Shrimp Pose Big Problem for LAX
Officials contend that
proposed preserve for the endangered species could
hamper air travel.
By Jennifer Oldham
Times Staff Writer
August 15, 2004
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."
