Habitat of endangered arroyo toad slashed
SPECIES: Wildlife officials say the animal didn't live in or use some areas that were removed.
11:37 PM PDT on Wednesday, April 13, 2005
By JENNIFER BOWLES / The Press-Enterprise
Federal wildlife officials on Wednesday dramatically scaled back habitat protections for an endangered toad in and around Southern California rivers, saying they would be too costly and impact water deliveries to the Coachella Valley and elsewhere.
Environmental groups said the habitat designation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service falls short of what the arroyo toad needs to survive. The designation dropped from a proposed 138,713 acres across Southern California to 11,695 acres and removed stretches of the Mojave River and Temecula Creek.
"The radical reduction in the size of critical habitat is further evidence of the Bush administration's assault on the natural environment," said David Hogan, urban wildlands program director for the Center For Biological Diversity.
Hogan said protections for the toad, which lives and breeds in slow-moving pools and open, sandy terraces by streams, also would protect tap water sources for people.
"The arroyo toad is a strong indicator of watershed health," he said.
Jane Hendron, a spokeswoman for the wildlife agency, said the habitat decrease resulted from new information that revealed the toads didn't live in the rivers or the habitat did not exist. In some cases, the acreage was refined to exclude areas too steep to be used by the toad.
Other areas were stripped because Interior Secretary Gale Norton can exclude areas where protections or alterations to projects or developments required to protect the habitat would be too costly. In this case, the threshold was $10 million, Hendron said.
The three-inch toad was placed on the federal endangered species list in 1994 because 75 percent of its habitat was lost to development. The toads are vulnerable to non-native predators such as bullfrogs.
In the Inland region, the habitat designation covers 2,152 acres along Bautista Creek and the San Jacinto River near Hemet, the Cajon Wash north of San Bernardino and the Whitewater River that flows through the Coachella Valley.
The designation along the Whitewater River was cut from 1,997 acres to 333 acres, avoiding a windmill-studded area near Interstate 10 that is crucial to filling an over-tapped groundwater basin below Palm Spring and Cathedral City with water from the nearby Colorado River aqueduct.
If the designation had remained, the Coachella Valley Water District would have had to pay $6.1 million to divert the pipeline that runs from the aqueduct, through the Whitewater River, and to percolation ponds where it settles into the ground, according to the wildlife agency's economic analysis.
"We are pleased," said Monica Swartz, a water district biologist. She said that part of the river doesn't provide the best habitat for the toad, however the agency plans to beef up habitat for the toad and other amphibians once a valley-wide effort to protect imperiled species is finalized.
Reach Jennifer Bowles at 951-368-9548 or jbowles@pe.com
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