There was some LATimes article or something about this yesterday. When Washington Mutual was considering developing Ahmanson Ranch, they had to pay for some program to conserve the red-legged frog and the spineflower while the environmentalists blocked every possible proposal for development.
Now that WaMu is getting rid of the property, nobody will pay for the frog and weed conservation. Apparently, those endangered species are only important to environmentalists when those species can be used to block development.
From the article:
"But with pending state acquisition of the land, protection of the species would rest with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, an arm of the state Resources Agency.
Ahhh... the Resources Agency. In other words, we get to pay for it through taxes. No wonder someone appropriately added the word "landgrab" to this article post.