Foothills Sentry - November 2024

Foothills Sentry Page 8 NOVEMBER 2024 Happy Thanksgiving! dan@DanSlater.com 714-744-2202 1 5 3 7 E. Chapman A ve . Orange , CA 9 2 8 6 6 DAN SLATER Family. Friends. Community. We’re all in this together. State Farm, Bloomington, IL 1801073 Ron Esparza, Agent Insurance Lic#: 0C79663 827 S. Tustin Ave Orange, CA 92866 Bus: 714-505-3400 ron@ronesparza.com Endangered bee survives wildfires; it lives where nature intended By Robert Detrano My life lasts only four months. Every second is for my queen. She is the future of our tribe. She will live deep underground through the winter. She was clever in finding the gopher hole that pro- tects us from lizards, snakes, and even the raging wildfires. For centuries, we have lived in the grasses of these hills, feast- ing on lupine, clarkia, and sage. The lazy males live only to mate, while the females work, fight off predators, and care for the queen. So many other creatures share these hills: colorful birds, speedy lizards, funny raccoons and giant lions. I fear one animal the most: the two-legged beast that steals our land to make oversized dwellings. The beast depends on the garden veggies we pollinate and picks the gorgeous wildflowers, only to let them die before we can take their pollen to our monarch. Will these beasts be so fool- ish as to buy the Orange Heights homes that will replace many of our species? There is a fire thundering over Santiago Peak. The wind will blow the flames to our gopher hole in a few hours. But we will survive deep in the ground. We will protect and take care of our queen. The humans will not fare so well. They will probably not perish in the flames, but they will lose their homes and everything inside of them. These thought- less creatures do not consider that they may extinguish other species while busy extinguishing their own. They carelessly build houses that the summer infernos will easily consume. The Crotch bumble bee is only one of the rare species whose habitat will be affected when The Irvine Company builds 1,180 expensive homes in its Orange Heights Project, on the corner of Santiago Canyon Road and Jam- boree Road in Orange. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the bee as “endangered.” There are female queens and workers, and males whose function is to mate with the females and turn them Female worker Crotch bee taking pollen from deerweed flower. into queens. In September, males and most females die off. Buried deep in the ground, the queens survive the winter and lay eggs that hatch the next year. The Irvine Company filed for an incidental take permit (ITP), which, if accepted, would allow it to destroy the bees. According to Leif Richardson, a bumble bee researcher with the Xerces Soci- ety, the avoidance plan in the ITP application is inaccurate. Grad- ing activity cannot occur from Sept. 1 through Oct. 31 because it will impact new queens. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife cannot issue the per- mit, if doing so would jeopardize the species' continued existence. Other endangered or rare spe- cies on the Orange Heights land include Bell’s vireo and the spot- ted skunk. Mountain lions roam these hills regularly, and females create lairs to birth their kittens in the bosoms of riparian creeks. The bulldozers will soon rip the creeks and lairs apart to make way for streets, sidewalks and multi-car garages. Over the past 10 years, climate change has fostered a significant increase in wildfires. Insurance companies may refuse to sell new Orange Heights homeown- ers a policy. State Farm Insur- ance Company cancelled thou- sands of California homeowners' insurance policies this year. The author lives in the canyons. His insurer would not renew his poli- cy without doubling the premium payments. Last year, Cal Fire could not get insurance for one of its firehouses in another high-risk area. Insect pauses East Orange development Crotch’s bumble bee, designat- ed a candidate species under the California Endangered Species Act, is known to inhabit the acre- age slated to be The Irvine Com- pany’s Orange Heights housing development, located at the corner of Chapman and Jamboree in East Orange. Several members of No Or- ange Heights, a group opposed to the development, spoke with representatives of California De- partment of Fish and Wildlife Residents opposed to The Irvine Company’s 1,180-unit development in East Orange gather across the street from the project site to bring attention to Orange Heights’ negative impacts. (CDFW) and U.S. Fish and Wild- life Service about their environ- mental concerns. They learned that The Irvine Company has submitted an ap- plication for an “incidental take permit” for Crotch’s bumble bee. CDFW is still reviewing the ap- plication for completeness, but acknowledged that the issuance of an incidental take permit is a discretionary action subject to the California Environmental Quality Act. As a result, project opponents surmise there may be a new oppor- tunity to comment on the potential impacts of the project, although the scope of any supplemental environmental review may be lim- ited to biological resources. The group also notes that The Irvine Company has not submit- ted an application for an incidental take permit for mountain lions, the other species recently designated as a “candidate” under the Califor- nia Endangered Species Act.