Mule deer are again in Catalina Island Conservancy crosshairs

Mule deer are the major natural brakes on growth of tindery browse & grass,  but conservancy wants to kill them all in the name of fire prevention

AVALON,  Catalina Island, California––The Catalina Island Conservancy,  owners of 88% of Santa Catalina,  California’s largest offshore island,  as of January 30,  2026 has the go-ahead from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to shoot the estimated 2,000 mule deer on the island out of existence,  in a multi-year extermination campaign.

That the Catalina Island Conservancy plans to kill all the mule deer,  a native California species if not always native to Santa Catalina,  is perhaps less surprising than the Conservancy claim that this round of mass killing will be for fire suppression,  after decades of animal massacres undertaken by the Conservancy in the name of protecting rare native plants.

Fire records

Santa Catalina Island fire records date back 142 years,  to 1883.

Santa Catalina Island has had 16 fires of note in those 142 years,  five of which were bigger than all of the others combined.

Two of those fires,  in fact,  were bigger than all 14 of the others:  the Empire Fire in 2006,  razing 1,063 acres,  and the Island Fire just a year later,  in 2007,  burning 4,760 acres:  twice as much acreage as all 15 of the other fires combined,  including the Empire fire.

All five of those worst wildfires in Santa Catalina Island known fire history closely followed previous Catalina Island Conservancy efforts to extirpate “non-native” ungulates,  whose ecological role chiefly consists of consuming flammable brush and grass.

Anchovies

Santa Catalina Island,  22 miles off the southern California coast and technically part of Los Angeles,  may be globally best known as the reputed point of origin of Catalina dressing––a theory as dubious as the Catalina Island Conservancy pretexts for killing grazing and browsing animals.

Catalina dressing is a sometimes but not always vegan variant of traditional French dressing,  often polluted by the inclusion of anchovies.

The earliest documentation of the existence of Catalina dressing actually dates to the 1957 introduction of bottled Catalina dressing by Kraft Foods,  with no reference made to the existence of the island,  which lies just south of what was at the time the most productive anchovy fishery in U.S. waters.

Severely over-fished,  it is no longer.

(See Mystery marine toxo host kills sea mammals; cats wrongly blamed.)

War on “non-native” species

Santa Catalina Island in the mid-20th century was known as an upscale resort,  movie filming location,  and spring training site for baseball teams owned by chewing gum magnate Philip K. Wrigley––the minor league Los Angeles Angels,  and the major league Chicago Cubs,  1921-1951.

Fifteen years after the debut of Catalina dressing,  and around the time the anchovy fishery crashed,  the Catalina Island Conservancy,  formed in 1972,  began an aggressive and well-funded effort to “restore” the 75-square-mile island to pre-European settlement conditions,  whether or not the 4,000 human residents or anyone else favored the bloody effort.

The Catalina Island Conservancy by 1975 gained control of most of Catalina Island and almost immediately began reducing any and all “non-native” species to approximately the condition of anchovies in salad dressing.

Cattle,  horses,  bison brought for film use in 1924,  black buck antelope,  wild turkeys,  pigeons,  European starlings,  house sparrows,  bullfrogs,  feral cats,  rats,  and pigs all were  targeted,  shot from helicopters,  poisoned,  and occasionally rounded up and shipped off the island alive under intensive activist pressure.

(See “Buffalo Bill” Dyer, 83, led animal rescues from Santa Catalina Island.)

The vanishing herbivores

The most numerous casualties whose remains anyone counted were 12,000 pigs,  reportedly reintroduced in the early 1930s after the loss of a population originally introduced more than 200 years earlier by Spanish explorers,  and 3,000 goats (some sources say 30,000),  descended from a few goats also left behind by Spanish visitors,  hunted thereafter by sailors and early settlers.

The cattle,  raised on Santa Catalina Island for about 120 years,  were exterminated by 1999,  the pigs by 2003,  and the goats by 2004.

About 90 bison remain,  corralled and kept as a tourist attraction until,  all having been sterilized,  they die out,  likely within the next ten years.

The first two mule deer arrived,  by permission and with the assistance of the California Division of Fish & Game,  on November 26, 1928.

According to the March 13,  1929 edition of the Los Angeles Times,  the first mule deer buck and doe were brought from Placer County in northern California.

They and their descendants,  if any,  were joined in June 1930 by eight mule deer captured in southern California.

Hunted

The Santa Catalina Island mule deer population had by October 1947 increased to about 2,500,  according to California Division of Fish & Game biologist Donald D. McLean.

McLean recommended that the island be opened to deer hunting during the regular annual California deer season.

Since then,  the estimated Santa Catalina Island mule deer count has fluctuated with climatic conditions from the high of 2,500 to a low of about 1,700,  sustaining an annual hunting take of 200 to 400.

The mule deer as of 1947 shared the 48,438 acres of Santa Catalina with 400 bison and 4,000 cattle,  plus goats,  sheep,  pigs,  burros,  horses,  and Asian blackbucks introduced for hunting,  the latter all killed so long ago that scant record now exists of their presence.

40 acres & a mule deer

From the arrival of the bison and mule deer until after all the other ungulates were killed,  the largest fire on Santa Catalina Island burned only 40 acres.

The Goat Harbor Fire of 1999,  closely following the massacre of the last cattle,  then burned 268 acres,  remaining the biggest fire in known island history until the Empire and Island fires.

The Empire and Island fires closely followed the extirpation of pigs and goats.

The fires post-ungulate eradication campaigns have not only been bigger,  but more frequent.  From 1883 to the mule deer introduction,  Santa Catalina Island averaged one fire every 10 years,  six months.

Since 1999,  Santa Catalina Island has averaged one fire every three years.

Finger-pointing

But the increasing frequency of wildfires,  coinciding with the destruction of the grazing and browsing ungulate populations has not stopped the Catalina Island Conservancy for blaming the mule deer,  whose presence for 70 years,  alongside goats,  sheep,  pigs,  burros,  and horses,  did not coincide with increased fire risk.

Alleged Scott Morrison,  California director of conservation and science for The Nature Conservancy,  to Tony Kurzweil of the Los Angeles television news station KTLA,  “The evidence of the severity of the threat the deer pose is overwhelming,  and all other alternatives have been exhausted.  Catalina Island can have either a functional, biodiverse and resilient ecosystem or it can have deer.  It cannot have both.”

“Fire cycle”

According to the Catalina Island Conservancy website,  “Recent wildfires on the mainland are a stark reminder of how quickly wind-driven flames can escalate in dry, steep terrain. Today, ecosystems dominated by invasive and highly flammable annual grasses make up roughly 35% of Catalina Island’s landscape,  creating the risk for a damaging fire cycle.

“Non-native plants and wildlife disrupt Catalina’s natural balance,”  the Catalina Island Conservancy website continues.  “Invasive grasses rebound quickly after fire,  creating more fuel, while invasive deer feed on young native seedlings before they can recover.  Over time,  this weakens soils,  depletes the natural supply of native seeds and leaves habitats more vulnerable to erosion, drought stress and more frequent wildfires.”

What mule deer really eat

Note the contradiction in the allegations that the mule deer “feed on young native seedlings” while “invasive grasses recover,”  a fallacy that anyone with a lawn nibbled by deer should recognize.

Reality is that while mule deer prefer browse,  including “young native seedlings,”  on year-round average the typical mule deer diet is 60% browse but also 40% “cover,”  a generic term meaning mainly grass.  If browse is sparse or absent,  for example due to a wildfire,  grass is what mule deer eat––and lots of it,  to compensate for the shortage of browse.

(Check it out at Habitat Guidelines for Mule Deer,  published by the USDA Forest Service.)

When Santa Catalina Island did have a “functional,  biodiverse and resilient ecosystem”

Reality also is that the “damaging fire cycle” the Catalina Island Conservancy decries did not happen during the 70-odd years that multiple species of ungulate grazers and browsers,  including mule deer,  were much more abundant than post-ungulate massacres,  and routinely ate down the “invasive grasses” before they made up a dangerously large percentage of the Santa Catalina Island biomass.

Indeed,  Santa Catalina Island does appear to have had a functional,  biodiverse and resilient ecosystem during those 70-odd years,  perhaps much more so than before the grazers and browsers were introduced,  thriving because they filled vacant niches in the previous ecosystem.

Pre-Darwinian theories

Unfortunately,  The Nature Conservancy and the spin-off Catalina Island Conservancy have from inception represented the pre-Darwinian theories of Teutonic naturism and ecological nativism,   amplified in more recent times by the “island ecology” arguments of E.O. Wilson (1929-1992).

The largely un-self-recognized guiding philosophy of the conservancies is denial of evolution,  the most essential part of which is adaptation to change.

(See Why mass shooters sometimes sound like conservationists and E.O. Wilson, counter-evolutionary “evolutionary biologist,” dies at 92.)

Janice Hahn

The proposal to massacre the Catalina Island mule deer “drew strong opposition from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn — whose district includes the 22-mile-long island — just days before its approval by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife,”  noted Kurzweil of KTLA.

Wrote Hahn to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife,  “Mule deer have been part of Catalina’s landscape for nearly a century,  and their presence has become an important part of the island’s identity.  This plan disregards the deeply held values of many Catalina residents and visitors. I continue to hear from my constituents who have lived on the island for decades and have come to cherish these deer.”

“A previous plan to shoot the deer from helicopters was scrapped in 2024 after Catalina’s residents expressed concern,”  Kurzweil reminded.  “The new approach will involve ‘ground-based specialists’ using rifles, the conservancy said.”

(See Science guns down excuses for hog-dogging & hits rationale for deer culls and How “Vegan Mayo” going “Plant-Based” helps Catalina Island mule deer.)

For the birds

            According to Catalina Island Conservancy spokesperson Pepe Barton,  “The project’s methods are designed for complete population removal and follow the stringent guidelines set by the American Veterinary Medical Association for humane handling and depopulation.

“Removal will happen over multiple years,  with carcasses near roads,  trails or public areas to be removed.  Meat will be provided to the California Condor Recovery Program to help these endangered birds to support their recovery. In remote hills,  carcasses will be left to decompose naturally.”

A similar procedure nearly annihilated the then-“endangered” and now only “threatened” Channel Islands fox,  when carcasses left by Nature Conservancy eradication of ungulates from nearby Santa Rosa,  San Miguel and Santa Cruz islands lured golden eagles to the islands,  who turned to hunting foxes when the carcass supply ran out.

(See How conservationists nearly drove a rare fox extinct.)

“No to introducing predators”

The same small fox species also inhabits Santa Catalina Island.

For this reason,  the Catalina Island Conservancy has said “No to introducing predators,”  such as pumas,  wolves,  and bears,  as “This would create risk to humans and rare,  endemic wildlife like the Catalina Island fox.”

Santa Catalina Island does host a small number of coyotes,  who hunt fawns,  but rarely kill adult mule deer unless the deer have already been disabled by illness or injury.

Detection dogs,  Barton continued,   “will be trained to smell deer scent in the air and alert their human handler.  Dogs will be trained to only detect deer,  avoid other animals,  and will be fully vaccinated prior to coming to the Island.

Night shooting & nets

“Teams may use special scopes and drones to spot deer at night.  Drones are for visual assistance only and do not shoot deer.”

Helicopters will be used,  Barton explained,  “to locate deer in hard-to-reach areas. Trained staff deploy a lightweight net to capture the animal…No animals are dispatched from the air.

“In the final phase of the plan,”  Barton said,  “trained wildlife staff may use tranquilizer darts to sedate deer.  This is done without firearms,  and only by certified professionals following strict veterinary and animal welfare guidelines.

“In the late stages of the project,  select deer will be darted,  sterilized and released in both Avalon and the wildlands.  These sentinel animals are non-reproducing and help conservation staff detect and locate any remaining deer on the landscape.”

Alternatives rejected

Alternatives rejected by the Catalina Island Conservancy,  the conservancy web site explains,  include aerial sharpshooters;  “Moving island mule deer to the mainland,”  because this “poses disease-transmission risks,  is inhumane and often results in death and suffering due to fatal capture stress;  contraception,  because “Delivering and re-administering contraceptives to more than 2,000 deer across 48,000 rugged acres is logistically impossible”;  and recreational hunting.

“The Conservancy has chosen to host California’s longest hunting season for over 40 years,”  the Catalina Island Conservancy website recounts.

“In 2024, we issued 754 tags.  Only 379 deer were harvested,  at a $250,000+ financial loss and increased reports of safety issues due to more hunters on the landscape.”

“No to fencing”

Further,  “Deer populations often respond to hunting pressure with increased birth and survival rates,  making it difficult to reduce overall numbers through hunting alone, even with large harvests. The latest deer survey shows approximately 2,165 individuals,  the most since 2016,”  up from 1,770 in 2024.

The Catalina Island Conservancy has also said “No to fencing,”  as “Impractical on 48,000 acres of rugged terrain,”  as fences “would require constant repairs,  risk concentrating deer into areas like Avalon,”  the only incorporated community on the island,  “and worsen competition for food and water,”  as at Point Reyes National Seashore,  north of San Francisco.

At the same time,  the Catalina Island Conservancy website says,  native plant “Restoration work will begin with a fenced,  10-acre area near Airport in the Sky,”  the island airfield,  “before expanding to a 105-acre restoration zone and scaling across the island in phases over multiple years.”

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