New Channel Islands Park Leader Knows Nature of Controversy

After nearly three decades as a national park ranger, Tim J. Setnicka’s steady climb through the ranks climaxed this month when he was named permanent superintendent of Channel Islands National Park.

The timing of the appointment was no accident, coming amid a flurry of criticism after Setnicka ordered a commando-style raid on Santa Cruz Island hunting camps to cap a grave-robbing investigation--a decision that prompted questions by congressmen about whether such force was necessary.

The answer from Setnicka’s superiors was unequivocal: On Feb. 6, National Park Service Director Roger Kennedy made the acting superintendent the permanent top administrator of the Ventura-based national park.

“We’re showing Tim a vote of confidence,” said Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service regional office in San Francisco. “All good managers work under pressure and work with controversy, and Tim’s done well under the pressure.”

Setnicka won out over 12 other candidates to replace C. Mack Shaver, who retired as superintendent of the five-island Channel Islands park last March. The selection of Setnicka as the $71,000-a-year chief of a park staff of 63 was more than a simple closing of ranks, Bundock said.

“He was the best qualified,” she said. “He has the experience at Channel Islands. And he understands the issues, which have been significant lately.”

Indeed, as Setnicka takes over as permanent superintendent, the park is embroiled in several controversies and a federal lawsuit that claims the government has abdicated its responsibility to protect park-owned Santa Rosa Island from foraging cattle, deer and elk.

First, Setnicka must deal with a drumbeat of criticism resulting from the Jan. 14 Santa Cruz Island raid, in which 20 heavily armed federal and local officers descended on two sheep-hunting camps in a Blackhawk helicopter to arrest three camp guides--one for alleged felony destruction of Chumash graves and two others on misdemeanor charges of guiding and serving food without a license.

Five guests and guides were ordered to the muddy ground, where they were handcuffed. A 15-year-old female hunter was handcuffed on a muddy floor, and she said later that one of the officers told her she was lucky to be alive because something could have gone wrong during the arrests.

Setnicka is drafting a report on the raid for review by director Kennedy, who will send it along to Reps. Elton Gallegly ( R-Simi Valley) and Walter Capps (D-Santa Barbara). The congressmen, citing concerned constituents, have asked for an explanation of raid tactics. Setnicka’s superiors say the raid was conducted by the book.

Setnicka was sharply criticized last week, as well, after the park service ferried riflemen to Santa Cruz Island for the Nature Conservancy, where they killed dozens of sheep that had strayed from park service to conservancy land. Setnicka has publicly embraced removal and adoption of the animals instead of slaughter.

The superintendent is also overseeing government takeover of the historic east Santa Cruz ranch from which the targeted sheep migrated, a rare federal seizure of parkland from a private owner in an age of reduced federal spending. Seizure of the 6,300-acre Gherini Ranch a week ago completed the 17-year-old Channel Islands park.

And proceeding in federal court in Los Angeles is a lawsuit filed in October by the nation’s largest nonprofit agency dedicated to protecting the national parks--a task the plaintiff insists Setnicka and his predecessors have botched on Santa Rosa Island.

“Those are business as usual in a growing and dynamic park,” said Setnicka last week, shrugging off the controversies. His biggest headache, Setnicka said, is the perpetual balancing act when overseeing a national park--how to preserve resources while still making them available to the public.

But to Setnicka’s critics, the January raid and his lack of concern over the sheep-killing incident betray an arrogance that is not becoming, and an aggressiveness that was not necessary.

The day after the raid, the president of the nonprofit Santa Cruz Island Foundation, Marla Daily, condemned it. She accused the park service of resorting to “Ruby Ridge tactics,” referring to a fatal FBI shooting during a 1992 standoff with militants in Idaho.

More recently, former Rep. Robert Lagomarsino, considered the father of the Channel Islands park for writing the law that created it, said he is bothered by the force Setnicka ordered on the hunting camps. “I think it was overkill,” he said. “It just seems to me that it was unnecessary to go as far and as fast as they did.”

And Mark Connally, co-owner of Island Packers, the park service boating concessionaire that takes passengers to Santa Cruz, said of the raid: “Knowing the people who were involved in this, the caretakers and the rangers and the situation out there, it just seems like it could have been done with less fanfare, creating a better image for the park service.

“The reaction of people who come in here and call us and write letters to the editor [is negative],” he added. “Right or wrong, that incident has created an image of an overly aggressive federal government. And people like to look at the park service as Smokey the Bear, the friendly ranger that greets you when you arrive.”

Setnicka himself said the raid was not a mistake, and he would do the same thing over again. He dismisses assertions that the raid tarnished the image of the park service.

“The situation out there merited the response that we put forward,” he said. “No one was hurt, no one was injured, no one came close to using a firearm on anyone. They were arrested effectively and safely. And the net results were that people were inconvenienced and the arrested folks had to wear handcuffs.

“The important thing is that protecting resources and the public trust encompass a lot of activities,” he said. “And it’s important that we take steps to prevent further grave robbing of the Chumash sites.”

*

As the events of the last month have played out, Setnicka has been portrayed more as a tough cop than a friendly ranger. Those who know him well say he is some of both.

At age 50, the son of a candy salesman and a school secretary in Chicago stands ramrod straight in a snug gray-and-green uniform and carries himself with the muscular deliberateness of an athlete.

A rock climber when he was a ranger at Yosemite in the 1970s, he still surfs, kayaks, scuba dives, snow skis, hikes, and swims three days a week at the Ojai Valley Racquet Club to stay fit.

His leathery face mirrors years in the wilds of parks in Alaska, Wyoming, Florida and Hawaii.

And his demeanor indicates correctly that he was a law enforcement ranger--and author of a widely circulated search-and-rescue book--before he moved into park service management.

But even if he sometimes projects an in-your-face persona, he displays a lively sense of humor, kidding one moment and looking for an edge the next. He is plain spoken and direct.

“He’s got a very big personality,” said Brian Huse, regional director of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., which is suing Setnicka over the situation on Santa Rosa Island. “He has all the characteristics of a competent individual: He’s certainly bright, a little brash and very self-assured, and he’s not afraid to speak his mind.

“He approaches relationships as if he’s either going to win that person’s trust or get what he wants out of the individual--that as a representative of the national park he is going to prevail.”

Kathy Jenks, coordinator of the Santa Cruz Island sheep adoption program with Setnicka, said she is still trying to figure him out.

“He wasn’t at all what I expected when I first met him,” said Jenks, animal regulation officer for Ventura County. “I was expecting a macho-type ranger, and he didn’t come across that way at all. But it was interesting. Our first meeting reminded me of two dogs walking in circles and sniffing each other.”

Perhaps no one has been in a better position to watch Setnicka perform his public duties at Channel Islands park than his former boss, Shaver. And Shaver, now working for a redwoods preservation group in the Bay Area, said Setnicka was an excellent choice for permanent superintendent--with one notable flaw in management style.

“I think the world of Tim. He’s extremely intelligent. He really believes in the mission of the National Park Service, and he wants to do what’s right,” Shaver said. “He was a truly great assistant superintendent.”

But Shaver, who went to Colorado State University with Setnicka in the late 1960s, said his old friend tends to treat everyone in the same aggressive manner, and that backfires sometimes.

“I’d characterize him as really liking confrontation,” Shaver said. “That’s part of a mind-game thing. And he loves mind games. He’s very competitive, and in that competitiveness he’s aggressive. He likes that. That’s how he handles issues. . . . But I think to get the most out of people you find out what they respond to, and some people don’t respond to an in-your-face kind of person.”

Setnicka had already been at Channel Islands for two years when Shaver was brought in to run the park in 1989.

“I knew that my greatest challenge was going to be supervising Tim Setnicka,” Shaver said. “But it didn’t really work out that way. It didn’t take long to realize that, when I wasn’t there, I could trust him 100% to do the right thing.”

On policy issues, Shaver and Setnicka agree.

They have followed the same course on Santa Rosa Island, vowing to honor the park service’s promise to ranch owners Russ and Al Vail that the brothers could continue to run cattle and commercially hunt deer and elk on the island until 2011.

That verbal gentlemen’s agreement came as the park service bought the Vail & Vickers 53,000-acre ranch-island for $30 million in 1986. The public still has very limited access to the island, and Huse’s parks group has asked a federal judge to order the government to reduce the number of cattle and perhaps remove all deer because they destroy endangered plants and pollute streams.

Huse said he supports the government’s seizure of Gherini Ranch on Santa Cruz Island to protect the island from overgrazing sheep, and only wants the park service to do the same thing on Santa Rosa.

However, across the Santa Barbara Channel on east Santa Cruz, one angry sheep hunting concessionaire is packing up his belongings to move following government seizure of Oxnard attorney Francis Gherini’s one-quarter share of Gherini Ranch. The park service had already bought three-fourths of the ranch from Gherini’s relatives.

Jaret Owens, an Ojai resident who has organized hunts and recreational outings on the 6,300-acre ranch for 13 years, insists that Shaver and Setnicka set out to take away the ranch and destroy Owens’ business in 1989 and have harassed Owens ever since.

“I respect Shaver. I didn’t agree with anything he did, but he was always honest,” Owens said. “If I said, ‘Why are you here?’ He’d say, ‘To get rid of your horses and sheep.’ He was always up front.

“But Setnicka was so devious,” Owens said. “He says one thing then he does something else. He has a personal vendetta against me.”

Setnicka is likable, with a dry sense of humor, Owens said. “But he leads you on like he’s going to help you work out a problem, then three weeks later he’ll say he couldn’t do it.”

Owens went so far as to write a letter last year to Setnicka’s immediate superior, west region Director Stanley Albright, asking him to appoint someone else as permanent superintendent.

Setnicka said he wants Owens off the island because of the ecological and archeological damage done during Owens’ tenure.

Some observers think Setnicka--and Shaver before him--used different standards in deciding how to deal with overgrazing of animals on Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz islands.

But Setnicka said that’s not so.

“The situations are different,” he said. “Santa Rosa and the resources out there are in incredibly better condition than the east end of Santa Cruz. That’s just a horrible mess. . . . We’ve got an ecological disaster on our hands.”

*

As Setnicka measures the tasks before him, he figures he will be around Channel Islands park for perhaps another five years--solving the Santa Rosa dispute and removing wild sheep, horses and pigs from east Santa Cruz to allow native plants and grasses to begin to recover.

But when those jobs are finished, he says, he may ask to go back to Yosemite, where he was first hired as a full-time ranger in 1970 and where four years later he met his future wife, Lu, who was also a park ranger.

“I can tell you this about Tim,” said Lu Setnicka, now chief of public affairs for Ventura-based Patagonia Inc. “He has his priorities in order. He’s committed to his family and he’s committed to the mission of the National Park Service, the protection of these beautiful places we’ve had the privilege to live in.”

As Tim Setnicka moved up the park service ladder, his family moved from Yosemite to a park near the Everglades, to the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, then to the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

“We lived on the Big Island,” Lu Setnicka recalled. “We had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see several volcanic eruptions. The kids remember that because the volcanoes would be erupting behind the school where my son was in kindergarten.”

Now the Setnickas--including Jake, 15, and Grant, 13--spend much of their free time in the outdoors, including weekend trips to the Channel Islands and repeated journeys back to Yosemite, which Lu describes as “a pretty special place for us.”

“After this experience,” Tim Setnicka said, “I definitely want to move on to a quiet park, like Yosemite.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile of Tim J. Setnicka

Age: 50

Residence: Ojai

Education: Bachelor’s degree in natural resources management, College of Forestry and Natural Resources, Colorado State University, 1970; law enforcement and management training, National Park Service.

Experience: Seasonal Forest Service fire-fighter, 1965; summer ranger, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1966-70; ranger, Yosemite National Park, 1970-80; chief ranger, Biscayne National Park, south Florida, 1980-82; park law enforcement specialist and chief assistant to the chief park ranger, Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming, 1982-84; chief ranger, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, 1984-87; chief ranger, assistant superintendent, acting superintendent, superintendent, Channel Islands National Park, 1987-present.

Family: Wife, Lu, public affairs director for Patagonia Inc.; sons, Jake, 15, and Grant, 13.

Community activities: Member of the board of directors, Ojai Valley Land Conservancy.