Public Input Lacking on New Island Park

The American people have finally captured Santa Cruz Island (“Historic Transition,” Feb. 9).

The best part of it is, now that the “public” has “assumed ownership” from the family that owned and paid taxes on the land for more than a century, the government gets to tell us exactly when we get to use “our” property, where we will be allowed to go, what we can do once we get there, and (as silently as a B-2 bomber) what it’s all going to cost us.

Is this a great country, or what?

BRUCE ROLAND, Ojai

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The east end of Santa Cruz Island has just become part of the National Park Service. This is our park now, and it seems that the public is being given very little input as to what we might expect.

As an unabashedly devoted lover of the island, I want to know why the public has not had a say about the future of the island’s many educational and recreational possibilities. Why, for instance, can’t we keep a kayaking concession on the island? Who makes these decisions for us?

But my main concern is with the beautiful herd of horses that now roam free on Santa Cruz. Why must they be removed? The park service insists that the sheep and horses overgraze the island, but if the sheep are removed, as the NPS also insists must be done, why can’t a small herd of horses be maintained? How can 13 horses on more than 6,000 acres cause an ecological imbalance? Horses have been on the island since the 1850s.

I’m sure that the public would enjoy seeing these wonderful animals in their natural setting. It is truly awesome to suddenly come upon them, the sea at their backs, as they wander on the flats or are silhouetted on the rim of a canyon. The island will certainly be missing something extraordinary if they are removed.

As a horse owner myself, I know that these animals will be misfits if they are brought to the mainland. They are wild, and they have never seen cars or corrals or even a rope. Maybe someone will have the time and patience to train them, but, sadly, I’ve seen many Bureau of Land Management horses that end up in the wrong hands.

Why can’t we have a public hearing to discuss the possibility of allowing the horses to stay?

PATTI ROSENMUND, Oxnard

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Over the last four years when I went to Santa Cruz Island, the skipper of the Island Packer’s boat would point out the ridge that separated the private (now National Park Service) portion of the island from the portion owned by the Nature Conservancy. But just looking at the island told you where the “line of demarcation” is--the portion owned by the Nature Conservancy is green and the once privately owned part is brown. This difference comes from the eradication of the feral sheep on the Nature Conservancy portion.

I feel the Nature Conservancy has every right to protect the hard-won renewal of its part of the island by continuing to make certain that the feral sheep do not repopulate. This means making certain that sheep from the “other” part of the island are kept out of the Nature Conservancy property.

LILITH, Ventura