Dear Avalon,
When I stepped off the boat with my family three years ago to help preserve and protect this remarkable place, I remember feeling a deep peace. This Island is remarkable—the rugged hills, the unique plants and animals, the history, and the pounding waves. Since then, I have experienced and grown to love our library, museum, friendly faces at the grocery store, the friendships my family has formed, and the sense of place I have developed here.
My neighbors, with that said, the preservation of this place that we all love is in jeopardy. As has been written about for many years, the Catalina Island Conservancy has inherited a difficult problem. The mule deer, which were brought to the Island in 1929, have been an issue that we are all aware of but would prefer to ignore. Go to Islapedia and read the old LA Times articles. There you will find stories of people struggling with managing deer dating back to 1947. In this paper (the Islander) there have been stories over the years on the poor condition of deer and the overpopulation in the Interior.
The Conservancy has provided this information for a long time through articles and one-on-one conversations within the community. Early on in this process, I asked many of you about this issue and heard about your past experiences. I appreciated learning your feelings about this nuanced subject and the importance of the health of our island home.
I know it seems like this is a discussion focused on deer vs. plants, but that isn’t the case. The Island relies upon its endemic plants to protect the land and keep it safe against wildfires, drought and soil erosion. These are the very plants the deer target. The longer we wait, the more of the protective plants that the Island relies upon as a natural defense system will disappear. Unless action is taken now, Catalina will convert to an Island of invasive grasses which, in this age of accelerated climate change, leaves us much more vulnerable to fire—witness the recent devastation on Maui.
We do know recreational hunting does not work; hunting is what we’ve been doing for 25 years. We have the longest hunting season in California and have more tags than we can sell. In the last ten years, 2,000 deer have been killed by hunters on this Island, about the same amount we have on the Island today.
We at the Catalina Island Conservancy are your neighbors. I know it’s an imperfect history that we’ve inherited, and our aim is to be the best partners we can to all of you. This Island is a home to us all and we want to leave it safe and in a state that we can be proud of for generations to come.
For more information about the Catalina Island Restoration Project, please visit our website and provide feedback via the comments section (www.catalinaconservancy.org/restoration-project). We read every email that comes into the Conservancy. We hope this provides some clarity to you all and an opportunity to express your thoughts. We are looking into other opportunities for community engagement as well.
Lauren Dennhardt, Senior Director of Conservation
