The California gnatcatcher, a warbler-like songbird, nests along the coastal sage land in Southern California's Orange County, which happens to be some of the most expensive real estate on earth. Last July, when the state fish and game commission announced that it would consider listing the gnatcatcher as an endangered species, developers bulldozed hundreds of acres of the birds' remaining habitat so that the land would be exempt from any future protection. In September the fish and game commission, bowing to construction-industry arguments that protecting the gnatcatcher would cost the state $20 billion and 200,000 jobs, decided not to list the...
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