The Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, and San Bernardino Sun all turned to EHL for an informed and responsible environmental perspective on the breaking news events of this Summer and Fall.

Comments filed by EHL and other groups on the ill-conceived Rancho Mission Viejo development were covered by the Los Angeles Times (“Critics Say Developers’ Report Skirts Key Issues,” August 10, 2004):  “The document really doesn’t let people understand what's going to be left over for the wildlife,” said Dan Silver, executive director of Endangered Habitats League. “What they’re calling open space is really open to so many uses, from agriculture to tennis courts.”

The Orange County Register reported on comments filed on the related Foothill toll road proposed to bisect San Onofre State Beach (“Toll Road Proposal Draws 6,000 Responses,” August 10, 2004).  “We believe it shouldn't be built,” said Dan Silver of the Endangered Habitats League. “The price is too high, and based on this EIR, we don't even know if it would do any good.”

In a Los Angeles Times article reporting Attorney General Lockyer’s welcome opposition to the proposed Foothill toll road (“Lockyer Decries an O.C. Toll Path,” August 12, 2004), EHL was listed as a project opponent.

On August 28, 2004, the Orange County Register carried the story, “A battle for habitat: Rare species, wildland would be jeopardized under Rancho Mission Viejo development plan, biologists say.”  The article utilized information from the Conservation Biology Institute, whose analysis of project impacts was commissioned by EHL.  Later on October 7, the Register noted Silver’s view that the plan doesn't provide enough open space.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the rush to approve the massive Rancho Mission Viejo development (“Rancho Plans Are on Track; Some Say Whoa,” October 14, 2004) and quoted EHL’s Silver:  If the county approves the developer's plan, said Dan Silver, executive director of the Endangered Habitats League, “the conservation plan will have to adapt to the [Rancho Mission Viejo], plan rather than vice versa.”

This same point was in the Sept. 29, 2004 Orange County Register (“Rancho Mission Viejo pulls passionate crowd”).   “The approvals make it effectively impossible to go back and fix anything,” said Dan Silver of the Endangered Habitats League. “It’s a stacking of the deck.”

After the Planning Commission voted to approve the project, the Register asked Silver to explain the harm done:  “When you fragment a landscape, it creates an artificial (environment) and that leads to the slow decline and death of species.” (“Planners OK 14,000 homes,” October 15, 2004)