NEWHALL RANCH LAND SPARED AS HABITAT SANTA CLARITA, DOWNSTREAM NO REFUGE FOR IMPERILED FROG.Byline: Staff and Wire Services SANTA CLARITA - Watershed areas in 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. that were thought to be ideal habitat for the rare California red-legged frog The California Red-legged frog (Rana aurora ) is a sub-species of frog within the family Ranidae also known as the "true frogs". It was earlier classified as a subspecies, Rana aurora draytonii were dropped Tuesday from the regions designated for special protections. Notably absent from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's maps of the land designated as critical habitat for the frog were the San Francisquito Creek The San Francisquito Creek is a creek that flows into San Francisco Bay in California, United States of America. Its headwaters are in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Menlo Park, around 667m (2000 feet) above the Bay. drainage area in northern Valencia and the land along the Santa Clara River Santa Clara River may refer to:
The Newhall Land and Farming Company The Newhall Land and Farming Company is a land management company based in Valencia, California, United States. The company is responsible for the master community planning of Valencia, as well as the management of farm land elsewhere in the state. , the developer, rejoiced at the news, saying the frog had never been spotted on its property, while an environmental group that pushed the habitat designation cried foul. ``It's an unscientifically justified exclusion,'' said Peter Galvin, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biologic Diversity. ``How can you delete San Francisquito Creek, for example, if you include the area upstream that lies within the Angeles National Forest The Angeles National Forest (ANF) was established by executive order on December 20, 1892 as the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve. It covers over 2,600 km² (650,000 acres) and is located in the San Gabriel Mountains of Los Angeles County, just north of the metropolitan area of Los ? It's completely arbitrary.'' Deleted from the critical habitat is land where Newhall Land plans its massive project, as well as its 2,500-home Westcreek development. Marlee Lauffer, the company's vice president of corporate communications, said the Fish and Wildlife Service made the right ruling. ``We have never had a sighting of (the frog) on our property,'' Lauffer said. ``We do have endangered species on our land, and we deal with that, but there was no evidence of the frog on our property.'' Celebrated for its jumping and protected for its rarity, the California red-legged frog won critical habitat designation on more than 4 million acres - including 105,890 acres in northern Los Angeles County and 313,716 acres in a region that includes the Santa Clara River Valley The Santa Clara River Valley is a rural region of eastern Ventura County, California and northwest Los Angeles County, California that is named for the Santa Clara River which winds through the valley before emptying into the Pacific Ocean between the cities of Oxnard and Ventura. . The red-legged frog already was listed as threatened, but the new designation maps out where frog populations live or could recover and indicates where developers could face federal scrutiny. |
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