Audrey L. Mayer - Bird versus Bulldozer: A Quarter-Century Conservation Battle in a Biodiversity Hotspot

The title of this book is brazen for a tiny, gray songbird that few people know. The bird isnt the bald eagle, peregrine falcon, or whooping crane, but the California gnatcatcher. The gnatcatcher doesnt have the widespread notoriety of other threatened and endangered species that have stood in the way of economic growth, such as the northern spotted owl. This lack of infamy may be due to an innovative state-level conservation policy, the Natural Community Conservation Planning Act, which places environmental protection on an equal footing with economic growth in rapidly urbanizing Southern California. The fact that most Americans are blissfully unaware of the California gnatcatcher suggests that the NCCP policy may offer valuable lessons for harmonizing nature conservation and economic activity.

The California gnatcatcher eats insects and spiders, and weighs about the same as a U.S. quarter. Its song sounds as if a kitten is plaintively whining through the high end of a harmonica. The species is nonmigratory but capable of searching for new breeding habitat when necessary, since gnatcatchers evolved in a region where fire regularly requires them to move. California gnatcatchers breed exclusively in a habitat called coastal sage scrub, which looks and smells exactly how it soundsa collection of waist-high bushes with pleasant aromatic qualities, found along the California coast from Santa Barbara down through Baja California, Mexico. The habitat is one of my favorite places in which to do fieldwork, particularly since my end-of-day field clothes smell far better than they do after walking around in other habitats. Unfortunately, California gnatcatchers and people both favor these coastal areas for housinga contest that gnatcatchers usually lost.

Since California achieved statehood in 1850, the human population of Southern California has grown from thousands to over twenty million people. Those millions produced food and built homes in one of the most biologically diverse landscapes in the worlda hotspot of species richness and uniqueness. As farms and neighborhoods expanded from the coastline into the valleys and foothills, almost 90 percent of the California gnatcatchers habitat was destroyed, and their numbers in the United States declined precipitously. The loss of California gnatcatchers and their habitat prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list them as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1993. Fearing that the gnatcatchers listing would halt development, the state of California initiated its NCCP policy, incentivizing landowners to protect coastal sage scrub and create habitat preserves collated from public and private lands. The policys ultimate goal is to conserve listed species and prevent future listings.

At the time of the gnatcatchers listing, the NCCP policy was hailed as an innovative approach to biodiversity conservation in areas with intense human activity. But after nearly thirty years of implementation, it is time to ascertain whether the policy has prevented further declines in California gnatcatcher populations and other coastal sage scrub species. If so, the policy is a shining example of regional-level, development-friendly conservation. If not, it is a cautionary tale about underestimating the importance of the Endangered Species Act.