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Santa Cruz Island
A Distressing Situation
The cost of
saving native plants on Santa Cruz Island may include destruction of a unique
breed of sheep. In the current chapter of this ecological set-to, that reads
like an Agatha Christie mystery, the list of suspects and motives is long. The
situation embraces the ecological conundrum of one "endangered"
species eating another, with each species receiving support from its own
eco-political action committee.
The Battle GroundSanta Cruz Island is the largest of
California's Channel Islands. The island's eastern tip comprises 10 percent—about
6,500 acres—of the land. The remaining 90 percent of the island is owned by
the Nature Conservancy. The National Park Service, which
administers the Channel Islands National Park, is 75 percent owner of the
eastern tip. Twenty-five percent is owned by a private citizen. This land has
been under lease as a hunting preserve. The National Park Service recently
benefitted from federal legislation, signed in November, that forced the private
owner to sell his share in the land to the government. The Park Service has
plans for the area that do not include hunting, the 3,000 feral sheep, and the
dozen wild horses living on the eastern tip of the island. The lessee, Island
Adventures, received eviction notice at the end of 1996 giving it 90 days to
remove its hunters' bed and breakfast business from the historic Smugglers Adobe
and Scorpion Ranch buildings and all property and improvements—including
the sheep, flush toilets and the lawn—from Santa Cruz Island while the
company goes out of business.
Whose Sheep? In the late 1800's sheep were brought
to the island for ranching. During the intervening century the sheep evolved
through natural selection into a distinct breed found nowhere else on earth.
When ranching was stopped, the sheep became feral. The wild sheep population numbered
about 30,000 across the entire island until the Nature Conservancy began a
program of eradication after acquiring the major portion of the island in the
1980's. Sheep were killed and left to rot until public pressure forced other
removal methods. Now the remaining population is confined to the eastern tip of
the island—a population that is incompatible with Park Service plans to "restore
the island ecosystem to its condition before European contact." The island has no holding or docking
facilities needed to transport the sheep—assuming they could be captured.
Under the initial time constraints options are limited to saving a few, killing
the rest of the sheep, and leaving them to rot or turning over their fate to the
government, which seems likely. The situation has stirred animal rights
activists, native plant proponents, bow hunters, and others, besides the
principals who have financial or political interests. According to the Park
Service the land is being overgrazed, water quality is threatened, historical
and archeological resources are being damaged and native vegetation is being
destroyed.
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