The Killing Field : Ecosystem: Santa Catalina Island Conservancy maintains that the goat population must be slaughtered to restore the natural flora and fauna. Nearly 6,000 have been killed in the last three years.

Thousands of wild goats that once roamed the rugged east end of Catalina Island have been hunted down and killed by helicopter-borne sharpshooters in a program to restore the natural flora and fauna of the popular resort.

An undetermined number of goats remain, but officials say they too will be killed in the coming months as part of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy’s effort to restore the island to its natural state.

The nonprofit conservancy owns 86% of the island, located 25 miles off the Southern California coast.

The exact number of goats killed in January and February was not recorded, but conservancy president Doug Propst said that at the conclusion of the last hunt, most of the feral goats had been eliminated from the island.

“The job’s 90% done,” Propst said. All told, he said gunners have eliminated 6,000 goats in the last three years. The dead were left where they fell because trying to airlift the carcasses out of the rough, inaccessible island interior was dangerous and costly, he said.

The hardy, prolific goats are the offspring of a domestic breed turned loose in the Channel Islands by Spanish explorers centuries ago, wildlife experts say. Native to the flinty Mediterranean deserts, the remarkably adaptive animals have run free, their numbers governed only by the availability of food.

Goats eat almost anything that grows. With no predators to keep their numbers down, thousands denuded the steep hillsides, destroying native plants and the habitat of several bird species that are now nearly extinct, Propst said.

That may be, but the slaughter of goats on any of the Channel Islands seemed certain to spark controversy.

“Don’t goats have the right not to be assassinated?” asked animal-rights activist Cleveland Amory, president of Fund for Animals. “Our goal is to stop such cruelty, such mass assignation.”

Angered because there had been no notice of the shooting, Amory called the gunners assassins. However, Amory said the group was not planning any immediate action, legal or otherwise, as a result of the Catalina killings.

On the other hand, environmental groups like the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club insist that the goats must be eliminated if the badly damaged native ecosystems are to be restored.

Though shooting goats is distasteful, it is the only practical way to get rid of the animals, Propst said. Attempts to trap and airlift the animals from the canyons and rocky crags have proven costly and ineffective because many of the animals eluded capture and continued to reproduce.

“There are no easy choices,” Propst said, explaining that, in the conservancy’s view, shooting was the only answer.

“We are here to preserve and restore this rare piece of Southern California. The goats are extremely destructive to the island’s ecosystems,” he said.

The recent shootings were not advertised ahead of time, presumably to avoid controversy. A similar unannounced shooting on the west end of the island in 1990 eliminated an estimated 2,000 goats--and sparked protests.

In the early 1980s, court action by animal-rights groups blocked the U.S. Navy’s efforts to kill off goats on San Clemente Island, used as a naval gunnery range. Before the case was over, the military spent $750,000 helping Amory and his supporters net and airlift 7,500 goats from the island.

But experts said the rescue operation didn’t solve the problem because thousands of goats eluded capture. Amory considered the operation a success, however, because so many animals were saved.

When Amory’s team left, the Navy started shooting again. All told, sharpshooters have killed 29,000 goats on San Clemente since 1972, officials reported.

Navy officials call the operation a success because the elimination of the goats allowed the natural flora and fauna to flourish once again.

“We’re down to maybe five or six goats, and we’re seeing an amazing recovery of the native plants,” said Jan Larson, Navy wildlife biologist.

The impact of the goats on the island’s brushy slopes had virtually wiped out a species of shrike, a rare bird that nests in ironwood thickets. The Navy is spending $250,000 trying to save this shrike from extinction.

“There was virtually no habitat left; the feral goats had eaten it all,” said ornithologist Lloyd Kiff, who is directing the shrike recovery. With the recovery of its habitat and some expert assistance, the shrike is making a comeback, he said.

Kiff, director of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, also heads the condor recovery project and similar wildlife preservation efforts.

“Feral mammals like goats are the chief cause of bird extinction, worse even than pesticides, oil spills,” he said.

The controversy on Catalina appears to be a classic example of the hard choices facing wildlife managers. Which animals should survive: the goats that inhabit the stony ridges or the island’s native birds, foxes and spotted lizards--creatures found nowhere else in the world?

Catalina, privately owned since the days of the Spanish conquests, is at the same time a popular resort that attracts 1 million visitors a year and a remote wilderness closed to public travel and visited by a hardy few. Eagles, foxes and other native wildlife compete with buffalo herds, wild pigs, goats and deer that were all imported for hunting.

For decades, the entire island belonged to the Santa Catalina Island Co., a firm owned by the Wrigley chewing gum family. Twenty years ago, the company created the conservancy and donated most of the 42,000-acre interior to the nonprofit organization. The conservancy’s mandate was to restore the 21-mile-long island to its natural state, Propst said.

By then, the wild boar, goats and buffalo threatened to wipe out the last vestiges of native plants and wildlife habitat, Propst said. Thousands of intricate goat trails crisscross the precipitous mountainsides, entire groves of ironwood and elderberry have disappeared, and the denuded canyons are eroding.

Sport hunting was stepped up in an effort to thin out the feral animals. The conservancy created a wild plant nursery and hired an expert staff to propagate and restore the island flora. Yet nothing seemed to slow the damage caused by the goats, Propst said.

Three years ago, the conservancy decided that the goats had to be eliminated.

“We’d done as much as we could with sport hunting in that rough terrain. We had to find another answer,” Propst explained. Ground hunting worked in some areas, but two-man shooting teams riding in helicopters proved the most effective.

Starting three years ago, the goats on the west end were targeted. Then the shooters moved into the center of the island. This year’s shooting was on the rugged east end, in the mountains near Avalon where an estimated 4,000 goats ran wild.

Restoration efforts were begun in each of the areas as soon as the goats were eliminated.

“Up on the west end, we are seeing more grasses, and rare native plants are coming back, like the ironwood trees and the island bush poppy that was almost wiped out,” Propst said.

The conservancy’s goat killing program has the backing of the California Department of Fish and Game, the nonprofit Institute For Wildlife Studies and most major environmental groups.

“The (Sierra) Club supports these kind of activities generally because we need to maintain the natural plant and animal communities,” said Sierra Club spokesman Mark Palmer. Where trapping and live removal do not eliminate the problem, shooting is the “only alternative,” he said.