Rare Butterfly Will Get Protection : Commission Favors Program to Preserve Habitat Near Airport

A state agency Wednesday agreed to let Los Angeles International Airport destroy weeds that are threatening an endangered butterfly’s food supply.

Meeting in San Francisco, the California Coastal Commission voted to allow the airport to use herbicides on a limited basis on the so-called Airport Dunes west of the airport. Non-native vegetation is thriving on the dunes and threatens to squeeze out a form of wild buckwheat that serves as food for the endangered El Segundo blue butterfly.

“We certainly feel anything that can be done to help the butterfly should be done so long as it is not done at the expense of other significant species,” said Lisa Horowitz, a commission analyst in Long Beach who recommended approval of the plan. The butterfly, which is no larger than a thumbnail, is on the federal government’s list of endangered species.

Environmental Concern

A local environmental group had expressed concern that the herbicide might pose a threat to other plant and animal life on the dunes. But, under the plan approved Wednesday, the chemicals will be sprayed directly on the targeted vegetation and the work will be monitored by the California Department of Fish and Game.

Still unresolved is the airport’s controversial plan to develop the vacant 302-acre parcel that includes the dunes. In 1985, the commission rejected the airport’s proposal to set aside about 80 acres for a nature preserve and develop the rest as a golf course and recreation area. The commission said the airport had not determined what effect the development would have on the dunes and their flora and fauna.

The airport dunes are the butterfly’s natural habitat and are nearly all that is left of a dune system that once stretched from San Pedro to Playa del Rey. The only other remnant is a two-acre plot at Chevron USA’s refinery in El Segundo, just south of the airport, where the butterfly is flourishing.

Maurice Laham, chief of the airport’s environmental management bureau, said airport officials and a team of scientists are conducting a biological study on the dunes, expected to be completed by next summer, before resubmitting the golf course plan.

“We are counting every tsetse fly out there,” he said.

In the meantime, rather than “get our nose out of joint” about the denial of the golf course, Laham said, airport officials decided to help the butterfly because of scientists’ findings that the insects’ breeding ground was threatened by non-native plants--primarily ice plants--and some insect species.

Last year, the commission, which reviews development along the coast to ensure that it conforms to state law, granted the airport an emergency permit to do some limited work on three two-acre sites. That work included the removal, by hand, of an abundance of ice plant, which was crowding out the buckwheat.

But the airport has been losing the battle to control the enemy vegetation, including a second type of buckwheat--one that the butterfly does not eat and is a breeding ground for a species of moth that eats the butterflies in their caterpillar stage of development.

“When these other critters go out and eat the few butterflies you have, you’re in trouble,” Laham said.

Airport officials say that they know, based on sightings, that the butterfly still exists on the property, but nobody has a good estimate of how many there are.

Limited Area

Under the plan approved by the commission and backed by federal and state wildlife authorities, airport workers will be allowed to go onto the dunes and use the herbicides Fusilade and Round-Up to control the unwanted type of buckwheat and bermuda grass. The work will largely be confined to the three sites covered by the emergency permit issued last year.

The airport also will be allowed to remove acacia trees, plant new seedlings of the favored buckwheat and install a drip irrigation system.

A biologist must be on hand when the herbicides are used and the vegetation is removed, and the California Department of Fish and Game must be permitted on the dunes to monitor the work.

Agencies have spent $50,000 so far on the butterfly habitat and expect to spend $150,000 on the study of the entire dune area.

Friends of the Dunes, a Playa del Rey environmental group that opposes the airport’s larger plan for the area, questioned in a letter to the commission whether the herbicides would pose a threat to other plants and animals on the dunes. But Laham said application of the chemicals will be done carefully, primarily with hand-held sprayers.

Laham predicted that, when the study is complete, the airport will be allowed to move ahead with the golf course and nature conservancy. He and other airport officials contend that the plan, which has already won the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council, is the best use for the dunes because at least five golf courses in the area have closed in recent years.

Sallie Davison, president of Friends of the Dunes, said her group prefers to have the dunes preserved as open space. “We’re concerned with all 302 acres, not just the restoration of the butterfly habitat,” she said.

Davison said she finds it strange that the airport once bought and cleared nearly 1,000 noise-afflicted homes from the area surrounding the dunes and now wants to build a golf course there.

“It is kind of insane to have taken all these people out of there and then bring them back to play,” she said.