Miramar's Ecological Price Tag

Miramar's Ecological Price Tag

Environmentalists say the construction of a commercial airport at the military base will drive seven plant and animal species to extinction.
By ROB DAVIS Voice Staff Writer

Monday, June 19, 2006

With a wave of his arm, Dave Boyer points to one of the region’s last stretches of undeveloped coastal sage scrub, a place that one biologist calls "San Diego’s version of the Galapagos."

This shrub-covered terrain at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar is rolling, vacant, expansive -- and a hotspot of biological diversity. On this land, silence can either be broken by a western meadowlark's gurgling warble or an F-18 Hornet's screaming engines. Seven endangered or threatened plant and animal species call this stretch of the base home. Bobcats, mountain lions and mule deer use a canyon through this scrub as a transit corridor connecting Torrey Pines State Reserve and Soledad Canyon with Mission Trails Regional Park.

According to the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, this is also the best place to put a new international airport. Its board decided earlier this month to ask voters whether the authority should work to obtain part of the base to build an airport to replace Lindbergh Field. The decision culminated the authority’s three-year search to address projections that Lindbergh will reach capacity sometime after 2015.

Boyer, a civilian who directs the military base's natural resources division, is just one of many voices on the 23,000-acre training base who protests the decision. He's joined by environmentalists and biologists, who say building a terminal and two new runways at Miramar would destroy Southern California’s largest remaining swath of a rare wetlands habitat called a vernal pool, which allows those seven rare species to persist amidst San Diego's urban development.

(snip)


http://www.voiceofsandiego.com/articles/2006/06/19/environment/989environment.txt

I often wondered if I would be killed by falling aircraft during the fucking airshow.

I would not be surprised if there were some rare species in there.

Let's hope this doesn't go through.