Catalina Island’s invasive mule deer population got a stay of execution.
The Catalina Island Conservancy on Wednesday, May 29, reversed its plans to shoot 1,700 deer on the island located 22 miles off the coast of Southern California by using sharpshooters firing from helicopters after strong opposition from residents and county officials.
Instead, the conservancy will use other methods to eliminate the deer, such as expanding hunting to thin the herd, sterilization and relocation.
The conservancy, which manages the island’s 48,000 acres for tourism, including hunting, biking, hiking and camping, presented strong evidence that the deer are eating up the island’s native plants and putting its ecosystem in danger of rare-plant extinctions, invasive grasslands and potential wildfires due to overgrazing.
As part of its original native habitat restoration plan, the conservancy wanted to first eradicate the deer by aerial shooting, intending to kill them all at once and leave the carcasses on the ground to rot. Once the deer were eliminated, new vegetation would be planted and barren areas seeded, in an effort to restore the natural ecosystem.
But after the killing method was made public, it unleashed criticism from many residents as well as a unanimous rebuke from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last month. Led by Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose Fourth District includes Catalina Island, the board voted to ask the conservancy and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to reconsider the aerial mass shooting.
Hahn said 90,000 signatures have been collected in opposition to the plan.
At a special meeting of the Los Angeles County Fish and Wildlife Commission on Wednesday, Lauren Dennhardt, the Catalina Island Conservancy’s senior director of conservation, announced the aerial shooting plan would be dropped.
The conservancy also phoned Hahn to personally inform the supervisor that the aerial shooting program was no longer an option.
At the meeting,…
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