Getting Their Goats : Animal Rights Groups Are Upset Over Killing of Catalina Animals

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

An undetermined number of goats remain, but officials say they 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, 25 miles off the Southern California coast.

The 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 wild goats had been eliminated from the island.

“The job’s 90% done,” Propst said. All told, he said, gunners have killed 6,000 goats in the last three years. The dead goats 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 by the availability of food.

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

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

On the other hand, environmental groups such as the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club insist that the goats must be eliminated if the badly damaged 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 crags have proved costly and ineffective because many animals eluded capture and continued to reproduce.

“There are no easy choices,” Propst said, explaining that in the conservancy’s view, shooting is 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 shootings were not advertised, presumably to avoid controversy. A similar unannounced shooting on the west end of the island in 1990 eliminated about 2,000 goats--and sparked protests.

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

But experts said the rescue operation did not solve the problem because thousands of goats eluded capture. Amory considered the operation a success because so many animals were saved.

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

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

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

The impact of 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 the 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 (such as ) 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 conquest, is also 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 bison herds, wild pigs, goats and deer that were all imported for hunting.

Starting three years ago, the goats on the west end were targeted for elimination. 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 killed.

“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.