How California eco bureaucrats halted a Pacific Palisades fire-safety project to save an endangered shrub

California’s eco bureaucrats halted a wildfire prevention project near the Pacific Palisades to protect an endangered shrub.It’s just the latest clash between fire safety and conservation in California that is coming under scrutiny following the devastating outbreak of the Palisades Fire — the most devastating blaze in Los Angeles history, which has consumed the very same area.In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing nearly 100-year-old power line poles cutting through Topanga State Park, when the project was halted within days by conservationists outraged that federally endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants had been trampled during the process.The goal of the project was to improve fire safety for the Pacific Palisades area by replacing the wooden poles with steel, widening fire-access lanes in the area, and installing wind and fire-resistant power lines — all after the area was identified as having an “elevated fire risk,” according to the LA Times.“This project will help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats,” the LADWP said at the time.“These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”But, after an amateur botanist hiking through the park during the work saw the harm done to some of the park’s Braunton’s milkvetch — a flowered shrub with only a few thousand specimens remaining in the wild — and complained, the project was completely halted, Courthouse News Service reported.Instead of fire-hardening the park, the city — which the state said had undertaken the work without proper permitting — ended up paying $2 million in fines and was ordered by the California Coastal Commission to reverse the whole project and replant the rare herb.That work saved about 200 Braunton’s milkvetch plants — almost all of which have now likely been torched in the wildfires that consumed Topanga Canyon, along with nearly 24,000 a...