Great Sheep Roundup Begins

Rangers from the National Park Service began a historic effort this week to round up 2,000 feral sheep and ship them off east Santa Cruz Island.

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

“We’re not talking about someone moving their dog off the island here,” he said. “This is a couple thousand wild animals.”

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

Park Service officials are trapping and removing the sheep from the eastern 10% of Santa Cruz Island, the newest part of the Channel Islands National Park, which was purchased through condemnation earlier this year.

The sheep, which have roamed the island’s rugged hills for nearly 150 years, have annihilated native plants by nibbling them to the ground. 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 ecosystem.

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.

Setnicka said the Park Service is committed to getting the sheep off the island alive.

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

Concerned that the animals might be killed, 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 also is bound to remove all private property from land 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 $200,000 to $250,000 to move the sheep from the island, and will take about a year.

This summer, Park Service officials are luring thirsty sheep into pens 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 the sheep as the evacuation continues.

As they are caught, the cross-bred Merino sheep are loaded into trailers. The trailers are then backed onto an amphibious World War II landing craft.

After arriving in 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 animals 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 taken by the government for about $3.8 million in February.

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

There, the rescued sheep will be cared for by members of the religious group, said Pastor Larry D. Ammon, who was on the island Wednesday.

Despite pleas from animal rights activists in Northern California, Francis 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 sheep will be sold for breeding, wool production and slaughter.

Diane Miller, a representative of Farm Sanctuary, a nonprofit farm animal protection organization, praises 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 was opposed to placement at the Oregon sheep farm because she thinks the sheep’s wool may be sold and their offspring slaughtered.

Farm Sanctuary’s shelter in Chico has space to accept 750 island sheep, and provide permanent, life-long 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.

Once the sheep leave, 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.