Wild Sheep Roundup, Exodus Start on Santa Cruz Island

Barking like sheep dogs, rangers from the National Park Service began a historic effort to round up 2,000 feral sheep and ship them off east Santa Cruz Island this week, rather than shooting them dead.

Channel Island National Park Supt. Tim Setnicka called the ambitious roundup a first.

“No one has ever done this before,” he said, referring to the live trapping and transport of the wild sheep off the island by boat. “We’re not talking about someone moving their dog off the island here. This is a couple thousand wild animals.”

The trip to the mainland will route the woolly critters either to a farm in Oregon, where they will live out their natural lives in peace, or an auction house in Buellton, where they will be sold for breeding or butchering.

Park service officials are removing the sheep from the eastern 10% of the island, the newest part of Channel Islands National Park, which was acquired through condemnation earlier this year.

Nimble island sheep, which have roamed the rugged hills of the island for almost 150 years, have annihilated the island’s native plants by nibbling them to the nubs. Sheep trails crisscross the island’s gold-brown slopes, marring the landscape. And steep eroded crevasses caused by overgrazing tear at hillsides.

Park officials say the sheep must be removed to restore the island’s ecosystem to its original state.

In the past, feral animals on the islands have been stalked and killed by commercial hunters. And riflemen might have been hired to eradicate the sheep this time.

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Setnicka said the park service is committed to getting the sheep off the island alive for two reasons.

“The biggest impetus was the . . . myth of us out there shooting 1,000 lambs,” he said.

He said that as a result of that perception, people from all over offered to help save the sheep. That paved the way for a plan to get the sheep off the island in a humane way, he said.

The National Park Service is also bound to remove all private property from land that the government acquires. “Usually that involves refrigerators and washing machines,” Setnicka said. “This time, it involves moving historical implements, sheep and horses. You should see the people back in Washington when we tell them about this.”

Setnicka estimates that it will cost between $200,000 and $250,000 to get all the sheep off the island and take about a year.

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This summer, park service officials are luring in thirsty sheep with giant troughs of water. Workers lurk in the bushes and when the sheep come to drink, they run out and shut the gate behind them.

But Setnicka said catching sheep will become more difficult as the numbers dwindle.

“We will have to become inventive,” he said.

Sheep experts and Navajo shepherds say they may have to use dogs and horses to round up sheep as the evacuation continues.

When all other methods fail, rangers say they may attach tiny radios to the lead sheep and track them by helicopter--a method once used to round up feral goats in Hawaii.

As they are caught, the sinewy cross-bred Merino sheep, once prized as far away as the East Coast for high-quality wool, are loaded into trailers. The trailers are then backed onto amphibious World War II landing craft.

Once shipped to Port Hueneme, the sheep are trucked to Buellton, where they are being kept at a livestock market. The park service pays 70 cents a day for each animal and will pay to keep them there for 30 days.

About 200 have made the trip so far, and more than 100 were gathered Wednesday. None has been injured so far, Setnicka said.

What happens to the sheep after that depends on their owners. The sheep ownership is divided between two factions of the Gherini family, longtime owners of the 6,300-acre sheep ranch seized by the government for about $4 million in February.

Francis Gherini of Ventura and his daughter, Andrea, have donated their half of the sheep to the Discipleship Training International Sheep Co. in Oregon. As a condition, Gherini secured a promise that none of the sheep would be slaughtered.

There, the rescued sheep will be cared for by society’s outcasts to bring those people closer to God, said Pastor Larry D. Ammon, who was on the island Wednesday.

Despite pleas from animal rights activists in Northern California, Gherini’s nephew, John, of Santa Barbara, will auction his flock.

“We are going to do what we have done historically. Sheep, cattle, fish from the sea provide food and goods,” John Gherini said, explaining that his portion of the sheep will be sold for breeding, wool production and slaughter.

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Diane Miller, a representative of Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit farm animal protection organization, praised the park service’s efforts to get the sheep off the island. But she criticizes both sides of the Gherini family for their method of sheep disposal.

She is against slaughter and dislikes the Oregon sheep farm because the wool may be sold and the offspring slaughtered.

Farm Sanctuary’s shelter in Chico has space to accept 750 island sheep and provide lifelong care for them, she said.

“It seems ridiculous that all this time and energy should be spent to get them off the island only to let them go straight to slaughter,” she said.

In the meantime, park service officials hope that as early as next year, long dormant ironwood trees and Bishop pine may begin to sprout again from the island’s denuded east end.

“They could come back this year with the rain,” said Carol Spears, parks spokeswoman.