The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday proposed designating 5.4 million acres as critical habitat for the threatened California red-legged frog, a move likely to affect development and agriculture in the state, particularly in Southern California. This designation, which would be the largest of its kind in the state and one of the largest in the nation, would require that landowners seeking federal permits prove that projects wouldn’t harm the frog or its habitat. The USFWS proposal came after environmentalists took the agency to court for not designating critical habitat and a judge ordered the agency to identify such habitat for the frog, which is believed to have inspired the famous Mark Twain story, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
