Wild Animals Are Eating Away at Parched Santa Catalina Island

In the dry summer heat on Santa Catalina Island, wild buffalo roll in the dust and munch on clumps of grass. Spotted baby boar scurry along the edge of a trickling canyon stream, digging up roots under the soil. Goats meander on a hillside and feed on green tree seedlings.

To tourists rambling through the hills of the 65-square-mile nature preserve, owned and managed by the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy, these scenes might appear idyllic. But for the conservancy’s naturalists and ecologists, they spell disaster.

The grazing animals, introduced by man to Catalina’s harsh semi-desert climate, are literally eating away at the island.

To protect the island’s scarce plants--some of which are found nowhere else--the conservancy has tried for years to reduce the numbers of non-native animals on the island, at times using controversial measures such as mass killings.

“If let alone, they would totally overrun the place,” said Doug Propst, president of the conservancy.

Efforts to control the animals now are more critical than ever, conservancy officials say, because of the four-year drought dogging Southern California.

What little vegetation grows during the winter is quickly eaten, threatening the survival of some plant species and contributing to erosion.

The drought also has exacerbated other concerns of the conservancy: guarding against fire and regulating water sources needed for residential and commercial development.

“This is a worse drought than any recorded on the island in the past 30 years,” said Keith LeFever, who manages the island’s water supplies for Southern California Edison.

During drought conditions, the animals’ hearty appetites threaten to take an even bigger bite out of the island’s unique plant life. Young tree saplings, for instance, are especially vulnerable to grazing but are crucial for the nature preserve’s survival, said Misty Gay, conservancy naturalist.

If the existing saplings are not protected now and new trees do not grow, Gay warns, then “when our oak trees reach the end of their lives--100 or 150 years from now--we could lose all of them.”

In the island’s interior, it is obvious where boar have ravaged whole hillsides by uprooting plants and grass, leaving dark brown streaks and tufts of rootless dying vegetation.

Looking out over a hillside where goats have cleared away stretches that look as bare as the moon, Propst noted: “Everything evolved here under no grazing pressure. It’s a very tender flora.”

In other parts of the island, conservancy officials say, the land is recovering as a result of various animal-control measures.

This summer, the conservancy has been shipping a weekly average of 20 wild buffalo to a ranch in Oklahoma. First brought to the island by filmmakers for the 1924 silent film “The Vanishing American,” the buffalo now number about 400, the fourth-largest herd of North American bison. The conservancy hopes to reduce the herd to 100.

Goats, each capable of gobbling up 2,000 pounds of vegetation a year, are perhaps the most destructive animals on Catalina, Gay said. Spanish missionaries are believed to have introduced them to the island during the 1800s to help feed the Indian population.

Hired sharpshooters killed thousands of goats earlier this year on the island’s small west end, where renewed growth is now visible. Similar programs can be expected throughout the island in the future, Gay said.

The conservancy also allows game hunters to shoot boar, deer and goats during the fall and winter.

“We’re not here to run a game preserve,” said Propst, who noted that hunting was the very reason deer and boar were originally brought to the island.

Because of the hunting and goat-killing, the conservancy has come under attack from animal rights groups such as the Fund for Animals.

“We recognize that goats are destructive to the habitat, but there are non-lethal alternatives,” including sterilization, said Jerye Mooney, Los Angeles coordinator for the Fund for Animals.

The Fund for Animals is particularly opposed to hunting with bow and arrow, the only type of hunting now allowed on the island. “Bow-hunting is the cruelest form,” Mooney said, because many animals manage to escape but suffer from implanted arrows.

But the conservancy says both animal and plant life on the island would eventually be destroyed without the controlled killings--that vegetation would be ravaged and the island’s animals would have nothing to eat.

The conservancy has tried in the past to trap and ship goats off Catalina, but that led to widespread stress-related illnesses and deaths among the animals, Propst said. Sterilizing the goats, many of whom live in out-of-the-way canyons, is impractical, according to the conservancy staff.

“If we don’t kill the goats, they’d kill themselves and the island with them,” Gay said.

The grazing animals compete with the island’s native mammals for scarce food supplies, putting pressure on rare species such as the Channel Island fox, listed by the state as endangered, said Penelope O’Malley, spokeswoman for the conservancy.

Conservancy officials point out that the family of chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., which owned the island and donated most of it to the conservancy in 1975, specifically wanted to preserve native plants and animals.

The imported animals aren’t the only threat to the fragile balance of plants and wildlife. Although the native plants are well-adapted to drought, the continuing dryness presents a fire risk in certain of the more heavily wooded areas, such as the hills north of Avalon.

One fire in recent years nearly wiped out a grove of Catalina ironwoods--tall, slender trees native only to the island.

Catalina usually gets between 12 and 14 inches of rain annually, Edison’s LeFever said. But during the last 12 months, there’s been less than six inches.

Natural pools of water, used for drinking by animals, have dried up, LeFever said. To help blunt the impact of the drought this summer, water troughs have been placed in grazing areas for buffalo and other thirsty animals. Blocks of molasses are also put out in the hills to help animals supplement their protein diet.

The island’s other animals--the 2,500 human residents of Avalon--also vie for Catalina’s scarce water.

To meet Avalon’s needs, Southern Edison Co. has drilled wells in the conservancy area, raising some concern that above-ground water sources, crucial for plants and animals, might be affected.

As a result of a 1962 agreement that predates the conservancy’s founding, the utility company holds all the water rights on the island.

Conservancy and Edison company officials said they work together to ensure that the pumping does not harm the environment. “We show great diligence in not over-pumping any of the canyons,” LeFever said.

“We have a gentlemen’s agreement with Edison. If any of these spots dry up, they’ll have to stick some water back in there,” Propst said.

For now, Avalon’s impact on the interior is limited, conservancy officials said. And development plans must be handled in such a way that life in the conservancy is not compromised, they add.

Propst said he is confident the island’s unique environment can be preserved, noting, “This is California how it used to be and how it will always be here.”