Plan Would Limit Deer, Grazing on Island

Taking steps to protect rare island plants and clean up polluted streams, the National Park Service on Monday recommended removing hundreds of deer now hunted for sport on Santa Rosa Island and restricting cattle grazing in some of the island’s most fragile areas.

Managers of the Channel Islands National Park also suggest eliminating more than half of the island’s elk herd, fencing off sensitive streams and forcing a seasonal rotation of pastureland to reduce the threat of excessive cattle grazing.

But the long-awaited proposals stop short of calling for a gradual removal of the largest herd--about 6,500 head of cattle now being fattened on the lush island grasses before they are ferried across the Santa Barbara Channel to mainland markets.

The omission, conservationists say, could lead to a long-threatened legal battle.

And, they say, it could unravel this management plan, which is designed to help the island make a graceful transition from a historic cattle ranch to an ecological showplace when the ranchers’ lease expires in 2011.

“The park service has 15 years left on its lease with the ranchers to provide for an orderly return of the island to its more natural state,” said Brian Huse, Pacific regional director of the National Parks and Conservation Assn., a private conservation group.

“It is in the public’s interest,” he said, “for the park service to work with the ranchers in a phased reduction of the herd and institute a systematic control of the noxious weeds.”

Indeed, acting park Supt. Tim Setnicka said he is concerned about creating another “environmental holocaust” as has happened on neighboring Santa Cruz Island when a huge sheep herd was recently eradicated.

Santa Cruz Island’s native vegetation, he said, has been overrun by wild fennel and other exotic weeds no longer kept in check by the sheep’s grazing.

“That’s the management question at Santa Rosa,” he said. “How do you phase out the ranching and phase in weed removal?”

Russ Vail, one of the island’s principal ranchers, declined to comment until he had a chance to review the proposals.

Setnicka called the proposed island management plan an important first step in the park’s effort to protect the island’s natural resources and stick by its agreement with the ranching family that once owned the island.

Still, he said he expected a legal challenge from either conservationists or the ranchers.

“It’s either lead, follow or get out of the way,” Setnicka said. “We are taking steps in the right direction, but with every step they scream louder than if we didn’t do anything.”

Park officials have been reluctant to interfere with the Vail & Vickers Co. cattle ranching operations, which has been using grasslands on the 84-square-mile island to fatten cattle since 1902.

The park service bought the land from Vail & Vickers in 1986 for $30 million, with the condition that the company be allowed to continue ranching for 25 more years--unless the operations became incompatible with the preservation of the island’s natural resources.

The National Parks and Conservation Assn. has repeatedly threatened to sue the park serviceover allegations that it has failed in its mandate to protect the island’s natural resources.

Monday’s environmental study was not begun until after the park service was ordered by the state Water Resources Control Board to reduce the cattle’s impact on streams and other habitat for native plants.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service increased the pressure last summer by proposing that 16 rare plants found on the Channel Islands be added to the nation’s list of endangered species. Ten of those species are found on Santa Rosa Island, about 45 miles west of Ventura.

To protect these species and sensitive habitat, a team of park service and fish and wildlife service biologists initially recommended gradually reducing the number of cattle.

Although that concept was eventually dropped, the park service’s current proposals for Santa Rosa Island include:

* Removing the herd of 600 mule deer within three years;

* Reducing the elk herd from 1,100 to 450 within three years;

* Closing one sensitive pasture--about 7% of the island’s acreage--to cattle and to the island’s small herd of horses;

* Requiring that more stubble be left on the remaining pastureland to halt erosion during the rainy season;

* Dividing one large pasture in half, and requiring ranchers to rotate grazing between the two sections so that cattle are kept from trampling sensitive stream beds during the summer;

* Fencing off nine separate stream beds, with enclosures ranging from 20 to 80 acres, along with replanting native vegetation;

* Expanding the island’s weed abatement program.