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VI. RESPONSES TO CONVgENTS ON REVISED BIOLOGICAL STUDY A. Federal Agencies Al: Information noted. A2: A new wetlands delineation study must be completed. When this is done, it will be incumbent upon the applicant to avoid the filling in of wetlands. Any loss of wetlands will need to be mitigated. B. State A eg ncies 131: Comment noted. No further response is necessary. 132: The EIR consulting biologist concurs with these comments. Given the direct comments of the owner that the site would be planted in vineyards if the proposed development could not be approved,it is the consulting biologist's belief that this compromise would be far superior to the condition now in place on neighboring parcels where grapes have been planted. 133: The EIR describes Brovelli Woods as one of the last remaining examples of the near pristine valley riparian woodland which once dominated this area, and that fact, along with the use of the woods as a nesting site by a state-listed, threatened bird, appeared to supersede all other basic biological information on the site: species and numbers of nesting passeriformes, species complement of rodents, etc. 134: A mitigation measure has been added to Section 4.7 in Volume II. See Mitigation Measure 4.7-1(h). 135: The consulting biologist concurs with the intent of this section. However, rather than mitigate the possible loss of North Tracy Lake by creating a similar lake of equal acreage in the near vicinity,it would seem more logical to develop another piece of land rather than destroy and then try to recreate this historical biological and anthropological seasonal wetland. 136: As the commenter is aware, the USFWS has not as yet developed or circulated survey criteria for endangered and threatened species in Central California. Thus, without such criteria as the number of branches examined per bush, minimal hole size for pupated adult emergence, etc., most surveys for this insect will be of randomly selected branches except for the cases where only one or two elderberry bushes exist on a site. The survey was contained to an area within approximately 200 feet from the top edge of the Mokelumne River bank extending the length of the parcel. Even though the random survey did not detect this species, two overriding considerations offer adequate "back-up protection" of this insect if it was missed in the field: (1) the fact that all elderberry exists within the woodland area protected under the CDFG Swainson's hawk mitigation guidelines, and(2)the bushes occur almost entirely within the 100- foot buffer zone required for preservation by CDFG inland from the upper edge of each bank of a permanent stream. VI-151