BY MIKE STEVENS
“Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… MASS HYSTERIA!” – Dr. Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters
Round of applause for the Catalina Island Conservancy (CIC) which has pulled off what no other organization or human being has been able to accomplish in decades. The CIC has absolutely cracked the code to unify Catalina locals, mainlanders in the island’s front yard, science-based conservationists, hunters, animal rights groups, even vegans, all on the same side of the aisle.
HUNTERS AND VEGANS!.
And that was all before it went mainstream-media national and exponentially magnified all these groups that otherwise agree upon very little. The recipe for this level of unification not seen since, I don’t know, repealing prohibition, was as follows:
- Recognize the fact (and it is a fact) there are too many deer on Catalina Island.
- Come up with a highly-questionable estimation of the island’s deer population based on “spotlighting,” which is driving around at night, shining flashlights into the darkness, counting the eyeballs and extrapolating that data across the entire island.
- Decide every last one of them needs to go.
- Roll out a plan to go Full Metal Jacket and pay professional hunters to smoke all the deer from helicopters.
- Dismiss recreational hunting (and, making money from that brand of game management rather than paying for it) as ineffective.
- Avoid acknowledging all the hoops hunters have to jump through in order to hunt on the island and blazing an easier path for more hunters to come over and happily do the work.
- Give a group offering better technology for getting an accurate deer count….FOR FREE… a hard “no” and pass on offers to publicly debate the situation with said outfit (howlforwildlife.org).
- Dump the chopper-mounted sniper idea following the most predictable public backlash imaginable and proceed with a boots-on-the-ground approach with the mercenary deer hunters with the approval of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which WON readers know only makes decisions based on the best science available.
There are more moving parts of varying significance, but that’s the gist of it. It really all starts with the population estimate, and moving down that above list, HOWL for Wildlife offered to put up multiple thermal-detecting drones and use the data to collaborate with CIC in determining an actual accurate count before moving on to a course of action somewhere between leaving all the deer alone and full-on eradication, but CIC is content with their spotlight survey data. The question is, why wouldn’t a conservation organization welcome more tech and better data? (as if we don’t know the answer).
All of the deer have to go? That’s a bit much considering how rare “total eradication” is for any big game species. Not looking into making recreational hunting of these deer as much of a cakewalk as possible, considering the economic boost it would bring to the island is certainly a decision, and it goes way beyond not cashing in on those travel-related expenses. Currently, Catalina locals are actively looking into what businesses to boycott based on what side of this coin they’re supporting.
Oh, and a major element to recreational hunting being “ineffective” in the eyes of CIC is hunters can’t handle Catalina’s rugged terrain which keeps the success rate down. Forget about the fact that deer hunters have been finding success in the gnarliest areas of Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Oregon, Arizona and so on, year in and year out, so they can probably handle the “island of romance” located 38 miles from the nearest In-N-Out Burger.
That being said, it’s pretty bold to suggest the same terrain that western hunters just can’t handle well enough to harvest a deer can be adequately covered by CIC staffers attempting to count the same deer with flashlights.
Howl For Wildlife (HowlForWildlife.org) has been at the forefront of this battle not only by offering up the drones, asking CIC to hash this out in a public setting, appearing on local news broadcasts and keeping the public aware and involved, they also produced a documentary, “Killing Catalina” that really does give both sides a voice. It’s definitely worth searching up on YouTube.
Anyway, hats off to Catalina Island Conservancy for unifying so many diverse groups against a single cause. It’s been fun having all these new kids in the sandbox.