a chronological hodge podge of news, events, sites, sounds, interviews and the stuff of the movement
to save san san bruno mountain, both historical and current...

News and Updates

Town Hall Meeting on The Acres and The Quarry
Tuesday July 30th 2002, Brisbane Community Center
(listen) www.osmosismedia.com/grnpte/sbmwtownhall.mp3
click on the pictures for larger versions of the notes from the meeting

Mountain Music
From Mountain Watch's Save The Brisbane Acres Outreach Day, March 16th 2002
It's a Beautiful Mountain: (listen) www.osmosismedia.com/grnpte/itsabeautifulmountain.mp3
Mountain Anthem: (listen) www.osmosismedia.com/grnpte/mountainanthem.mp3

Op Ed to the San Francisco Chronicle, Never Printed

6th of January 1999

Dear Editor,

The Bay Area is incalculably fortunate to have a unique oasis of biodiversity at San Bruno Mountain. However, as is the case with so many other global treasures, this great fortune is not being handled with adequate care. In my book, The Diversity of Life, I highlighted San Bruno Mountain as one of eighteen global biodiversity "hotspots" in need of immediate protection, along with the Usambaa mountain forests of Tanzania, the Columbian Choco, Madagascar, and others. San Bruno Mountain's ecosystems are severely jeopardized by development and its associated problems, principally the invasion of non-native species. More development, as is currently proposed, will further fragment what is home to hundreds of plant and animal species, including several that live nowhere else. Current Habitat Conservation Plan provisions are insufficient to preserve this rich biodiversity.

It is imperative that all the open space that remains on San Bruno Mountain be saved. We can leave our decendants a sorely degraded environment and an example of abuse and exploitation, or we can leave a rich legacy of respectful stewardship-it is our choice. I urge all Californians to take a stand in favor of conserving San Bruno Mountain.

Sincerely yours,

Edward O. Wilson
University Research Professor
Harvard University

International Intention of Respect

The Undersigned Particpants in the
International Symposium on "Natural" Sacred Sites: Cultural and Biological Diversity
Jointly organized by UNESCO, CNRS, MNHN
September 22-25, 1998
Paris, France

We, as the undersigned participants in the International Symposium on "Natural" Sacred Sites: Cultural and Biological Diversity co-sponsored by an international humanitarian body, pledge our respect and support for the protection of sacred sites worldwide.

In the spirit of respect for the autonomy of diverse cultures, we agree to respect and support worldwide the designation of particular sites or whole areas as sacred if determined to be so by, and chosen to be publicly announced by, the keepers of the sacred knowledge of traditional cultures (and, if they are deceased, other qualified supporters of environmentally, culturally, and historically significant sacred sites).

Further, we agree to respect and support the efforts of traditional sacred knowledge keepers and their supporters to protect their sacred sites worldwide.

Our International Intention of Respect is made with the awareness that too little attention has been given in the past, and much more must be given in the future, to the effective protection of sacred sites worldwide.

In order to continue the momentum building at this international symposium, we strongly recommend that UNESCO take further steps in the direction or respecting and protecting sacred sites worldwide, including bringing these concerns to the attention of national governments.

Signed by 178 people worldwide and with four members of San Bruno Mountain Watch
Betsy Danon
Charles Miller
Victoria Rojas
David Schooley

from GLS Sierra Club, April/May 1998
The Large Ohlone Shell Mound at San Bruno Mountain
By Fred Andres, San Bruno Mountain Watch

Shell mounds found on San Bruno Mountain were made over enormous spans of time, even millennia, from the remains of countless shellfish feasts and dinners from convenient estuaries, rivers, and lakes. These mounds are sometimes called "middens," an unfortunate term, by academics, developers and the state government. "Midden" has derogatory connotations and the preferred term is shell mound. Few of these Ohlone Shell mounds, which once numbered as many as 600, have been spared the bulldozer. One such San Bruno Mountain Mound, spectacular in size and over 5000 years old, is in imminent danger of being developed. Part of what once was the areaÕs largest Ohlone village (called Sipliskin) the mound is over 2 acres in size, and reaches a depth of over 290 cm or 9-1/2 feet. It is located on the property of SunChase Development, on the near the border of Brisbane and South San Francisco.

In 1989, an archeological report (only now available) commissioned by the owners previous to SunChase dated the shell mound and found that "dozens or perhaps hundreds" of human burials exist there. Rosemary Cambra, chair of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, adds "What is significant to my people is to respect these holy sites." Cambra believes the mound is 10,000 years old and contains the remains of 10,000 people.

Sterling Pacific Management Services, the manager of the SunChase property, refused a1996 an offer of $2,000,000 by the Environmental Mitigation Exchange Company for 30 acres of land, including the Sipliskin mound. An official with Sterling also refused in 1996 to turn over the land to the state or a nonprofit for protection as well as educational and cultural use. He said he would consult with archaeologists, but not with members of the Ohlone tribe.

SunChase's plans for development of the land on which the Sipliskin mound lies will be voted on soon by the council members of the City of South San Francisco. The plan is to put a business park with a hotel of at least 300 rooms and several roads, essentially cutting the Sipliskin shell mound from San Bruno Mountain. The mound itself is to be planted with native plants and trees, much like the mudflats in the recently approved Blackpoint luxury subdivision in Novato. David Schooley, founder of the nonprofit educational organization San Bruno Mountain Watch, whose goal is to preserve San Bruno Mountain, at the least wants the Sipliskin Mound to become attached to San Bruno Mountain State and County Park.

Interested persons can give their comments to SunChase by contacting Jim Sweeney, SunChase, 6001 North 24th Street #A, Phoenix, AZ, 85016 and Ronald E. Strausberger, Manager of Loans, Sterling Pacific Management Inc, at the same street address. Letters to the Mayor and Council Members of the City of South San Francisco go to P.O. Box 711, South San Francisco, CA 94083.

An excellent source of information on San Bruno Mountain, State Reserve and County Park and the entire HCP debacle (the nation's first HCP was instituted on San Bruno Mountain) is: David Schooley, San Bruno Mountain Watch, 415-467-6631. Hikes and nonnative plant removal work on San Bruno are done on Saturdays and Sundays. For a copy of the abbreviated 1989 archaeological report, please call Fred Andres at 821-9759. Lastly, a superb and fascinating book on the Ohlone peoples: The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin.

from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 7, 1997
No Backdoor Deal
Conservationists win settlement on Endangered Species Act.
by Savannah Blackwell

ENVIRONMENTALISTS recently marked a small victory in their fight to stop the Clinton administration's back-dooring the Endangered Species Act by compromising with commercial interests.

More than seven groups settled their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior March 18 over its "no surprises" policy -- a concession to landowners who wanted to develop private property inhabited by endangered species. The fight to save the habitats of endangered species has local roots; David Schooley of San Bruno Mountain Watch, one of the plaintiffs, has worked for nearly 30 years to preserve habitats on San Bruno Mountain.

The environmentalists oppose habitat conservation plans, or HCPs, which allow developers to kill endangered species and destroy their habitats so long as they attempt to either re-create or preserve similar habitats elsewhere (see "The Sack of San Bruno," 12/11/96). HCPs have been part of the Environmental Protection Act since 1982; the nation's first HCP was crafted to allow development of San Bruno Mountain. The "no surprises" policy guarantees landowners freedom from government demands for additional protection measures once an HCP is signed. The suit sprang from this policy, which encourages landowners to sign onto HCPs.

Oddly enough, the Clinton administration has outdone its conservative predecessors in its efforts to suck up to developers through HCPs. The Bush and Reagan administrations created only 14 HCPs, while more than 200 HCPs have been completed and 300 are in the works under Clinton's leadership. More than 30 HCPs have been approved and 50 more are pending in California alone.

Though HCPs were intended to be an exception, they are fast becoming the rule, and they're now covering larger land areas. At the same time, acreage set aside for protection of species is shrinking dramatically. Much of southern California is now covered by state versions of habitat conservation plans. For example, a San Diego HCP includes more than 500,000 acres and covers 85 species. Under the plan, 98 percent of habitat used by endangered species can be developed, according to Leeona Klippstein, a co-plaintiff in the "no surprises" suit.

The historic settlement calls for a 60-day review period, during which the Department of the Interior will take comments from the public on the policy. The department recently started accepting letters; the official comment period runs from May 19 to July 19. According to the settlement's terms, federal officials obligated to consider rescinding the "no surprises" policy.

"It's the best thing we can do right now," Schooley told the Bay Guardian. "We're hoping for a big response from conservationists all over America."

The "no surprises" policy was enacted without public comment in 1994 by Bruce Babbitt, secretary of the Department of the Interior. In effect, "no surprises" says some cooperation from landowners is better than none; once a property owner secures the right to develop land critical to an endangered species under an HCP, no additional requirements or demands may be made of the owner, even if it is later established that the species needs additional measures for protection, such as more land for breeding. Recent HCPs promise landowners this guarantee for as long as 100 years.

Zygmunt Plater, the environmental lawyer who was the first ever to litigate under the Endangered Species Act, calls the "no surprises" policy "ludicrous." According to Kim Walley, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who handled the lawsuit, the policy violates the intention of the Endangered Species Act by severely limiting what measures the government can take to protect endangered species.

"This is a way of quieting down the landowners and 'wise-use'rs [property rights supporters] by giving them what they want in a more discreet way. It's totally outrageous," Tara Mueller, a staff lawyer at the Environmental Law Foundation, told the Bay Guardian.

Federal authorities say HCPs and the "no surprises" policy are more realpolitik than craven submission. "We think this is as much as you can ask for from private landowners without the public ponying up and being party to it," Peter Hamm, spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, told the Bay Guardian. "We think it's a fair trade-off."

Many conservationists and scientists disagree. The Endangered Species Act was designed to help species facing extinction increase in number.

"We [taxpayers] get milked twice, because we lose part of our natural heritage and we've got to pay for it," Brian Vincent, conservation director of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, told the Bay Guardian.

In a joint letter last July to congressmembers working on new versions of the Endangered Species Act, more than 160 scientists wrote that "no surprises" was a scientifically unsound approach to conservation.

" 'No surprises' flies in the face of scientifically based ecological knowledge, and in fact, rejects knowledge," wrote Gary Meffe, senior ecologist at the Savannah River Ecology Lab and professor at the University of Georgia.

When White House officials asked for comments from leading conservation and biology scientists earlier this spring, nine scientists wrote, " 'No surprises' ... runs counter to the natural world, which is full of surprises."

The litigants are hoping the suit will open the door to challenges to the use of HCPs. Meyer & Glitzenstein, the Washington, D.C., firm that handled the "no surprises" suit, is now suing the federal government over an HCP in Alabama.

The San Bruno HCP has proved to be a dismal failure. In the 15 years since its creation no new habitat has been established. The butterflies have not taken to their resettled environment, and the number of butterflies is dwindling. Non-native plants that threaten flora on which native species depend are taking over large sections of protected habitat (see "The Sack of San Bruno," 12/11/96).

Even so, the Clinton latched onto HCPs as convenient tools to appease private-property interests and added "no surprises" as a further concession. According to Hamm, "Maximizing the flexibility of the ESA" is necessary to prevent losing the Endangered Species Act in its entirety, or as he said, so "the dark side doesn't win in the final analysis."

But those who do not want to see the Endangered Species Act defanged say the Clinton administration should stand up to private-property interests rather than caving in to their demands.

If the administration continues the policy even after many scientists and concerned citizens say it is unsound, the public's comments will constitute grounds for further lawsuits, Walley told the Bay Guardian.

"This gives us ammunition," she said. "It gives us another angle to pressure them to get rid of it."

To participate in the public-comment period, before July 19 write Bruce Babbitt urging him to discontinue the "no surprises" policy.

Bruce Babbitt, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20240

To assist in the fight against HCPs, call San Bruno Mountain Watch at (415) 467-6631.

The steep pitch of Owl Canyon on the north side of San Bruno Mountain is a dense carpet of knee-high wild grasses and native plants like lupine, mission bells, wallflowers and California sage. On a strand of grass, two Bay Checkerspot butterflies mate, while Mission Blue and Elfin butterflies, both endangered species found only on the mountain, flit through the air.

The 3,300 acres that comprise San Bruno Mountain are some of the most natural and untouched in the Bay Area. A grove of live oaks halfway up Owl Canyon is more than 500 years old, predating the Mexican explorers who founded missions in what is now San Francisco.

Yet standing on a ridge line, hikers can look back over their shoulders and see San Francisco skyscrapers peeking over the hills just a few miles to the north. To the east, cars zoom by on Highway 101, past the San Francisco International Airport and Candlestick Point.

And at the mountain's base, bulldozers have cleared large sections of earth to make way for new commercial and residential development, continuing a slow encroachment by developers that began in the mid-1980s.

Sunchase, a Phoenix-based developer, is currently building a 720-home subdivision in South San Francisco on the mountain's south side. When completed, TerraBay will include single family homes, townhouses, a hotel and a small commercial development.

On the mountain's Northeast Ridge in Brisbane, Brookfield Homes has built roads and poured the first foundations for what will be a 500-home development. Similar projects are completed or under construction in Daly City and the Cow Palace section of San Francisco.

Homeowners and endangered species like the Mission Blue butterfly share San Bruno Mountain because of a 1982 amendment to the federal Endangered Species Act. Under that amendment, a coalition of environmentalists, government officials and private landowners formed the country's first-ever Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). Designed as a compromise between landowners and environmentalists, the San Bruno HCP allowed developers to destroy the habitat of endangered species if nearby lands were preserved as a kind of substitute habitat.

Developers are required to pay fees and set aside land to create the new preserves, which are monitored by outside consultants.

Fifteen years after the creation of the San Bruno HCP, the verdict is still out on its success. Some environmentalists call the San Bruno HCP a failure that has robbed endangered species of vital habitat and caused non-native plants to invade the mountain. They claim that HCPs, which now number 30 in California alone, are an environmental sellout that give developers a legal loophole through the Endangered Species Act.

Developers disagree. They say the HCP represents a successful accommodation between the economic needs of a fast-growing community and the preservation of endangered plants and animals.

David Schooley, a founding member of San Bruno Mountain Watch, calls the compromise that created the San Bruno HCP "great for politics, but unfortunately, compromise is not so great for the environment."

Schooley has been leading hikes up and down the mountain since the late 1960s, and is one of its most vocal supporters. He was at the negotiating table when the HCP was drafted, but says its implementation has been a "disaster."

While leading a hike up Owl Canyon, Schooley looks back at the Northeast Ridge as an example of why the basic premise of HCPs are flawed. In the early 1980s, developers like Brookfield Homes favored the gradual slopes of the ridge as the best place to build much-needed new housing for Brisbane, which, like most of the Bay Area, is suffering from a housing crunch. Unfortunately, the grasslands on the ridge were dotted with lupine, a squat, grassy plant that plays host to the endangered Mission Blue butterfly.

Under the HCP, the builders were able to "take" -- bureaucratic legalese for "destroy" -- this butterfly habitat after agreeing to set up and pay for a new habitat higher up the mountain's northwest side in an area known as the Saddle.

Today, the top of the Northeast Ridge has been flattened for houses. The only evidence of the butterfly are street signs like Mission Blue Drive that commemorate their existence.

Schooley says tens of thousands of dollars have been spent by San Mateo County and its environmental consultant, Thomas Reid Associates, to recreate the Mission Blue habitat with little or no success. The main hurdle is that the Saddle is riddled with non-native plants like gorse and eucalyptus that choke off more fragile lupine plants. Without lupine, Mission Blue butterflies have nowhere to breed, he said. In addition, the area is too windy and damp from ocean fog for the butterfly and other native plants.

"The motives of the county and Thomas Reid Associates are good, but it is impossible to recreate a habitat that took nature several hundred years to perfect," he said.

Victoria Harris, a consultant with Thomas Reid Associates and a co-author of the original 1982 San Bruno HCP agreement, lauds Schooley's enthusiasm, but rejects his conclusions.

Specifically, Harris says the HCP can take credit for preserving the best habitat to ensure the butterfly's survival. Of San Bruno Mountain's 3,300 acres, only 360 acres have been developed or will be permitted for development.

"Including the state and county park, approximately 2,700 acres on San Bruno Mountain -- much of it the best habitat -- will be preserved," says Harris.

The HCP is funded by $70,000 collected annually from developers and homeowners, who are required to pay annual assessments on their property. The money is used to protect and enhance the habitat, which includes removing non-native plants, replant-ing native species and monitoring butterfly activity.

Harris admits that efforts to eradicate non-native plants like gorse have been difficult, but said volunteer assistance from groups like Friends of San Bruno Mountain is turning the tide.

"The butterflies don't seem to mind the development as long as the plants they need are healthy," she said, adding that surveys of the butterfly populations show no significant decreases.

The debate over the San Bruno HCP is destined to drag on for years because development of the mountain's base continues. Cities like South San Francisco, already penned in by San Francisco Bay but in need of more housing to accommodate job growth, have approved new construction, according to Marty Van Duyn, head of South San Francisco's economic development office.

"We have a lot of job growth here that is putting pressure on us to come up with ways to provide additional housing," he said, referring to Sunchase's plan for the development of TerraBay on San Bruno Mountain's south side.

Three hundred units of housing are already under construction in phase one. Phases two and three will be built next, adding additional housing as well as a hotel and a small office complex. The hotel plans have particularly riled environmentalists like Schooley because it will be constructed on top of one of the oldest Native American shell mounds in the Bay Area.

"While the city welcomes this development, it also recognizes the importance of the mountain's habitat and the need to adhere to the HCP," said Van Duyn, adding that only two-thirds of the TerraBay site will be developed, and no other project will be allowed to encroach on the mountain's southern slope.

Developers and environmentalists from other parts of California and the nation are also eying San Bruno Mountain with interest. The Clinton Administration has pushed the formation of HCPs, resulting in more than 500 separate proposals since 1992. In California, more than 30 HCPs have been approved, including an agreement between the federal government and the Irvine Co. to develop 325 square miles in Orange County. Another HCP in San Diego is also being set up.

"I don't like to discourage the restoration work that's being done on San Bruno Mountain because every little bit helps," said Schooley. "But the whole HCP process sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the United States. It's allowing developers to destroy endangered species and their habitats without proving they are actually recreating this habitat elsewhere."

from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, December 11, 1996
Tragic Mountain
The Sack of San Bruno
San Bruno Mountain development was a national model for decimating the Endangered Species Act.
by Savannah Blackwell

What's next?

WHEN YOU CLIMB up Buckeye Canyon on San Bruno Mountain, the air is heavy with the sweet smell of California sage. Other native plants, such as lupine and manzanita, dot the wild grasses. A gentle breeze stirs the boughs of live oaks.

This is ancient turf. A couple miles southeast, at the base of a slope, lies an earthen mound where members of a Native American tribe called the Sipliskin tossed oyster shells, remnants of suppers past. The historic mound is one of very few in the Bay Area that does not lie beneath asphalt and buildings.

But perhaps not for long. Developers are rapidly transforming what's left of the mountain's unprotected natural landscape. Land once occupied by rare and endangered butterflies has been bulldozed. South San Francisco's current land use plan allows for a hotel parking lot to cover the shell mound.

Since the mid-1980s several large housing developments have sprung up on San Bruno Mountain. Construction of more than 300 condominiums near Daly City began in 1985, and now more than 600 additional houses and condominiums are going up at the mountain's base. Above South San Francisco, in an area formally known as Paradise Valley, 750 homes will eventually rise.

Where Mission blue and Callippe silverspot butterflies once flew, new streets bearing the species' names will be laid out for 500 condos, town homes, and detached houses now under construction near Brisbane on the Northeast Ridge.

None of this would have been permissable had developers not succeeded in amending the 1973 Endangered Species Act. In 1982 San Bruno became the national model for a dangerous compromise between the needs of the environment and the lure of profit. The mountain was the first place in the country where developers were allowed to kill endangered species and destroy their habitats -- as long as they attempted to either re-create or preserve similar habitats elsewhere. A group called San Bruno Mountain Watch fought bitterly to stop the plan. But since then the group has been painfully watching runaway development decimate the region.

The policy that allowed for San Bruno Mountain's development is known as a habitat conservation plan (HCP) and was the nation's first, signed in 1982. It effectively weakened the Endangered Species Act; since then such arrangements have proliferated around the country. During the Clinton administration the number of authorized and proposed HCPs jumped from 14 to nearly 500. And a 1994 regulation has made HCPs even more developer-friendly (see "Surprise, Surprise,").

There are more than 30 already approved, and 50 more proposed, in California alone.

In 1982 Congress added a provision to the act that allowed state and local agencies, as well as individuals and corporations, to "take" (or kill a certain number of) a listed species through the use of an "incidental take permit" so long as an HCP was prepared.

But the lesson of San Bruno Mountain is clear: HCPs have been dismal failures.

"Most of what has been done under San Bruno's HCP has been a disaster," says David Schooley, chair of San Bruno Mountain Watch, which has led tours up the mountain for nearly three decades.

Since development on San Bruno began, the number of butterflies has not increased significantly -- and increasing the population of endangered species was one of the key goals of the act. Because of that and the failures of other HCPs, environmentalists and scientists around the nation are sounding the alarm that the use of HCPs is accelerating the loss of endangered species.

"Nothing should compensate for killing [endangered species]. Nothing," Marcy Benstock, director of the New York-based Clean Air Campaign and a leading foe of HCPs, told the Bay Guardian. "These plans will cause irrevocable damage, which will catch up with human beings sooner or later. It's lunacy to go along with these schemes."

Since 1982 the use of HCPs has increased most dramatically throughout the western states and other rapidly developing states such as Florida and Texas. As more and more are put into practice, HCPs are also covering larger land areas. Most of the remaining natural land in southern California is slated for development under the Natural Community Conservation program, the state version of the HCP, according to Tara Mueller, counsel to the Natural Heritage Institute. "What this is, is the sanctioning of incredible amounts of habitat loss," Mueller said.

Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College who filed the first lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act, called the HCP "a Trojan horse for undercutting the [Endangered Species Act] as a whole.... You can kiss the recovery of species goodbye."

Jasper Carlton, director of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, told the Bay Guardian that recent HCPs in other parts of the country call for 80 percent of the habitat of certain endangered species to be developed. In addition to San Bruno Mountain, sites of other major HCP projects in California include:

* Orange County, where an HCP agreement has recently been signed between the federal government and the Irvine Company. The agreement allows for commercial and residential development on 325 square miles (less 36,378 acres set aside for preservation) between Los Angeles and San Diego. Six endangered species live there, including a songbird called the California gnatcatcher, the peregrine falcon, the willow flycatcher, the arroyo toad, and the Pacific pocket mouse.

* San Diego, where an HCP that covers much of the southern part of the county is in the works. The plan involves more than 1,000 landowners and 84 animal species, including the gnatcatcher. Under both the Orange County and San Diego plans, developers are assured that if they contribute some land for preservation they can construct houses and shopping malls elsewhere unhindered by local, state, or federal authorities. Both plans provide assurances that the latest, soundest scientific methods will be used to manage the habitats.

* Headwaters Forest in northern California, where a proposed agreement between the federal government and Maxxam-Pacific Lumber will allow the company to log 197,500 acres of redwood forest. Environmentalists who fought to preserve Headwaters Forest are concerned that the HCP will not go far enough to protect the endangered marbled murrelet that lives there.

"We have huge concerns about [the Headwaters plan]," Paul Mason, coordinator of the Environmental Protection Information Center's endangered species project, told the Bay Guardian. "The public doesn't get to be much of a participant in an HCP. By the time the draft is released to the public it's set in wet concrete, meaning it won't change very much."

The San Bruno compromise

San Bruno Mountain offers a rare glimpse at the true nature of San Francisco. It is the grounds of three kinds of rare and endangered butterflies as well as foxes, raccoons, skunks, birds, and rare and endangered plants.

James Roof, a noted Daly City native-plant expert who died in 1983, described the mountain as the last piece of native Franciscan habitat, which is characterized by dense miniature scrubs and grasslands. This habitat once covered the Marin peninsula, the Presidio, Mount Davidson, Sunset Heights, Twin Peaks, and Diamond Heights. Some kinds of plants and flowers, such as hummingbird sage, can only be found on San Bruno Mountain.

"We're losing our connection to the ancient rhythms and flow of time," Schooley said. "That's why we must protect this sacred place, this area that is still native."

Ironically, the use of the mountain's base as a garbage dump for more than 50 years discouraged developers from exploiting the area. But by the mid-1960s the dump had been covered over by rocks and earth, and only a lumber company stands there today.

Shortly after the dump was covered, developers began eyeing San Bruno. Early on Schooley and others fended off one proposal to hack off the top of the mountain, fill the bay with the earth, and build homes and shopping centers on the bay fill. But interest in developing the mountain remained high. In the early 1970s San Bruno Mountain Watch and other environmental groups succeeded in getting most of the mountain set aside as parkland.

In the mid 1970s a group of UC Berkeley students found the Mission blue butterfly, an endangered species, on the mountain, and developers were forced to address the Endangered Species Act. But they refused to bow to the needs of preserving the species, and federal, state, county, and city officials ultimately crafted a 30-year HCP with San Bruno Mountain landowners. Two lawsuits filed against the HCP by San Bruno Mountain Watch and other citizens' groups failed to stop developers from encroaching on the native habitat.

The consolation? Those who raze the mountain's flora and kill its fauna promise to try to re-create something it took nature thousands of years to build.

From the edge of Buckeye Canyon a visitor can look across to the Northeast Ridge, where the Mission blue butterfly once lived. The land is barren now, scraped by bulldozers in preparation for new homes. More than a mile away another ridge is marked by patches of dark green vegetation, where San Mateo County's environmental consultant, with funds from developers, has attempted to re-create the butterflies' habitat.

But the butterflies have not moved into their replacement home, Schooley said. The new habitat is too wet and doesn't get enough sun for the Mission blues, and the plants they need for laying their eggs are being choked out by nonnative vegetation. Moreover, the butterflies should have had a corridor linking the old habitat with the new one, Schooley said.

Some critics find the idea of relocating endangered animals in confined, sometimes re-created habitats absurd. An ecosystem involves the complex interaction of plant and animal life with the natural environment; you can't just pluck a system out of one place and stick it in another.

"We don't know enough about natural science to [create habitats]," Carlton said. "It's a pretend game. They say to the species, 'You have to stay in this one confined area.' That's not a naturally functioning wildlife creature. This little butterfly can't see two miles away. It doesn't know where it's supposed to go."

Mueller added, "To recreate a complex ecosystem is pretty well-nigh impossible." Both Mueller and Carlton point out that the plans rarely include participation from scientists independent of the involved government agencies or developers.

"In theory the HCP sounds great," Mueller said. "But the problem is that I can't cite you one example where an HCP is achieving an integrated habitat. These are basically political deals with landowners, not biologically based, ecological planning."

Playing god, badly

Schooley and other environmentalists say the habitat conservation plan implemented at San Bruno Mountain in 1982 is an experiment that failed. "San Bruno's HCP has not proven to be a strong enough protection," said Leeona Klippstein, president of the Spirit of the Sage Council, which fought the HCP in Orange County. "The butterflies have not recovered after 14 years."

According to the officials who supported it, the San Bruno Mountain HCP was a necessary compromise. John Ward is a former San Mateo County supervisor who signed on to the plan in 1982, so it's not surprising that he now represents a developer building a 750-home community called Terrabay on the mountain's southern slope above South San Francisco. He told the Bay Guardian that allowing landowners to develop prime habitat was the only way to save any part of the mountain.

"The HCP was drafted as a means of making the federal Endangered Species Act work to allow for a balance between the reasonable use of property and protection of the environment," Ward said. "It was a unique creature at the time and has been a model ever since."

The need for housing was part of the developers' motive, Ward said, and without some kind of compromise the federal act might have been weakened more than it was. "A lot of people in Washington were not enamored with the [act] and were trying to weaken it because they saw it as an impediment to any development," he told the Bay Guardian.

Environmentalists say that threat was a red herring. It would have been far more difficult to repeal the entire Endangered Species Act than it has been to slowly amend it to death. The compromise was a political deal to accommodate landowners' desire to profit from habitats of endangered species.

"That was not a needed compromise," Gaffney said. "It was politically driven.... The whole [mountain] should have been preserved."

Both Ward and Victoria Harris, a senior associate with Thomas Reid Associates, San Mateo County's environmental consultant, say San Bruno's HCP is a good deal overall. Without the $100,000 generated yearly from developers -- who pass the charge onto homeowners -- under the plan, it would be impossible to tackle the nonnative plants that are invading endangered species' habitats, they say.

"At least now there's long-term money for monitoring the butterflies' habitat, counting the butterflies, and getting rid of exotics," Harris said. Before the HCP, "San Mateo county officials had their budget reduced and had totally abandoned the mountain except for opening gates and emptying garbage cans."

But the new homes' landscaped yards have contributed to the growth of unwanted plants. Jake Sigg, president of the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant Society, said that there are more nonnative plants on the mountain today than when the HCP was signed.

In areas where Reid has attempted to plant new vegetation, such as lupine, which Mission blue butterflies eat and lay their eggs on, exotic (or nonnative) plants such as gorse, broom, fennel, and pampas grass keep coming back, and they're choking out the plants the endangered butterflies prefer.

"There's been no real created habitat center that has really worked," Schooley said. "The problem is, it's not a matter of just a butterfly and one plant, it's a fragile, intricate web of birds and other wildlife."

At least one of the San Bruno Mountain developers has admitted that Schooley is right. At an August meeting at Terrabay, where representatives from San Bruno Mountain Watch, the county, and the developer, SunChase G.A. California I Inc. gathered to discuss how to replant an area behind the proposed development, David Kaplow, a botanist working for SunChase, confirmed that no authentic habitat has been re-created anywhere on the mountain.

"San Bruno's HCP says we're hoping to restore habitat," Harris told the Bay Guardian. "But we don't know if we can."

Paul Reegan, a fire-monitoring specialist with the National Park Service, worked for Thomas Reid Associates for three years during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Reegan said at the time he found the firm's scientific practices suspect. New habitat for butterflies was created in the wrong places because developers wanted to construct homes in the areas most like the butterflies' grounds, he said.

"Mission blue like drier and more protected areas than the saddle area [the part chosen for preservation], which is too windy," Reegan said. "But the lands most like the habitat they prefer is the area where they wanted to build."

Effective use of funds was another problem, he said. "Money was being thrown at [conservation] rather than being used in ways that were cost-effective," Reegan said. "Take the gorse problem, for example. They sprayed it with herbicide, hacked at it, kind of drove 'dozers over it, but it keeps coming back."

"I think they could be doing a much better job," Reegan said, adding that the need for independent, scientific review of the effects of development on San Bruno's endangered species is critical.

Controlling nature

Coordinating nature's work is not always easy. Environmental officials have run into numerous problems restoring and relocating habitat. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have cited lack of proper spending as a problem on San Bruno Mountain. About $400,000 remains untouched in county coffers. That money should be going toward restoring habitat, said Mike Horton, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's HCP coordinator at San Bruno Mountain.

"The funds are just sitting there," Horton told the Bay Guardian. "There are some areas on the HCP that have not been restored the way they were supposed to be."

In addition, a gravel quarry near Buckeye Canyon is causing problems by creating dust that is covering plants. That kills the plants by preventing them from photosynthesizing, said Horton, who added that the Fish and Wildlife Service cannot monitor San Bruno's HCP as much as the agency would like because of cuts in staff.

Harris defended Reid and San Mateo County's conservation efforts, claiming that the county is beginning to spend money on restoring a eucalyptus grove (eucalyptus is a nonnative tree). She acknowledged that the intrusion of nonnative plants is a problem on the mountain but said Reid had made "significant strides" in controlling the unwanted vegetation.

"There's been some increase [of Mission blue] in the conserved habitat," said David Wright, an entomologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service. "But on the other hand, development that's been allowed by the HCP is proceeding, so you lose the butterflies living there."

San Bruno Mountain Watch is fighting the additional development of endangered species' habitat on the mountain. On the mountain's highest peak, called Radio Ridge, elfin butterflies are threatened by an amendment to the HCP calling for an expansion of the telecommunications center situated there. After losing a suit against the proposal for more satellite dishes in San Mateo County Superior Court, the group has taken its case to the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

"The compromise of a living thing equals its death," Schooley said. "That's the whole problem with HCPs. 'Habitat Conservation Plan' -- 'Habitat' sounds like it's concerned with habitat, but really it's about destruction of habitat....

"But it's so clear on San Bruno Mountain that there has been no creation of habitat. It's not just one single animal, or one bug, or one bird; it's a fragile creation over a long period of time. That's what the [Endangered Species] Act is really about."

from the Ecology Center, Berkeley, Spring 1994
Bye-bye Biodiversity?
By Mark Huntington

“SAVE SAN FRANCISCO Habitat,” the sign proclaims to commuters barreling down Bayshore Boulevard on their way to work. What kind of oxymoron is that? Does that mean the dandelions growing up through cracks in the concrete? Stretched out across the highway, a big banner reads “Kill Locally--Die Globally. No New City on San Bruno Mountain.”

Such was the scene a few months ago at the corner of Bayshore and Guadalupe Canyon Parkway, just south of the San Francisco Line. Southwest Diversified’s proposed development there would double the population of Brisbane while scoring a resounding victory against the 30-year struggle to save this last intact fragment of local native habitat.

As the Endangered Species Act (ESA) comes up for reauthorization in Washington, D.C., one its most celebrated failures is unfolding here.

San Bruno Mountain is one of California’s most diverse examples of coastal grass and scrub habitat. A unique collection of plants, some of which are found nowhere else, provides habitat for several endangered species. The plight of these species is an indicator of the destruction of the entire fabric of life.

The ESA draws a clear line against the 228-acre development of prime habitat on the mountain’s northeast ridge. Nevertheless, the bulldozers may be rolling soon, and with them, will go the last place of its kind on earth.

WAYS TO SKIN AN ACT

The list of the way developers and their allies ignore and circumvent the ESA is longer than the list of extinct San Francisco plants and animals. Governments invariably favor development over enforcement of environmental laws. For them, the tricky part has been to keep the people from suing to enforce compliance.

One way to do this is to get someone in Congress to attach a rider onto an appropriations bill, exempting a specific development project from all federal law. If this fails, the “God Squad” can step in. Appointed by the president, these guys can allow the last bald eagle to be ground up and served as Chicken McNuggets.

Such unpleasant extremes were not necessary to prevent private citizens from enforcing the law on San Bruno Mountain. In 1982, San Mateo County, the developers, and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife got together and created the nation’s first Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

The HCP was based on a $300,000 habitat study commissioned by the developers. The Thomas Reid Associates Study concluded that destroying endangered butterfly habitat posed “no significant threat to [the butterfly’s] survival.” That same year, Congress reauthorized a weakened ESA, allowing the “taking” of endangered species under HCPs.

Local citizens sought to stop the encroachment, or at least to limit it to the places where native plant life was already degraded. But Southwest Diversified had its eye on the sunny slopes that form the center for the almost extinct Mission Blue and San Bruno Elfin butterflies.

The company got what it wanted and, in return, promised to mitigate the damage by creating new butterfly habitat elsewhere. The 35-year mitigation program is attempting to recreate habitat where none of the conditions exist that made that habitat possible in the first place.

With all its limitations and weaknesses, the ESA has still allowed private citizen to slow down or even to temporarily stop environmentally destructive projects. But by the time the act is tinkered with and reauthorized, we may have little or no environment protections left. What are we going to do?

First, go for a hike on the mountain--this is the most spectacular spring in memory. Then write and call your representatives and senators. Tell them we need them to be activists for a strong ESA and for a citizen’s right to enforce it. Tell them to delete the “God Squad” provision, delete the “take” amendment (sec. 10a), outlaw riders, and fund biological studies and recovery plans with the money now being spent on bogus “Habitat Conservation Plans” and ridiculous mitigation schemes. For more information, or for guided hikes on San Bruno Mountain, call San Bruno Mountain Watch at (415) 467-6631.