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Actually, I did a little more research. There are “corridors” near housing developments that are designated as “habitat.” BUT, residents are not prohibited from clearing brush on or near their own property. It is the corridor/habitat that is supposedly left as is.

Enchiladita, I've tried to avoid commenting on this before my prior post, trying to stay on topic, but you are so wrong! Under the Endangered Species Act, the FWS has been prohibiting homeowners from all sorts of acts on their own property. When they don't comply, they are charged with a crime, pay financial penalties, and often have their property seized by the government, creating the very "corridors" you mention.

Read some of the environmental threads. Read some of Carry_Okie's posts, or Marsh2, or tubebender, or hedgetrimmer, SierraWasp, or sergeantdave, or dozens of others. Richard Pombo was leading the charge to weaken the ESA and the left launched an all out assault to get him out of office. The environmental movement IS the new communist movement, out to destroy property rights through creation of conservancies, habitat conservation, Agenda21, green corridors, etc.

Here is but another example, one of only thousands!

Another egregious example from California involved Tang Ming-Lin, a Taiwanese immigrant who bought 723 acres of undeveloped farmland in Kern County, all of which was zoned for agriculture. One day in 1994, when his foreman was plowing a new field, some 20 government agents (6 of whom were armed) raided his farm and confiscated his tractor. His crime? Tang Ming-Lin had allowed his foreman to plow land inhabited by endangered species, a federal crime. Specifically, the FWS claimed that Ming-Lin’s foreman had killed two (possibly five) Tipton kangaroo rats and "taken" the habitat of blunt-nosed leopard lizards and San Joaquin kit foxes. The FWS never provided any evidence, but it did demand 363 of Ming-Lin’s 723 acres, $300,000 in fines, and $172,425 to maintain the expropriated land as a wildlife preserve.
The FWS raided Ming-Lin’s offices and slandered his family in the media. Among other outrages, the FWS threatened to deport his family and implicated them in tax fraud and other nefarious schemes, all of which turned out to be untrue. One FWS official even managed to convince local authorities to suspend the immigrant’s driver’s license. In the end, however, the FWS backed down when faced with a jury trial. Tang Ming-Lin’s persecution had sparked a property-rights backlash. Although he admitted to no wrongdoing, Ming-Lin did agree to donate $5,000 to a habitat conservation fund and to stop farming his land until he obtained an ESA permit. This episode awakened people to what the ESA could do to farmers and ranchers.