salamander habitat zone and to return to a 2005 plan for the entire 74,000 acres.</p><p>After collecting public comment and issuing an economic analysis of critical habitat designation, the federal agency intends to make a decision on the zone of protection by July 1, 2011.</p><p>Suzanne Doyle, a Sierra Club official in Sonoma County, said Thursday she still was drafting the group's proposals, which have not been approved by its governing board. However, she said the Sierra Club believes the final federal rules should include creation of an agency to monitor tiger salamander preservation efforts and should prohibit replacement of agricultural land with vineyards because the reptiles don't survive among the grapes.</p><p>“One thing I can say is that the status quo doesn't provide enough protection,” Doyle said. “</p><p>Doyle said many in the Sierra Club are critical of the Conservation Strategy plan advocated by the county that proposed 17,000 acres as critical habitat.</p><p>Settlement of the lawsuit last August put an end to the group of development industry, environmental and government leaders called Santa Rosa Plain Conservation Strategy. Their plan attempted to streamline the permit process and establish mitigation banks for habitat preservation.</p><p>“Conservation Strategy ended up shrinking the actually protected area to 4,000 or 5,000 acres and it set critical habitat back to zero,” Doyle said.</p><p>However, county officials say their Conservation Strategy plan was based on salamander surveys that “have now been completed on the Santa Rosa Plain with negative results, according to Kelley's letter.</p><p>Surveys have not found evidence of the animal north of Mark West Creek, west of the Laguna de Santa Rosa, east of Highway 101, nor in the Petaluma area, according to county officials.</p><p>While the federal agency studies the issue, officials in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa say they will continue to adhere to Conservation Strategy guidelines that regulate intrusion of development into tiger salamander habitat such as upland burrows and seasonal pools and ponds.</p><p>Although the poor economy has largely halted development, some developers have been funding mitigation banks that improve habitat near their sites.</p><p>Susan K. Moore, field supervisor with the Fish and Wildlife Service office in Sacramento, said that because Conservation Strategy's goal was tiger salamander recovery, the plan remains laudable although settlement of the lawsuit put the entire effort on hold.</p><p>However, she said “we believe that designation of critical habitat is unlikely to require substantial deviation” from Conservation Strategy's proposed regulations.</p>