California wildlife officials moved forward last week with a plan to eradicate a herd of mule deer from Santa Catalina Island: extermination.
The plan has been putting locals from the island off the coast of Los Angeles with the Catalina Island Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit 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 resistance.
The permit issued by the California department of fish and wildlife allows the conservancy to eliminate the island’s herd of about 1,800 deer over a five-year period, mostly using hired shooters who kill the deer on bait. Outside the island’s only incorporated town of Avalon, shooters can shoot at night and use helicopters and drones to help locate deer. Helicopters can also be used to set nets on deer for capture.
As deer numbers dwindle, the permit provides for the use of dogs to help shooters find and kill those still in transit. The permit also allows the conservancy to capture the deer, sterilize them, fit them with GPS collars and release them back into the wild.
The meat from the animals will go to either feed captive birds in the California Condor Recovery Program or to tribal partners.
Many locals, however, deride the extermination methods as cruel and see the deer as an emblematic local species, despite the fact that they were introduced to establish a hunted population in the 1920s. An online petition to “Stop the Mule Deer Killing on Catalina Island” has 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 wrote in a recent letter to 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 have come to cherish these deer.”
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Recreational hunting will continue on Catalina Island, although the conservancy says it has failed to reduce numbers sufficiently.
The native flora of Santa Catalina evolved without mule deer, prompting the plants to evolve few defenses to limit the animals from preying on them, according to the conservancy. That heavy browsing pressure has allowed non-native grasses to colonize areas once populated with native plants, causing the island to lose shrubby chaparral to invasive grasslands.
The conservancy plans to replant native flora and beat back invasive vegetation as it eradicates deer. Recolonizing the island with native shrubs and other plans will help support efforts to recover endangered species including the Catalina Island fox and Catalina Hutton’s vireo, a small bird endemic to the island, the conservancy says.
“The ecological challenges facing Catalina cannot be solved in a sustainable and long-term manner 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.