"Rare plants look like rarer transplants"  "Protected plant
suddenly shows on project’s land"  Those were the headlines in
the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and the San Francisco Chronicle
recently on articles about the sudden appearance of a clump of
endangered plants in a proposed 21-acre subdivision near the
town of Sebastopol in Sonoma County.  The two articles detail
how a Santa Rosa developer has tried for three years to win
approval for a 145-unit subdivision. Blocked by
environmentalists, the developer scaled back his subdivision
plans in response to the objections.  The county was in the
final stages of an environmental review, according to the Press
Democrat article, when suddenly a hiker who just happened to be
a member of an environmental group opposing the development
found an endangered species under state and federal law,
Sebastopol meadowfoam, on the site.  "People joke about this all
the time -- stopping a development by putting an endangered
species in its path" Gene Cooley, a California Fish an