Goats Head for New Home as Catalina Roundup Ends

They were plopped ashore in metal bins Wednesday--a woolly, bleating mass of formerly condemned goats whose herd has roamed and munched on rugged Santa Catalina Island for more than 170 years.

In what is being called the first successful live relocation of the island’s maligned goat population, more than 120 of the feral beasts were captured over the last two months, shipped to Long Beach in a World War II-era landing craft, then loaded into cattle cars and trucked nine hours north to a sprawling Bay Area goat sanctuary.

The roundup, which ended to both cheers and tears Wednesday, marked a grudging compromise between animal activists who wanted the goats left alone and ecologists who say the ravenous goats are destroying the island’s habitat. Past efforts to rid the island of goats have relied on killings, including shotguns fired from helicopters, so island caretakers approved a $25,000 pilot program for a team of herders to round up the animals live with bare hands and barking border collies.

Now, these pardoned goats will spend their remaining days clearing hillsides in Orinda of fire-fueling brush.

The Catalina Island Conservancy, the entity that owns all but a sliver of Catalina and has a mandate to return the island to its natural state, has called the roundup a remarkable success. A past effort to remove the goats alive was a dismal failure, with almost 90% of the captured goats dying quickly, said William Bushing, a conservancy vice president. Similar efforts in other parts of the world have met with identical failure, he said.

“I’m pleased to say they’ve done a marvelous job,” said Bushing, who was skeptical of the plan at first. “It’s been well beyond our expectations.”

As the final shipment of 59 goats chugged into the Port of Long Beach and filled the quay with the scent of crumbled chevre, weary herders recounted two months worth of breakneck chases through heavy thickets of beaver tail cactuses and over rocky cliffs. The herders made their home in a modest base camp, where they shared their sleeping bags with their faithful collies and trundled captured goats on their shoulders down steep mountain ravines to waiting pens.

“What these guys had to do would have put Indiana Jones to shame,” said herder Adam Selvin of his co-workers--five South American ranch hands. “The job is just running top speed through the most ridiculous terrain. You’re usually tired even before you see your first goat, and then the dogs take off and you take off after them.”

Selvin, whose arms and legs were crosshatched with bruises and scars, said one chase left him stranded on a rocky outcropping overlooking shimmering Gallagher Cove--a section of the island accessible only by boat.

“They just lassoed me, like a goat, and pulled me off,” Selvin said with a laugh.

The herders were from Goats R Us, an Orinda company that specializes in providing herds to clear brush. Goats, they say, respond very poorly to stress. “Sometimes a goat will just lie down and give up,” said Terri Holleman, the firm’s co-owner. “They say, I’ve had enough and I’m just going to lie here and die.”

Consequently, much of the herder’s job is concerned with settling the anxious animals’ nerves, she said. The goats were also fed mineral supplements to improve their odds of survival.

First time observers said they were astonished as they watched the herders speak to and caress the jittery goats. “The first thing they do is kiss them,” said Catalina resident Debbie Avellana, who helped organize the rescues. “I think it’s that kiss that makes all the difference.”

Chase on Foot Through Chaparral

As ridiculous as it may sound to some, treating the animals with kid gloves worked. Only one goat died during the expedition, and several pregnant goats gave birth in captivity--including one mother who had two kids in the landing craft Wednesday. (The sight of the slippery baby goats softened even the burliest of dockhands. Husky tug operator Bob Sylvester slapped bystanders on the back and announced with pride that one of the goats had been named after the vessel that brought them to Long Beach, the Christopher G.

Instead of roping the animals by horseback, herders traveled the chaparral on foot with border collies. Even as the herders lunged at the goats, or attempted to lasso them, they struggled for purchase on the island’s steep hillsides. The average day of herding yielded only one or two goats.

Bill Dyer, of the animal rights group In Defense of Animals, raised various donations for the project and considers the roundup a victory for live removal programs in general. “We hope this will serve as an example for similar efforts around the world,” Dyer said. However, the activist said that, because of time constraints on this roundup, there remain anywhere between 75 and 100 goats on the island. It is unclear whether the Catalina Island Conservancy will contract with the herders again for live removal or begin hunting once again.

The conservancy’s Bushing declined to say what action he would recommend at the organization’s executive board meeting next month. Goats R Us is busy with work in Northern California and cannot return to get more Catalina goats until spring. Although the conservancy was pleasantly surprised by the herders’ work, Bushing fears the remaining goats will breed rapidly and double their numbers in a year.

“They’ll be going through another reproductive cycle in the next couple of months,” Bushing said. “We’d like to bring closure to this soon.”

In the steeply plunging mountains and valleys of Catalina Island, fall chaparral and sere grass are crisscrossed by paths made by goats, bison and deer. Along dusty switchback roads, signs warn visitors that the grazing beasts are not as benign as they appear.

The conservancy, though, says the real danger of the goats is that they are voracious eaters and have devoured delicate native plants with abandon. This loss of vegetation has not only frustrated the conservancy’s restoration goal, it has also caused difficulties for the island’s human inhabitants. Peter Schuyler, the conservancy’s director of ecological restoration, said that denuded hillsides are prone to slide in the rainy season, and that goats were partially responsible for a major slide four years ago that buried a section of the island’s crucial Airport Road--the island’s primary artery for mail and parcel delivery.

Goats are not the only animals targeted for removal on Santa Catalina Island. Pigs, deer, and to a much lesser degree, bison, are all considered nonnative breeds that pose a threat. The conservancy continues to hunt deer and pigs, while a percentage of the bison are removed from the island alive. Many are allowed to remain, as they provide a draw for tourists.

Goats first arrived in Catalina in the 1820s--some say they were brought by Spanish missionaries--and have thrived on the island. By the 1970s most of the goats on the island were wild, and numbered in the tens of thousands. The conservancy soon set about hunting the animals.

Some residents and animal activists urged In Defense of Animals to help stop the so-called harvests.