Builders File Suit Over Federal Plan To Save Wild Bird.The Building Industry Association of Southern California and four allies have made good on their promise to go to court to overturn the federal government's designation 514,000 acres in the region as critical habitat for the threatened California gnatcatcher, including broad swaths of Los Angeles County. The BIA BIA abbr. Bureau of Indian Affairs , along with Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Association, the National Association of Home Builders The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is one of the largest trade associations in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the association organizes one of the largest conventions in North America, The International Builders' Show, which draws more than and an Orange County group, filed a lawsuit Jan. 17 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. that seeks to prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from enforcing its ruling. The building industry, which fears development will be restricted or even prohibited within the designated area, is alleging that the agency failed to, conduct a proper economic impact study of the rules and did not consider new scientific data indicating the small song bird is flourishing in Baja, Mexico. The lawsuit also seeks to overturn a smaller critical habitat designation for the San Diego fairy shrimp. "Certainly the need for housing throughout the region is at an all-time high," said David Cordero, spokesman for the Diamond Bar-based BIA. "As critical habitat designations come down, it limits the availability of land that could be used to meet the demand of affordable housing in' Southern California." Issued in October, the gnatcatcher gnatcatcher Any of about 11 species of small songbirds (genus Polioptila) often treated as a subfamily of the Old World warbler family Sylviidae. The blue-gray gnatcatcher, 4.5 in. (11 cm) long, with its long white-edged tail, looks like a tiny mockingbird. designation covers nearly 58,000 acres in Los Angeles County, including land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the Puente-Chino Hills, the San Gabriel Mountain foothills and the Santa Clarita Valley The Santa Clarita Valley is the valley of the Santa Clara River in Southern California. It stretches through Los Angeles County and Ventura County. Its main population center is the city of Santa Clarita. The valley was part of the 48,612-acre (19,672. . Projects within the area range from a proposed expansion of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Covina Hills to housing developments in Walnut and Santa Clarita. A spokeswoman for the wildlife service's Carlsbad office, which developed the rules, said she was unaware of lawsuit and could not comment. The national nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is a New York City-based, non-profit non-partisan international environmental advocacy group, with offices in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Beijing. Founded in 1970, NRDC today has 1. forced the gnatcatcher designation, and an impending im·pend intr.v. im·pend·ed, im·pend·ing, im·pends 1. To be about to occur: Her retirement is impending. 2. series of other critical habitat designations, after filing a lawsuit several years ago. "We think the building industry should stop trying to block the enforcement of the Endangered Species Act The federal Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) (16 U.S.C.A. §§ 1531 et seq.) was enacted to protect animal and plant species from extinction by preserving the ecosystems in which they survive and by providing programs for their conservation. and start working productively to help with the designation of critical habitat," said defense council attorney Andrew Wetzler. |
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