Frog gets third bid for critical habitat (1.6 million acres)

The federal government Tuesday made its third attempt to designate critical habitat for the California red-legged frog. The 1.6 million acres proposed represent the result of a decade of legal battles and scientific study. Previous proposals had been for as much as 4.1 million acres (in 2001) and for as little as 450,000 acres (in 2006). The latest designation includes 4,449 acres in Calaveras County that had been omitted from the 2006 proposal. Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said his organization is pleased with the latest designation. "Compared to the 450,000 or so acres that were designated in 2006 under the Bush administration, this is a dramatic improvement," Greenwald said. The 2006 plan would have excluded the Calaveras County area from designation because a property owner there said he would manage his property to benefit the frog and recruit other landowners to do the same. According to discussion in the federal habitat designation rule, no other property owners have come forward since 2006. Also, federal officials said the danger that grazing in the area will damage frog habitat justifies including the Calaveras area in the designation. "We won't know until we see what the agency does to landowners," Blodgett said of the new rule for the red-legged frog. "They have already been issuing threats to landowners on other species."...read more