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Santa Catalina Island is the crown jewel of the Channel Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Southern California that is so biodiverse that it is often called \u201cNorth America\u2019s Gal\u00e1pagos\u201d.<\/p>\n
A rugged mountain jutting out of the sea, Catalina, as it is commonly known, is home to more than 60 plants and critters found nowhere else on earth. Plump quails and miniature foxes unique to the island scurry across the dirt roads that wind through scrubby hillsides. Thick pillows of fog roll onshore and coat the leaves of rare plants with dew. Bald eagles swoop far above the glittering Pacific.<\/p>\n
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Lauren Dennhardt, lead conservationist for the Catalina Island Conservancy.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>NYT<\/cite><\/p>\n But the habitat is suffering because much of the native flora has been ravaged by animals shipped here over the past century for ranching, hunting and filming movies.<\/p>\n To Lauren Dennhardt, lead conservationist on the island, there is only one way to save Catalina for future generations: kill all the deer.<\/p>\n Five of the eight Channel Islands comprise a remote national park, but Catalina, the closest to Los Angeles, has had a far different existence. For more than 100 years, the island has been a tourist destination, made famous by John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and legions of other Golden Age Hollywood stars who boarded steamer ships to Catalina \u2013 $2.25 round-trip \u2013 to dance, sunbathe and delight in glass-bottomed boat tours.<\/p>\n A mule deer in Avalon, California, on Santa Catalina Island.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>NYT<\/cite><\/p>\n The contours of the island were also seen as prime ground for hunting, and 18 mule deer from California forests were introduced nearly a century ago. Now, 2000 deer are mowing through the native plants here.<\/p>\n That has eroded soil, depleted the food supply for other animals and, most alarming, allowed flammable shrubs and grasses to proliferate, said Dennhardt, lowering her window while driving to grab a fistful of tumbleweedlike brush growing on a Catalina hillside. These non-native plants, she said, could create conditions akin to those that fuelled the recent catastrophic fire in the Hawaiian island of Maui.<\/p>\n The Catalina Island Conservancy, a non-profit that owns 88 per cent of the 75-square-mile island, has concluded that the only way to save native plants and restore the island is to get rid of the deer.<\/p>\n The nonprofit, for which Dennhardt is the senior director of conservation, first considered relocation. But it would be almost impossible to reach deer hiding in ravines, and the animals often die from stress when captured. There would be similar challenges with sterilisation, and still it would take 15 years to eliminate the deer, she said.<\/p>\n Enter the sharpshooters. The conservancy ultimately determined that slaughtering the deer with rifles from helicopters, over seven weeks next summer, was their best hope. Although the approach sounds extreme, such projects are fairly common in the field of conservation and have already been carried out on all the other Channel Islands. Worldwide, more than 1200 eradications of invasive horses, cats, elk and other mammals have occurred on islands to bolster fragile ecosystems.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t do these projects lightly,\u201d Dennhardt said. \u201cThis is a last resort.\u201d<\/p>\n The conservancy still needs approval from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which is reviewing the plan. A spokesperson, Jordan Traverso, said it was premature to opine on the sharpshooter approach, although the department was \u201cgenerally supportive of the broader habitat restoration project.\u201d<\/p>\n But outrage has ensued over the prospect of gunning down deer from the sky. Many of the 3000 residents of Avalon, a resort community on the outskirts of the conservancy\u2019s land, have staged protests and signed petitions. Animal lovers as well as deer hunters have joined the chorus.<\/p>\n Tourists pouring out of cruise ships onto Avalon\u2019s palm tree-lined promenade are now greeted with \u201cStop the slaughter\u201d posters that adorn the windows of shops selling Hawaiian shirts and sand-dollar Christmas ornaments.<\/p>\n Longtime Avalon residents, who call themselves \u201cislanders,\u201d said they felt deeply attached to the land and their way of life, informed by childhoods spent spearfishing in sparkling-blue waters, camping on sandy beaches or admiring deer bounding through their school playground. One resident said her young children believe the docile animals are Santa\u2019s reindeer.<\/p>\n Avalon residents who learned of the arrival of journalists from The New York Times demonstrate at the ferry terminal for the California coastal island of Santa Catalina.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>NYT<\/cite><\/p>\n Maneuvering his green pickup truck atop a ridgeline on a recent morning, Pastor Lopez, 74, stepped on the brakes as a deer sprinted across the road before disappearing into a canyon covered in dry chaparral. Lopez, who was born on the island, recalled that his family nicknamed his older sister \u201cwandering deer\u201d because of how often she would hike the island\u2019s interior.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, the deer, rattlesnakes, every living thing here is just like me. I feel like we\u2019re connected. All the animals, we\u2019re all sharing time here,\u201d Lopez, who is retired from his job as head of Avalon\u2019s public works department, said in a gravelly voice. \u201cNobody should have the right to slaughter the deer, to make that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n In a shallow valley surrounded by brown hills, Dennhardt pushed open a gate to enter a lush garden, a stark contrast to the desiccated landscape just beyond the fencing. The enclosure is a conservancy project to illustrate how Catalina could look without deer, Dennhardt said.<\/p>\n Visibly excited, she pinched a silvery leaf off a small shrub. \u201cThat\u2019s a really rare plant,\u201d holding it to her nose for a whiff of its sage smell, \u201cbut it doesn\u2019t have to be\u201d.<\/p>\n A man fishes off a pier at the ferry terminal for the California coastal island of Santa Catalina.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>NYT<\/cite><\/p>\n Although islanders are OK with locals hunting the deer, many find massacring all of them out of step with peaceful Catalina. Avalon is by any definition quaint, just one square mile stretching along a cove bobbing with boats, run by locals who grew up together. It is served by a single grocery store and filled with golf carts because of a tight restriction on new cars.<\/p>\n Inside the protected enclosure, Dennhardt marched to the Catalina ironwood, a tree that grows only on the island. This kind of tree went extinct in the rest of North America roughly 12,000 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat a gift to be able to see and touch something you can\u2019t on the mainland,\u201d she said, tilting her head up to listen to birds chirping in its leaves. \u201cWhat we have on Catalina is this postage stamp of ancient California that could be easily brought back.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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