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Wild Neighbors: UC and Strawberry Canyon: The Harvestman Paradox

By Joe Eaton
Thursday May 01, 2008 - 10:43:00 AM

My two previous columns provided background on planned major construction by the University of California and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in undeveloped areas of Strawberry Canyon, and discussed a state and federally listed species, the Alameda whipsnake, which very likely inhabits the area to be developed. (Since last week I’ve received a credible report of a whipsnake sighting in the UC Botanical Garden, near the proposed site of the Helios Facility.) 

The whipsnake is far from the only sensitive species in the canyon. The draft environmental impact reports (DEIRs) for Helios and for the Computational Research and Theory Facility (CRT), planned for Blackberry Canyon, list a number of plants considered vulnerable by the California Native Plant Society and animals with federal or state special status—too many to discuss them all. 

One creature in particular provides an object lesson in the politics of endangerment. It’s not officially listed as endangered or threatened by either the federal or state governments. But the state Department of Fish and Game includes it in its list of Special Animals, with a ranking of globally endangered. 

That’s because the entire population—the entire global population—of the Lee's microblind harvestman may be limited to Blackberry Canyon, next door to the projected CRT site.  

Microcina leei is an arachnid, not a proper spider but related. Technically, it’s a phalangodid. Its larger kin are the fragile-looking creatures known as daddy-longlegs. M. leei is, as its common name suggests, very small (not quite a millimeter in body length) and sightless. It appears to live only under sandstone rocks in oak grassland. 

Its scientific history is brief. The species was first collected in Blackberry Canyon, also known as Woolsey Canyon, in 1960. Twenty-three years later it was refound there, and additional specimens were collected in Claremont Canyon. Darrell Ubick and Thomas S. Briggs, entomologists at the California Academy of Sciences, described it as a new species in 1989. 

I was able to reach Ubick, who is still with the Academy, by email. He said he and Briggs had revisited both the Blackberry/Woolsey and Claremont sites in later years. “Of the several visits to this area we encountered M. leei only at Woolsey Canyon and only on one occasion,” Ubick wrote. “Obviously, their population is very low and more work would be needed to ascertain how stable it is.” 

As far as Google Scholar knows, no one has done any subsequent research on M. leei. In the mid-nineties, it and six other Microcina harvestmen were considered for federal listing. The others, found only in serpentine habitats, were eventually included in a Recovery Plan for Serpentine Soil Species. M. leei, with its predilection for sandstone, was the odd arachnid out. Then it seems to have fallen through the regulatory cracks. No one has ever gone to court on its behalf. It’s not charismatic, majestic, beautiful, or cuddly. 

It just happens to be a unique biological entity, found nowhere else on earth except a couple of spots in the Berkeley/Oakland Hills—maybe just one spot, since Ubick and Briggs couldn't find it again in Claremont Canyon. In a rational world where the federal government took the Endangered Species Act seriously, M. leei would be a slam-dunk for listing. (California’s legislation excludes insects, and it’s insect-like enough for DFG.) In a rational world, a lot of things would be different. 

I’ve gone through the EIRs, for the CRT as well as separate UC and LBNL Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) reports. UC’s LRDP EIR doesn’t even mention the harvestman. The Lab’s LRDP EIR describes its habitat requirements, citing Ubick, and goes on to say this: “Although the species has no formal status, its known habitat at LBNL will continue to be protected from development by its designation as a fixed constraint under the 2006 LRDP.” 

Well, maybe. In the CRT DEIR, there is a curious inconsistency and a slightly different spin. The distance from the CRT site to known harvestman habitat is given as 350 feet on page 4.3-30 and 500 feet on page 4.3-37. Referring to that habitat and to nearby willow riparian scrub, the report concedes: “In the absence of avoidance measures, these habitats could be indirectly affected during construction of the proposed project.” At this point one might expect a description of those avoidance measures. But the report just says that LBNL will employ “a wide array of construction-period ‘best management practices’” to minimize impact, and concludes: “No project-level mitigation required.” 

Although the EIR maintains that “suitable habitat is not present on the project site” itself, there is no indication that anyone has looked for M. leei there. 

It comes down to this: a globally unique species lives just across the road from, if not on, the CRT construction site, and no special precautions are being contemplated to protect it.  

Years ago, the visionary conservationist Aldo Leopold wrote: “The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, ‘What good is it?’….To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.” I would think that would cover even blind arachnids that hide under rocks.