California wildlife officials stepped up last week with a plan to eliminate a herd of mule deer on Santa Catalina Island: extermination.
The plan has long pitted locals from the island off the coast of Los Angeles against the Catalina Island Conservancy, an environmental non-profit that manages 88% of the island’s terrain. The conservancy sees mule deer, which are not native to the island, as a major threat to local biodiversity, water quality and fire resilience.
the permission granted The California Department of Fish and Wildlife allowed the conservancy to eliminate the island’s herd of nearly 1,800 deer over five years, mostly using hired shooters to kill baited deer. Outside the island’s only incorporated city of Avalon, shooters can shoot at night and can use helicopters and drones to help find deer. Helicopters can also be used to drop nets on deer for capture.
As deer numbers dwindle, the permit envisions using dogs to help hunters find and kill stragglers. The permit also allows the conservancy to capture deer, sterilize them, fit them with GPS collars and release them back into the wild.
Meat from the animals can go to feed the captive birds of the California Condor Recovery Program or tribal partners.
Many locals, however, deride the extermination methods as cruel and see deer as an iconic local species, despite the fact that they were introduced to build a huntable population in the 1920s. An online petition of “Stop the Slaughter of Mule Deer on Catalina Island” gathered nearly 23,000 signatures.
“Mule deer have been part of the Catalina landscape for nearly a century, and their presence has become an important part of the island’s identity,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said. wrote in a recent letter by California wildlife officials. “This plan ignores the deeply held values of many Catalina residents and visitors. I continue to hear from my constituents who have lived on the island for decades and come to love these deer.”
Recreational hunting will continue on Catalina Island, although the conservancy says it has failed to reduce numbers sufficiently.
Santa Catalina’s native plants thrived without mule deer, which led the plants to evolve some defenses to limit the animals from eating them, according to the conservancy. That heavy browsing pressure allowed non-native grasses to colonize areas that were once home to native plants, leading the island to lose shrubby chaparral to invasive grasses.
The conservancy plans to replant native plants and control invasives as it exterminates deer. Recolonizing the island with native trees and other plans will help support efforts to recover endangered species including the Catalina Island fox and the Catalina Hutton’s vireo, a small songbird endemic to the island, the conservancy said.
“The ecological challenges facing Catalina cannot be resolved in a long-term, sustainable way as long as non-native mule deer continue to prevent the recovery and restoration of the Island’s natural habitat,” reads a conservation management plan.