Up to 1,893 sites in Pennsylvania where endangered species are thought to live may have been stepped on by development projects because of a computer problem that went unnoticed and uncorrected by two state environmental agencies for 16 months.

A re-check by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources of more than 13,000 permit review inquiries made to its Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory from May 1999 through August 2000 discovered the missed "potential conflicts" between the development proposals and the habitats for 99 at-risk species.

Because some of the 1,893 missed sites contained multiple endangered species or more than one location for one of the species, there were actually 3,278 potential conflicts or "hits" that were missed because of the computer problem, according to the department's review of its inventory database released this week.

Among the missing were 547 hits on bog turtles, 307 on eastern massasauga rattlesnakes, 268 on redbelly turtles and 191 on Indiana bats.

The review also found the index wasn't totally broken during that 16-month period. Potential conflicts were registered for 456 species sites.

The number of actual conflicts will be much lower than the potential conflicts, but five months after the index's software programming problem was corrected, the state environmental agencies still can't say how many endangered species sites were damaged or destroyed or whether any of the fragile fish, reptile, bird or mollusk species were hurt.

"This definitely requires some investigation," said Gretchen Leslie, a conservation department spokeswoman.

"But [the department] still believes there was no widespread damage done to any particular species."

Leslie said the results of the inventory review have been given to the state Department of Environmental Protection, which will try to match the permits that were granted with the missed hits.

"Once they do that they'll be able to weed out the false positives and focus on those that need to be investigated further," she said.

The natural diversity inventory is a computerized data bank that keeps track of where "at-risk" species live.

County and state officials -- especially the DEP permit review and county conservation district staffs -- use it to determine if proposed shopping centers, factories, highways and smaller development projects that move dirt, cross water or otherwise affect nature will damage rare species or their habitats.

"What we have to do now with the information on the missed hits is a screening job like on initial permit inquiries and match them with permits that have been issued," said Christina Novak, a DEP spokeswoman. "It is going to take some doing."

Novak said she doesn't know how long the identification process will take. After the DEP matches the permits with missed potential conflicts it will forward the information to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which normally do the in-depth reviews during the permitting process to determine if a project will have an actual impact on an endangered species.

If such a project is found but has not started, the DEP will inform the permit holder of the new determination and seek to avoid damage to the species or its habitat.

The identification process is complicated by uneven and inconsistent permitting and record-keeping procedures within the DEP's various bureaus and among the county conservation district offices, which have been delegated responsibility for some permit approval by the DEP.

"If nothing else, this re-checking of the missed hits will give more credibility to the need to have a uniform system of permitting numbers and applications cross-referenced to [Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory] inquiries," said Andrew Shiels, the fish commission's nongame and endangered species coordinator.

"This could result in a lot of projects being altered and a lot of money being spent to correct the problem."

Post-Gazette

-- Anonymous, January 04, 2001