STUDY: ENDANGERED SPECIES GROUPED IN `HOT SPOTS'.

Byline: Paul Rogers Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

A study that could have significant impact in the debate over private property rights and threatened wildlife has found that large numbers of America's endangered species are clustered in relatively few ``hot spots.''

And Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Contra Costa, Los Angeles and San Diego counties are among those most sensitive areas, according to researchers from Princeton University and the Environmental Defense Fund.

The first county-by-county study of endangered species, published today in Science magazine, also singles out Hawaii and Florida as areas with disproportionate numbers of vanishing plants and animals. Most of those regions, the scientists said, are places that enjoyed a rich biological heritage to begin with - but now face relentless development pressures.

``Endangered species tend to be clumped together,'' said Mark Roberts, a Princeton researcher and co-author of the study. ``Having identified those regions we can now focus special attention there.''

The study suggests two key findings.

First, that despite political rhetoric in Congress and elsewhere, battles over endangered species are not as geographically widespread as some observers might think.

And second, by targeting funds at fragile ``hot spot'' areas, the nation could put limited dollars to better use in its attempts to save plants and animals from extinction.

``We can protect a tremendous number of endangered species on only a small proportion of the nation's land,'' said David Wilcove, a senior ecologist with the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., and co-author of the report.

The study examined all 924 plants, mammals, fish, insects, amphibians and reptiles that were included on the federal Endangered Species List as of August 1995.

Using computer mapping, it concluded that many rare species inhabit only one county. And in the case of the ``hot spots,'' that county often is facing steady population growth, housing and road development.

For example, 48 percent of endangered plants do not cross any county lines. Similarly, 40 percent of America's endangered insects, 36 percent of birds, 31 percent of fish and 26 percent of mammals on the endangered list live nowhere else but within the boundaries of one county.

In some cases, those species overlap.

Only two counties in the United States are ``hot spots'' for three different endangered groups: San Diego, for fish, mammals and plants; and Santa Cruz, for plants, insects, reptiles and amphibians, the study found.

Nationally, more than 50 percent of all endangered species live only on private property.

As a result, the best way to protect them would be for the government to offer landowners incentives for assisting rare species on private land, the study's authors said in interviews last week. Such incentives could come in the form of tax credits, swaps for government land or permission for additional building elsewhere.

Several prominent California scientists and property-rights advocates agreed.

``Right now the act is all prohibition and no reward,'' said Dennis Murphy, president of Stanford University's Center for Conservation Biology. ``We need to come up with progressive methods to reach compliance.''

Murphy noted that some California counties may have a larger share of endangered species because they have more environmental groups and scientists than other areas. ``Nobody studies South Dakota as much as Northern California,'' he said. But California - like Florida and Hawaii - is home to a broad array of fragile species with narrow ranges because of its unique topography, evolution and weather.

New incentives, such as land swaps and habitat conservation plans, ``are the wave of the future'' in protecting endangered species, said Donn Zea, vice president of industrial affairs for the California Forestry Association in Sacramento.

Under habitat-conservation plans - touted by U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Gov. Pete Wilson - landowners are allowed to destroy habitat of an endangered plant or animal in exchange for preserving and managing other habitat. A prominent example is ongoing in San Diego County, where developers have been given permission to build homes on the habitat of the endangered gnatcatcher, a tiny bird, in exchange for setting aside thousands of acres of gnatcatcher range nearby as permanent open space.

``People should have a reason for supporting the conservation of species on private lands without fear of reprisal,'' said Zea.

The Endangered Species Act, signed in 1973 by President Nixon, is the nation's pre-eminent wildlife-protection law. Up for reauthorization, it prompted furious debate last year in Congress.

Republican congressional leaders complain that it violates Fifth Amendment rights guaranteeing payment when government devalues, or takes, private property.

President Clinton and many environmental groups say the act needs only minor changes and has brought the bald eagle, the California gray whale, the whooping crane, the peregrine falcon and other species back from the brink of extinction.