"Shrimp Pose Big Problem for LAX"

Sunday, August 15, 2004

Shrimp Pose Big Problem for LAX
Officials contend that proposed preserve for the endangered species
could hamper air travel.
By Jennifer Oldham
The Los Angeles (CA) Times


The scrubby, rock-filled drainage ditch at the end of a runway at Los
Angeles International Airport might not look like much, but to scores of
endangered shrimp, it's home. 

The little depression, surrounded by a chain-link fence with signs
warning "Los Angeles World Airports - Endangered Species - Keep Out," is
part of a 108-acre area at LAX that federal officials want to designate
as a preserve for the tiny creatures, which at the moment exist in egg
form.

The proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announced earlier
this year, took both Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that
operates LAX, and the Federal Aviation Administration by surprise. The
agencies have spent years trying to persuade federal wildlife officials
to allow them to move the airport's Riverside fairy shrimp population. 

At many airports in California, including LAX, rare birds and animals
have found refuge from relentless coastal development. But the desire to
provide a haven for endangered species at these airports often conflicts
with aircraft safety. 

"The obligation of LAWA to provide safe and efficient air travel makes
it physically and socially impossible to improve, expand or conserve
habitat for Riverside fairy shrimp on the LAX airfield," Jim Ritchie, a
deputy executive director at the city's airport agency, wrote to the
Fish and Wildlife Service. 

LAX officials argue that creating a preserve for the shrimp poses a risk
because the crustaceans require standing water, which attracts birds and
other wildlife. Birds, in turn, can be sucked into aircraft engines.

The airport logged 632 "wildlife strikes" - in which a bird or other
animal collided with an airplane - from 1990 through 2004, FAA officials
said. Those encounters caused severe damage to some planes and
endangered people on board and on the ground. 

In the most serious incident at LAX, a seagull was sucked into one of
the four engines of a KLM jumbo jet as it was taking off in August 2000
with 449 people aboard. The collision threw the engine's spinning
turbine blades out of balance, sent chunks of metal flying and knocked
off the tail cone. 

The heavy tail cone landed on the beach a few feet away from a family.
The plane made an emergency landing. No one was hurt. 

Fish and Wildlife Service officials say they had no choice but to
propose designating 5,800 acres in five Southern California counties as
a preserve for the Riverside fairy shrimp. A federal judge ordered the
action in response to a lawsuit that invalidated a previous critical
habitat designation for the species that was finalized in 2001, said
Jane Hendron, a service spokeswoman. 

LAX is one of the last refuges for the declining population of the
fragile crustacean, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Development, off-road vehicle use and livestock overgrazing have
destroyed 90% of the shrimp's habitat in Southern California. 

"Conservation of a population of the Riverside fairy shrimp in the
coastal region of Los Angeles County is essential to the conservation of
the species," federal wildlife officials wrote in a filing in the
Federal Register. "This area is essential because it represents the
remnants of a large historical vernal pool complex in the Los Angeles
Basin. It is likely that this and other isolated populations of
Riverside fairy shrimp have unique genetic differences that will
contribute to the long-term survival of this species."

The service agreed this spring to allow the city's airport agency and
the FAA to move a small number of shrimp to comply with mitigation
measures required by LAX's modernization plan. Federal wildlife
officials have also agreed to allow airport administrators to use a
portion of the proposed preserve for other activities as long as they
protect 23 acres where the shrimp lie.

But aviation officials are still trying to persuade the service to allow
them to transplant the entire population.

"We take their mission seriously," said Ritchie, deputy executive
director of the city's airport agency. "That's why we worked so hard
over five years to present them with a wide variety of sites. We were
prepared to, at a considerable cost, move them into any number of
environments where they would thrive and present no hazard to the
traveling public."

Fish and Wildlife officials say they will continue to negotiate with the
city's airport agency and the FAA over the shrimp's future.

Riverside fairy shrimp exist only in several areas in Southern
California. The translucent creatures, which reach half an inch to an
inch in length in adulthood, inhabit warm freshwater pools that form
during the rainy season. After they reach maturity, the adult females
lay eggs, which sink to the bottom of the pool. The eggs remain in the
soil after the pool dries up and lie dormant until it fills with water
again.

The shrimp at LAX are stuck in the cyst, or egg, state and have not
hatched for years. That is because the pools at LAX are too shallow and
the water chemistry is off, aviation officials say, adding that too few
eggs exist at the airport to allow the species to flourish.

No one knew Riverside fairy shrimp existed at LAX until biologists
started compiling a list of species at the airport in 1998 to be
included in environmental studies for airport modernization plans. 

Those studies, conducted during one of the wettest years in more than a
century, found shrimp eggs in nine locations, including in tire ruts,
along the shoulders of access roads, in a hazardous materials
containment pond and in a flood basin.

But only a small percentage of the eggs found at LAX were viable in a
lab - where it took two tries to hatch the crustaceans, said Andrew B.
Huang, an environmental supervisor at the city's airport agency. 

Shrimp eggs lie close to the surface at the nine sites, several of which
are surrounded by chain-link fences and filled with grasses that
officials say attract insects, which attract rodents, which attract
birds of prey. Raptors have been responsible for many bird strikes at
LAX. 

LAX isn't the only airport struggling with accommodating endangered
species. At San Diego International Airport, officials have worked for a
dozen years to protect the endangered California least tern, which nests
each year between the taxiways at the seaside facility. But because of
its behavior and small size, the bird does not present a significant
risk to aircraft. 

At Ventura County's Point Mugu Naval Air Reserve base, which is built on
wetlands where five endangered bird species live, officials installed a
high-tech radar system to keep track of the fowl. Most of them are beach
birds that do not present a significant risk to aircraft.

At LAX, officials are already administering a 200-acre preserve for the
endangered El Segundo blue butterfly on dunes at the airport's western
edge. The butterfly has flourished there, growing from 500 individuals
to 100,000 in 15 years. But butterflies do not present a threat to
aircraft operations, officials say. Birds don't eat them; spiders do.

Federal wildlife officials are not required to issue a final ruling on
the Riverside fairy shrimp habitat proposal until next spring. In the
meantime, airport officials are pulling together documents and
completing studies they hope will persuade the service to allow them to
move the shrimp.

But biologists caution that there isn't enough scientific data to show
that the shrimp populations would thrive elsewhere. 

Moving the creatures needs more study, said Marie A. Simovich, an
invertebrate biologist at the University of San Diego. "You can't just
dig a hole anywhere and throw dirt into it."


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