Endangered Bird Putting Area Projects in Jeopardy.

The federal government's Oct. 24 designation of 514,000 acres of Southern California as critical habitat for the threatened California gnatcatcher has put several major L.A.-area projects in jeopardy.

Affected projects range from the proposed expansion of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Covina Hills to major housing developments from Walnut to Santa Clarita.

In a bid to overturn the designation, the Diamond Bar-based Building Industry Legal Defense Foundation and seven allies have filed a legal notice of an intent to sue.

The building industry, at a minimum, wants the number of designated acres pared down dramatically. It also wants the courts to clarify how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will enforce the new regulations, if they are allowed to stand.

"Everybody will be suing, and it's all fundamentally going in the same direction: Somebody tell us what this all means and how to deal with it," said Laer Pearce, executive director of the Coalition for Habitat Conservation, a Laguna Hills-based industry group formed to fight the gnatcatcher and other critical habitat designations.

The newly designated habitat area includes 57,760 acres in the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the Puente-Chino Hills, the San Gabriel Mountain foothills and the

Santa Clarita Valley, among other county locations.

The land either is home to gnatcatchers, or is critical for the birds ability to travel across its historical habitat, which ranges from the Santa Clarita Valley to Baja California in Mexico, according to the wildlife service.

The gnatcatcher, which half a century ago flourished in Southern California, is a long-tailed warbler that preys on insects and nests in coastal sage scrub, vegetation that has dwindled as the region has grown.

The service estimates only 2,300 pairs now live in the United States portion of its range, a number that has earned the gnatcatcher the dubious distinction of a threatened species, a step away from being endangered.

"I guess ultimately we don't believe that the designation of critical habitat is going to have the significant impact that is being portrayed. This is not going to bring economic growth to a grinding halt," said Jane Hendron, a wildlife service spokeswoman. "We understand this is causing a lot of confusion. We would look to see if (the planned projects) would jeopardize the continued existence of the species."

Environmentalists say that the building industry's claim that the regulations could lead to as much as $5 billion in economic impact is "absurd."

That $5 billion figure comes from an economic analysis prepared by an Orange County consulting firm for Forest Lawn Memorial-Park Association and other parties.

It's based on the wildlife service's original proposal to designate as much as 799,000 acres as critical habitat for the gnatcatcher, an amount the agency pared down in its final ruling after refining its mapping techniques.

However, the building industry still contends the costs could be several billion dollars related to projects being halted, trimmed or modified - fallout it says the wildlife service did not adequately address.

"A failure to consider the economic impacts in any meaningful way are an absolute violation of the Endangered Species Act," said David Smith, general counsel of the industry's legal defense foundation and the Building Industry Association of Southern California, also based in Diamond Bar.

The industry study found that Forest Lawn alone might suffer $50 million in losses if it is prevented from expanding.

"We see a great impact on the community in not having this resource available, and a great impact on the park, which is a nonprofit association, of not being able to develop it," said Tim Applegate, Forest Lawn's senior vice president and general counsel.

The industry is also concerned about the precedent being set by the designation, which is only the first of four such designations protecting as much as 8 million acres as critical habitat across Southern California.

The wildlife service is now studying critical habitat designations for the peninsular bighorn sheep, the California red-legged frog and the arroyo southwestern toad, said Rob Thornton, an attorney representing Forest Lawn and others.

"What we are seeing is a massive federalization of land use on an unprecedented scale," he said. "There are 100 million acres in California, so that is 8 percent of the land."

Rick Jemison is a representative of NJD Ltd., a Texas limited partnership that is seeking approvals for its Canyon Oak Development, 145 homes on 200 acres it owns in Glendora.

Jemison said that when work first started, about 20 percent of the site was considered territory that the gnatcatcher might occupy, but now all of it lies within the critical habitat as designated by the wildlife service.

"They (the service) are making these broad statements that it won't a affect us. 'Don't worry about the language. Trust us,"' he said. "We are concerned that that may be their view, but if they are sued by environmentalists, it may not hold up in court. We are in limbo, essentially."

Andrew Wetzler, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council's Los Angeles office, said that with all sides in the issue staking, out different positions, limbo is just where the development community may stay for quite a while.

"The court will be asked to rule on this issue," he said. "There are going to be a series of court cases over the next five years."