Suit Alleges Damage to Santa Rosa Island

Environmentalists sued the National Park Service in Los Angeles federal court Tuesday, charging that the agency has let free-grazing cattle, deer and elk trample and partially destroy one of its lushest holdings--Channel Islands National Park.

The suit by the National Parks & Conservation Assn. accuses the park service of breaching a number of environmental laws by continuing to let a 6,500-head steer ranch and wild-game hunting company operate on Santa Rosa Island under a lease that expires in 2011.

It asks the U.S. District Court to order the National Park Service to declare that the ranching permit violates the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Water Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the park service’s own regulations.

And the suit asks the court to shut down the ranching operation run by Santa Barbara-based Vail & Vickers Cattle Co. until the ranchers comply with U.S. environmental laws.

The park service bought Santa Rosa Island in 1986 for $30 million from Vail & Vickers, then signed a 25-year lease on the land that allows the company to continue ranching herds of cattle for meat, and elk and deer for hunting.

But environmentalist Brian Huse on Tuesday accused the park service of failing to keep the grazing in check or adhering to its own mission of preserving the island for public use.

Instead, most of the 54,000-acre island about 27 miles off the coast of Ventura remains off-limits to unescorted visitors. And grazing animals have leveled some of the island’s vegetation to stubble and fouled its creeks with waste and bacteria, said Huse, regional director of the private National Parks and Conservation Assn.

“In our opinion, the park service has failed to live up to its part of that bargain,” Huse said. “Under the [agency’s rules], the park service has to manage the park so the resources are available now and for future generations.”

Park service officials declined to comment.

“The U.S. attorney will have to be the ones to comment, and they have not seen the suit yet,” said Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service’s Western Region. “The park service believes it’s in compliance with the applicable laws, with regards to any national park, but specifically with regards to the Channel Islands.”

Santa Rosa Island is home to the western snowy plover and several other threatened or endangered animal and plant species, and an estimated 2,000 archeological sites once peopled by Chumash Indians and Chinese abalone fishermen.

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While one of the island’s principal ranchers declined to comment directly on the suit, he dismissed it as “extremists in action” and said that Vail & Vickers disagrees that its cattle are damaging the island.

“Cattle and sheep have been there for 160 years, and there are still some of those rare plants out there,” said Russ Vail, the ranch’s office manager and part-owner of the hunting operation. “We don’t call them endangered, they’re rare.”

Vail & Vickers has used the island since 1902 to fatten cattle before sending them to market.

But only after the state Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered the park service in 1991 to reduce the cattle’s impact on streams and other habitat for native plants did the service draft a plan of action.

The agency issued a management plan last spring calling for Vail & Vickers to:

* Remove the herd of 600 mule deer.

* Reduce the elk herd from 1,100 to 450 within three years.

* Close 7% of the island’s most sensitive acreage to cattle and a small herd of horses; rotate grazing on one large pasture to keep cattle from trampling sensitive stream beds in summer.

* And fence off nine sensitive stream beds--including 80 acres around one--and replant native vegetation.

But the conservation association said the plan does not seem to be working.

Grazing continues to blunt new growth of plants such as Hoffman’s rock cress, soft-leaved paintbrush and Santa Rosa Island dudleya. Hooves carve gullies and cracks into otherwise verdant hills. And animal waste clogs Santa Rosa’s streams with fecal coliform bacteria and algae, the suit says.

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Jane Baxter, an official of Range Watch, an environmental group that monitors the effects of grazing on federal lands and supports the lawsuit, visited the island recently and said she was appalled by the condition of one of the creeks:

“The algae growth and oxygen deprivation from nutrient overload [caused by animal waste] are such that it’s one of the sickest creeks I’ve ever seen on public land,” she said.

And Huse added, “This is, in effect, a great example of an absentee landlord. If you rented a house out to your tenants, you certainly wouldn’t let them destroy your possessions.”

Huse said the park service’s strategy is: “Let’s wait, let’s allow them to run their course on the island and then we’ll take the next step.’ It’s pretty much a passive, inactive role.”