Offended by New York Times article
Editor’s note: The author of this letter originally sent it to the New York Times. The author sent a copy of the letter to the Islander.
I am writing about the New York Times article, “The Plan to Save a California Island: Shoot All of the Deer.” As a longtime islander and retired journalist, I thought the article was biased, insulting, and poorly sourced.
The story reports that Catalina Island is being ravaged and destroyed by the 2,000 mule deer who roam the mostly undeveloped isle. Is this fact? or merely a claim by the Catalina Island Conservancy to justify killing all of the deer. Were any independent sources or other conservationists consulted to validate this assertion?
Your reporter assumes the mission of the Conservancy is as defined in its self-generated public relations materials. I was there in 1972. I remember what Philip K. Wrigley’s original intentions were when he created the non-profit. When Wrigley shareholders deeded most of the Island to the Conservancy, it was “to ensure that most of Catalina’s wildlands and wildlife would be protected,” according to the Catalina Islander newspaper in 2013. The current Conservancy is a departure from those values.
The article quotes a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Department who infers that locals are unsophisticated, ignorant, and bored. He reasoned that’s why people vehemently oppose the mass deer killing. Where’s the rebuttal?
The qualification that locals refer to themselves as “Islanders,” is an insinuation that this is a self-proclaimed, undeserved title. Why aren’t the people who live on Catalina automatically “Islanders?” People who live in Texas are called “Texans,” without attribution.
The Conservancy’s plan is to shoot the deer with automatic rifles from helicopters. (Why would it ever be a good idea to have snipers fly over any population with loaded guns?) Islanders who have researched this eradication method say that the initial shots often only wound the animal and they suffer until they are eventually shot again or die. This was not mentioned in your story.
The Conservancy also plans to leave all of the carcasses to rot where the deer are killed, providing food for other animals. I don’t know of too many animals left on the island that are carnivores and would eat 2,000 deteriorating deer bodies. The impact of this was not addressed in your article.
The wildlife existed and was flourishing when William Wrigley Jr. obtained the controlling stock shares in the company that owns Catalina. He imported many unique birds and created a popular tourist attraction called The Bird Park. His son, Philip, bred and trained champion Arabian Horses at a ranch in the middle of the island. The ranch was a major highlight of the popular Inland Motor Tour, operated by Wrigley’s company. Visitors were also treated to sightings of roaming buffalo, goats, and wild boar. (The boar were named and fed by tour bus drivers). The Conservancy has already slaughtered all the boar and goats on the Island.
The deer have inhabited the Island for almost one hundred years, but they are just now a detriment to the landscape? Maybe the hillsides are dry and foliage is dying because of the drought conditions common on a desert island? If this is clearly the right way to resolve the problem, why is the Conservancy hiring a public relations firm to rationalize excuses and shove this solution down a greater majority’s throat? Maybe that money would be better spent researching ways to preserve both the wildlands and wildlife, as first intended?
Finally, the sad reality is that islanders and nature lovers believed they were given the gift of an unspoiled Island. We believed the Conservancy was a tender caretaker ensuring the Island would remain open and enjoyable for all. Fifty years later, this is not the case. The Conservancy is no longer interested in stewardship. It has its own heartless, destructive agenda that includes killing problems, as it interprets them.
Katie Cotter
Deer should be least of Conservancy’s worries
I’ve lived on Catalina for more than 70 years and grew up hunting here. The Conservancy’s claim in different news articles about starving dear and suffering fawns couldn’t be further from the truth. The deer I see on my daily walks are fewer and the healthiest I’ve seen them.
The deer make up a small fraction of the many thousands of goats, pigs and livestock that were once here, and the native plants survived. I’ve seen myself that the fenced areas that are not for public view look the same inside and out. It’s obvious to even some of the Conservancy’s own staff (who are honest off-duty) that deer browsing, when compared to all the non-native grasses, invasive plants and dry brush the Conservancy hasn’t removed, should be the least of their worries.
Sincerely,
Pastor Lopez
Avalon
Address the
high cost of deer eradication
News articles covering the pending eradication of Catalina deer fail to address the high cost the proposal is likely to have in the future, and is already having, on our island economy.
Tourism, our economic engine, depends upon Catalina’s reputation as an “Island Paradise,” not a “Bambi Bloodbath.” The pending eradication could irreparably damage the Island’s brand and business community. In a preview, one of my businesses is down more than 30 percent with a strong indication that visitors are staying away in protest. Catastrophic impacts become more likely each day this plan looms.
Catalina’s bison, like Catalina deer, are a non-native, “invasive” species imported nearly a century ago, just like the deer. The bison are part of our economic engine and have been allowed to stay on the island. In its video “Going Home” (YouTube) the Conservancy lauds its compromise solution to manage 150 bison as a “win-win-win” and a “conservation first,” as well it should. Publicly available documents show that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has offered a number of solutions to increase deer harvest on the island when necessary. With the tools they’ve offered, why not take a lesson from the bison and follow suit with Catalina mule deer which also have a deep-seated historical and cultural value to residents and others—apparently at least 15,000 people (change.org petition) and counting.
Leslie Baer Dinkel,
Business Owner
Avalon
Catalina mule
deer could save the species
The Catalina deer story, that ran in the New York Times on Dec 2, is riddled with message points taken as fact. In its “Restoration Plan,” the island’s conservancy details its strategy to override the wishes of Catalina’s 4,000 residents, animal welfare groups, hunters, and others who overwhelmingly oppose the slaughter of the deer. That plan includes lawyers, high-powered PR firms, and a communications department newly stocked with more than a half-million-dollars in personnel to manipulate island residents, convert opinions that clash with their endgame to eradicate the deer, and address internal sabotage since it predicted its employees would be against eradicating Catalina’s deer.
Surprisingly, the article doesn’t question CIC’s application for a “Scientific Collecting Permit” which is inappropriate for eradicating a species. CIC is using it as an end-run around the proper “depredation” permit it has already been denied twice in the past decade.
A glaring omission is the critical role the Catalina Mule Deer herd will play in the future. Mainland Mule Deer populations are threatened by Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The Catalina herd is best protected from CWD in the Western United States. It provides wildlife managers with an invaluable resource at a critical juncture in preserving the California Mule Deer species.
Rick Travis,
Legislative Director
California Rifle and Pistol Association
Fullerton, California
Zero tolerance for Catalina deer is a choice, not based on science
In the New York Times article “The Plan to Save a California Island: Shoot All the Deer,” the reporter treated as scientific fact the talking points of the Catalina Island Conservancy. Among those talking points, the Conservancy insists that native plant survival depends on all Catalina island deer being killed i.e., eradicated from the island. As a Ph.D. restoration ecologist who has analyzed Conservancy studies, I strongly disagree. The science clearly does not support that to meet recovery objectives for native plants the number of deer must be zero. By their own admission, recovery is already occurring with species being observed that have not been seen in decades (with deer still present). Eradication is the easy route forward, whereas management is complicated and complex.
Increasing and sustaining biodiversity is a laudable goal of the Conservancy, but what if after the deer eradication management solution neither occurs? The science is lacking to definitively to answer this question. Current Conservancy leaders, including CEO Whitney Latorre, have publicly stated they don’t see managing the deer, as within their purview. A strange statement when island management writ large, is.
Robert Kröger, Ph.D., Executive Director,
Blood Origins
Memphis, Tennessee
Conservancy’s deer count, science
questioned
The count used by the Conservancy in the recent New York Times article, “The Plan to Save a California Island? Shoot All of the Deer,” to justify eradication of Catalina mule deer is inaccurate. The 2,000 estimate was upended by a 2022 study, setting the number below the Conservancy’s historical stated goals for deer management (page 3).
Carrying capacity for a species doesn’t change to “zero” in a few years. This lower count other conservation organizations place at 500-800 deer is consistent with hunter observations of alarmingly low numbers but exceedingly healthy deer on Catalina. This is in stark contrast to the Conservancy’s claims of emaciated fawns that need to be exterminated for their own good.
A California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) senior scientist described Catalina’s environmental challenges as “a result of centuries of livestock damage to soil and vegetation, NOT deer browsing.” She disavowed Conservancy justifications for deer eradication as “not demonstrated,” “false pretense,” and the agency denied their request. The CDFW is the very agency to which the Conservancy has reapplied to eradicate Catalina deer. Those of us watching this issue hope the agency will take to heart the first-hand assessments and conclusions of their own scientists.
The eradication of a deer population should be a last-ditch effort based on a management plan rooted in science, and when all else has failed. In this case, neither are true. The idea that mule deer will be shot from helicopters, the meat left to waste, with a complete disregard to management, is unacceptable.
Sincerely,
Charles Whitwam
President/Founder
Howl for Wildlife
