Twain's Frog To Get New Home

.c The Associated Press

By BOB EGELKO

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Mark Twain's celebrated jumping frog may soon have some
new places to land.

A federal judge last week rejected the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's
reasons for refusing to designate ``critical habitat'' for the dwindling
California red-legged frog - a step that would create the area that a
species
needs to survive and recover.

The red-legged frog is the largest native frog in the western United States,
and once ranged across much of California - including mining country, the
site of Twain's short story, ``The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras
County.''

But a coalition of environmental groups say that the frog's habitat has been
destroyed, leaving only a few frogs in the Sierra Nevada and none in
Calaveras County, about 100 miles east of San Francisco.

The groups, which sued in U.S. District Court, blamed developers,
dam-builders, farmers and miners for the destruction of the habitat.

The Fish and Wildlife Service designated the frog as a threatened species in
1996, and was then supposed to designate critical habitat. But the agency
refused to issue the designation.

On private land, a habitat designation prohibits an owner only from extreme
actions such as destruction of the species' breeding area, said attorney Jan
Hasselman of the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund. But on government land, or
any land that requires a federal permit for development, any harm to
critical
habitat is prohibited.

The service argued that designation of habitat would backfire because it
would tell would-be poachers where to find the frogs. But U.S. District
Judge
William Alsup called the agency's reasoning ``suspect,'' noting that public
documents in the case describe the frogs' locations.

Fish and Wildlife Service's spokeswoman Pat Foulk said the agency would
issue
a draft recovery plan for the frog early next year, followed by a critical
habitat proposal.

``We want to make sure that this famous frog is once again as common as in
the days of Mark Twain,'' said Deanna Spooner of the Pacific Rivers Council,
which took part in the lawsuit.