TOAD VICTOR IN SETTLEMENT; AGREEMENT CALLS FOR PROTECTED HABITAT FOR SEVEN SPECIES.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will designate critical habitat for the arroyo southwestern toad and six other rare species under terms of a settlement between the federal government and environmentalists.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Christians Caring for Creation filed a federal lawsuit March 4 in San Francisco to force the federal government to establish habitats for the rare species, which include the arroyo southwestern toad, a kangaroo rat, a snake, two birds, a snail and a grasshopper.

A settlement, which still requires approval of a judge, has now been reached, the plaintiffs said. It calls on the Fish and Wildlife Service to set out a timetable for earmarking the habitat for the species.

``No endangered species can survive without its habitat protected,'' said Peter Galvin of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

The settlement calls for the Fish and Wildlife Service to propose a ``critical habitat'' by June 2000, and make a final decision by January 2001 for the gravel-colored toad, whose presence in Los Padres National Forest caused the U.S. Forest Service in January to close overnight entry at some campgrounds in the Ojai and Mount Pinos ranger districts and put up educational signs at trails in the Santa Barbara Ranger District. Seasonal restrictions on prospecting and mining were also put in place at Piru Creek.

The areas that would be protected for the species in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, where toad populations live in the upper reaches of small creeks like Little Rock and Piru, was not immediately known.

``We haven't even begun the mapping effort, so it's too early to say,'' said Andy Yuen, deputy field supervisor for Fish and Wildlife's Carlsbad office.

The agency's Ventura office is determining critical habitat for the arroyo toad.

The environmental group has a second lawsuit against the Forest Service for what Galvin said is its failure to hold mandatory consultations with Fish and Wildlife officials about the effects of Forest Service land management policies on endangered species in Southern California national forests.

Settlement talks are still going on for that suit, Galvin said.

The other endangered species named in the lawsuit were the San Bernardino kangaroo rat in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, Alameda whipsnake in Northern California, and the Morro shoulderband snail in coastal Central California.

The threatened species are the Zayante band-winged grasshopper in Northern California and two Alaskan birds, the spectacled eider and the Steller's eider.

Once a species is listed as endangered or threatened, Fish and Wildlife generally has up to a year to designate the critical habitat, agency spokeswoman Joan Jewett said.

Nationwide, Fish and Wildlife has listed 1,754 plants, animals, insects and freshwater fish as endangered or threatened.

But Galvin, a biologist with the 10-year-old Center for Biological Diversity, said the agency has systematically refused to designate and protect habitat for each of the more than 200 species listed under the Endangered Species Act species since 1996.

Of the seven species covered by the settlement, all were placed on the Endangered Species Act list as endangered or threatened since 1993. The arroyo southwestern toad was declared an endangered species in 1994.