This story has been updated to correct the vote of Councilman Ron Nirenberg.

San Antonio will join Bexar County in overseeing a plan to allow the destruction of endangered species habitat in Bexar County while preserving more land elsewhere.

On Thursday, City Council voted to join the Southern Edwards Plateau Habitat Conservation Plan, which would use a land-swapping credit system to preserve habitat for two endangered songbirds and seven rare cave spiders and insects.

Over 30 years, it would preserve a net 14,059 acres of habitat for the golden-cheeked warbler and 3,960 acres for the black-capped vireo across seven Hill Country counties. It would also preserve 1,000 acres for seven rare cave insects and spiders but allow development on 21,086 acres underlain by cave-pocked terrain. That land includes 49 caves occupied by the cave insects and spiders.

The plan grew out of conversations among local officials and the military over encroaching development at the Army’s Camp Bullis in northern Bexar County. Army commanders warned that removing trees and brush to make room for subdivisions, roads and businesses was pushing golden-cheeked warblers onto Camp Bullis. Federal law requires the military to preserve endangered species on its bases.

“What we don’t want is to become is a lone refuge where there’s zero habitat left in Bexar County except ours,” said James Cannizzo, an environmental attorney for the Army.

Representatives of the city, county, Army, developers and the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance told the Express-News that the plan, if properly managed, would encourage more developers to comply with the Endangered Species Act by cutting the time to get a permit from up to two to three years to less than a month.

Endangered species have snagged some high-profile projects over the past 18 years. These included The Shops at La Cantera, where developers had to get their own habitat plan. The discovery of a rare cave spider at the intersection of Texas 151 and Loop 1604 stalled roadwork for two years.

Many developers do not bother to get endangered species permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, even when building in endangered species habitat, Cannizzo and GEAA Director Annalisa Peace said.

“These caves are not very big, and it’s easy to pretend that they don’t exist,” city development services director Rod Sanchez said.

The plan would require developers and government entities to pay to preserve 2 acres of bird habitat for every acre destroyed for new homes, businesses and highways. The preserved land would then be included in a land bank that other developers could use to offset their own projects.

For bird habitat, documents released by the city suggest participation fees for developers of $2,500 per project and 10 percent of the total mitigation cost. They would pay either $2,000 or $8,000 per acre of destroyed bird habitat, depending on the level of impact.

For cave habitat, the fee would be $1,000 per acre, though developers would have to pay $40,000 to build 345 feet to 750 feet from the cave opening and $400,000 to develop less than 345 feet from the entrance. Those fees could change.

The council vote also approved a city-county coordinating committee to administer the plan, with city employees Melissa Ramirez, Xavier Urrutia and Rudy Niño as appointees. The county will appoint its members in February.

On Wednesday, Peace urged the council to delay the vote to get more time for citizen input and address concerns over whether taxpayer-funded land bought under the city’s aquifer protection program or city properties should be counted toward the plan.

District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg abstained from voting while the rest of the council approved the plan. He said he supported it in theory but had questions about whether the committee should include a council member, the use of city property and the potential removal of the black-capped vireo from the endangered list, among others.

“If this is not implemented properly, we could be accelerating the very thing we’re trying to prevent,” he said.

bgibbons@express-news.net