DOWN TO 11,695 ACRES TOADS' HABITAT SHARPLY REDUCE.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

ANGELES NATIONAL FOREST - Citing costly impacts on development and water deliveries, federal wildlife officials have scaled back protected habitat for the rare arroyo toad to less than one-tenth of the area proposed four years ago.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's final designation last week of 11,695 acres in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties as critical habitat for the toad is dramatically lower than an earlier 182,360-acre plan struck down by the courts.

In some cases, acreage was refined to exclude areas cut off from creeks by roads or railroad tracks and not likely to be used by the toad.

Other areas were deleted after Interior Secretary Gale Norton determined that protections, such as major alterations to projects or developments, would be too costly.

The final designation also eliminated military bases and some private lands protected by habitat-conservation plans.

The buff-colored arroyo toad, or bufo microscaphus californicus, lives in rivers with shallow, gravelly pools next to sandy terraces. The adult toads burrow into the sand during the day and emerge at night to eat insects.

The toad has lost about 75 percent of its historical habitat because of urban development, recreation, dam construction and other human activities, officials said. It was placed on the federal list of endangered species in 1994.

Environmental groups said the final habitat designation falls short of what the amphibian needs to survive.

``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 wild-lands program director for the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a study released in February, federal officials said that a previous proposal to protect the toad on more than 95,000 acres could have cost more than $1 billion over the next 20 years.

The prospective price tag included costs of delays to developers in getting projects through the environmental-regulation process, alterations to construction projects to minimize harm to toads and purchase of land for toad habitat. In the Antelope Valley, the revised designation eliminates about 1.5 miles of the upper Little Rock Creek from designation as critical habitat. That area is already protected from development because it is inside the Angeles National Forest and at least two miles from the nearest paved road, officials said.

The final designation earmarks as critical habitat a 4 1/2-mile section of Little Rock Creek from just north of the Little Sycamore campground to the upper end of the Little Rock Reservoir.

The new plan retains a 1.1-mile stretch of Santiago Creek upstream from the reservoir's upper end.

In all, 734 acres, all inside Angeles National Forest, are earmarked as critical habitat in that area. The previous plan earmarked 941 acres in the area.

The toads in that area are geographically isolated from other toads and might have unique genetic and phenotypic variation, according to the Federal Register.

In the Santa Clarita Valley, the final designation eliminated 7,398 acres proposed for critical-habitat designation along the Santa Clara River and San Francisquito Creek.

A portion of the planned 21,000-unit housing development known as Newhall Ranch is in that area.

Santa Clarita environmentalists complained about the change.

``Our concern is, does everything have to be destroyed just to build houses?'' asked Lynne Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment.

In some other areas of Southern California, the designation along the Whitewater River in Riverside County was cut from 1,997 acres to 333 acres, avoiding a windmill-studded area near Interstate 10 described as crucial to filling an overtapped groundwater basin 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 a pipeline.

The federal agency also excluded a critical-habitat area proposed for the Santa Ynez River in Santa Barbara County for economic reasons, said Mike McCrary, an official with the Fish and Wildlife Service. An economic analysis performed by the agency estimated that designating that area as critical habitat could have led to costs totaling more than $20 million over 20 years, mainly through effects on local water supplies.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color) Less than one-tenth of the area proposed four years ago has been designated as critical habitat for the rare arroyo toad.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer