State: Local Development Dooming Endangered Species

The Canyons project has become the latest focus of mounting concerns by a state wildlife agency that local officials aren’t protecting endangered species as they approve new development around Bakersfield.

In a letter to city planners Friday, the California Department of Fish and Game said General Holding’s proposed housing development on the northeast bluffs would wipe out a significant portion of the endangered Bakersfield cactus, which grows only around Bakersfield.

That’s enough to doom the plant’s long-term survival, said the letter, a response to a recently released draft environmental impact report on The Canyons.

If the city lets that happen, Fish and Game threatened to end an important agreement that seeks to fast-track development while also protecting rare species.

The letter is the strongest rebuke so far in a series of contentious discussions between the state agency and local officials over a slew of projects planned for northeast and southwest Bakersfield that would pave over critical habitat for imperiled species.

Fish and Game officials say that a 1994 habitat conservation plan identified those areas as future preserves.

"You can see that the whole area is solid proposed development," said Julie Vance, a Fish and Game senior environmental scientist, referring to pending and approved housing projects in the southwest.

GETTING THEIR ATTENTION

Until now, city and county officials have downplayed the agency’s concerns, insisting the areas could be developed under the plan and that Fish and Game gave no evidence to support its concerns. But the letter about The Canyons got their attention.

"They’re saying this one project is a deal-breaker," said city Planning Director Jim Movius.

Movius plans to notify the city Planning Commission and City Council, which are charged with OKing the project, that The Canyons could jeopardize the city’s long-standing habit plan.

He’s also contacting developers with other projects in the northeast and southwest to say they need to talk to Fish and Game about cactus and Tipton kangaroo rats, a second species of concern to Fish and Game.

General Holding, The Canyons developer, declined to discuss the recent Fish and Game letter. Robert Kapral, The Canyons project engineer, said in an e-mail that the issue will be hashed out in a closed-door meeting with city planners and Fish and Game. A formal response letter won’t be made available until the project goes before the city Planning Commission for approval, he said.

SPEEDING DEVELOPMENT, PROTECTING SPECIES

Threats to void the habitat plan have alarmed local government and developers.

The plan was one of the first of its kind to balance protection of endangered species with expanding development in a large area. It lets local government approve development that would displace or destroy more than a dozen endangered species found in metro Bakersfield in exchange for developer fees to buy conservation land elsewhere.

The plan replaced an arduous system by which developers had to negotiate with state and federal wildlife officials on a project-by-project basis to lessen their projects’ impacts on species. That way is costlier and could hold up a project for years, said Donna Carpenter, who runs a civil engineering firm and chairs the Home Builders Association of Kern County.

"It would be a terrible thing if Fish and Game decided to negate that document," Carpenter said.

FROM HABITAT TO HOMES Fish and Game agrees the habitat plan helps streamline a complicated process but says as enforcers of the federal and state Endangered Species Act, it must void the agreement if it’s not protecting species.

Because local officials haven’t bought habitat land in the northeast and southwest, several species have crept closer to extinction, they say.

Fish and Game officials say the plan placed a high priority on using developer fees to purchase land in the northeast and southwest. Those areas have a large number of endangered cactus and Tipton kangaroo rats and are linked by the Kern River flood plain, facilitating wildlife migration, the plan said.

Yet barely any land in those areas has been purchased.

Records show that since 1994, more than 16,100 acres of habitat land have been bought with developer fees. Of that, just 450 acres, or less than 3 percent, is within Bakersfield. Approximately 300 acres is in the northeast. None is in southwest Bakersfield.

All other land acquisitions were in other areas of Kern, Tulare and Kings counties.

In September, Fish and Game told the city and county they may have to deny some development projects in those areas. The issued flared again in early February when Fish and Game objected to the Ten Section housing development in southwest Bakersfield, located on some of the last pieces of prime habitat left for the endangered Tipton kangaroo rat.

The Canyons project has now brought the issue to a head.

‘PICKING ON US’

Locals say new Fish and Game staffers are trying to reinterpret conditions in the plan. The habitat plan doesn’t require land purchases in the southwest or northeast, it just sets a goal of buying some if there’s a willing seller, they say.

"This whole program was based on finding willing sellers. We could not use the power of eminent domain to condemn property," said Kern County Planning Director Ted James, who helped negotiate the habitat plan.

The plan’s main requirement is for conservation land purchases to keep pace with development, which it has, James said.

So Fish and Game’s sudden focus on Bakersfield and its letters objecting to city projects came as a surprise.

"They took us completely sideways," Movius, the city’s director of planning, said. "We thought, what is going on that all the sudden you guys are picking on us?’"

"It seems like (Fish and Game officials) are not being supervised, per se," said the Home Builder Association’s Carpenter, who is part of an ad hoc committee that’s begun planning to renegotiate the plan when it expires in 2014.

Local officials have tried to buy land within Bakersfield but finding willing sellers has not been easy because owners can get more money from developers.

In 2003, a habitat plan group was on the verge of purchasing 218 acres of property on the northeast bluffs from private owners when General Holding swooped in with a higher bid. As a result, land envisioned as cactus preserve could now be part of a 1,200-home community.

Babak Naficy, a San Luis Obispo attorney monitoring the habitat plan for the local Sierra Club, said the city and county have twisted the "willing seller" concept to justify approving any development within Bakersfield.

"The city’s saying a deal is a deal but nothing about that argument addresses the fact that not enough land is being set aside to prevent the species’ extinction," Naficy said. "They’re just showing up and doing work without care for whether it’s really working. According to them, as long as your development’s within the Bakersfield area, it’s all fair game."

Vance acknowledged local governments’ challenges but said the plan’s overall objective was to protect dwindling species.

"We can’t just sit here and say, ‘Well they have this plan and they’re trying, so it’s alright if something goes extinct,’" she said. "Those are species we can’t get back."