In Defense of Island Ranching Operation

* The National Parks and Conservation Assn., a Washington, D.C.-based “watchdog group” referred to in your article on July 5 (“Cattle Battle Heats Up on Santa Rosa Island”), has lent its name to our locally driven Environmental Defense Center, which unfortunately is proceeding with an uninformed, poorly researched agenda lacking in scientific fact and driven by a select few.

The cattle operation on Santa Rosa Island has been managed by Vail & Vickers since 1902. Theirs is an operation well known for its attention to good range management practices. Both rare plants and animals have continued to coexist with cattle for 93 years under Vail & Vickers management.

During this time, not one species is known to have gone extinct as a result of cattle. It is, in fact, due to Santa Rosa Island’s unique biota that the federal government was interested in acquiring it for inclusion within the Channel Islands National Park in the first place.

Vail & Vickers should be considered “the endangered species.” Theirs is the last remaining cattle operation on any of California’s Channel Islands. Their cattle boat, Vaquero II, is the last operating cattle ferry on the West Coast of North America. This cattle ranch in the sea is a national treasure to be preserved. It is the last we have of a small piece of the real West. We have an obligation to preserve our country’s western culture and heritage.

MARIA DAILY

Santa Barbara

Maria Daily is president of the Santa Cruz Island Foundation. * To date, every available scientific study on Santa Rosa Island suggests that the ranching operation on the island has no significant negative effect on the sensitive natural resources. Indeed, abrupt removal of livestock could trigger an environmental disaster by enabling invasive noxious weed species to gain a foothold and wreak havoc such as has occurred on Santa Cruz Island. The fact that rare plants and animals are still present on Santa Rosa after nearly 150 years of ranching suggests there is no impending crisis of extinction.

The National Park Service is operating the island in a responsible manner. Gratuitous, scientifically insupportable litigation will not result in any dramatic preservation of allegedly threatened wildlife, but will probably further erode and thus endanger public support for the Endangered Species Act itself.

WILLIAM T. EVERETT

Camarillo

William Everett is senior conversation biologist for the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology.