Site is home to endangered fairy shrimp.
Davis offers to preserve land elsewhere, but U.S. official warns of lengthy review. The political leaders rushing to build a 10th University of California campus north of Merced have been forced to slow down and reconsider the plans because of concerns about the survival of fragile wetlands and an endangered creature called the fairy shrimp. Complaints have increased in recent weeks among federal regulators, university faculty and students that the 2,000-acre UC Merced campus could devastate California's largest remaining cluster of vernal pools. Each spring, these shallow ponds teem with tiny crustaceans on the brink of extinction. The governor's conservation plan, to be outlined to the public today, would more than make up for any property degraded in the building of a new campus and leave plenty of habitat for the fairy shrimp and its cousin, the tadpole shrimp, say UC officials and boosters in the San Joaquin Valley.