Deer cull may do more for wine-growing relatives of Catalina Island Conservancy founder than for either nature or claimed pretext of fire suppression
LOS ANGELES––Henry David Thoreau, had he been an observer of the Catalina Island mule deer cull now underway, might have observed that “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find an aviation attorney who owns a vineyard in proximity to a drone ban where a highly controversial deer massacre might be videotaped.”
The following seven sets of facts and the sequence in which they occurred may be viewed as purely coincidental, but Henry David Thoreau and other advocates for animals and the environment might also have found much to question in the antics and activities of the Catalina Island Conservancy over the past several decades.
Wine grapes & deer
1) Rusack Vineyards, founded by aviation attorney Geoff Rusack and his wife Alison Wrigley Rusack in 1995, produces high-end wines grown from grapes raised on a 17-acre former horse ranch in Ballard Canyon, Catalina Island.
Alison Wrigley Rusack is a descendant of chewing gum magnate Philip Wrigley (1894-1977), whose family once owned most of the island, but donated much of it to the Catalina Island Conservancy, begun by Philip Wrigley in 1972.
2) Deer, nationwide, eat about $22 million worth of wine grape leaves, vines, and the grapes themselves per year.
“Drone Policy & Operating Procedures”
3) The University of Southern California Wrigley Marine Science Center on January 14, 2026 published a new and highly restrictive Drone Policy & Operating Procedures manual for drone pilots operating over Catalina Island.
4) The Catalina Island Conservancy on January 30, 2026 won the go-ahead from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife to shoot the estimated 2,000 mule deer on Catalina island out of existence, in a multi-year extermination campaign.
5) Los Angeles Superior Court judge Curtis A. Kin on September 1, 2026 denied an appeal for an emergency injunction against the deer massacre brought––paradoxically––by Safari Club International and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, which sought to preserve sport hunting on Catalina Island, plus the Coalition to Save Catalina Island Deer.
Shooting begins
6) Catalina Island Conservancy director of communications Pepe Barton on September 8, 2026 announced that the conservancy has banned “launching, landing, and operating unauthorized drones from, on or above its land. The new policy,” Barton stipulated, “applies across the 42,000 acres managed by the Conservancy, or about 88% of Catalina Island.”
7) Reported Andrew J. Campa and Alex Wigglesworth for the Los Angeles Times on September 9, 2026, “Pepe Barton, the Catalina Island Conservancy director of communications, confirmed that the controversial shooting and culling of roughly 200 of Catalina Island’s invasive mule deer ‘is underway.’”
Summarized Campa and Wigglesworth, “Up to a dozen trained professionals employing rifles and bound by state regulations are expected to kill the island’s non-native mule deer on the ground over four to five years.”
Many of the dead deer are to be left for consumption by the native Channel Island foxes.
Pilot project
“About 200 deer are anticipated to be killed from September through October 2026,” Campa and Wigglesworth continued. “The culling is part of an opening phase that will test whether any other tools, methods or equipment are needed when crews expand the process next year, Barton told The Times.”
Added Campa and Wigglesworth, “A day before Judge Kin denied the injunction, Janice Hahn, supervisor for Los Angeles County’s fourth district, sent a letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom asking him to revoke the permit issued by the California Department of Fish & Wildlife,” which Newsom declined to do.
“The deer,” Hahn explained, “are currently eating vegetation that would otherwise become fuel for fires. Removing them would allow brush to grow uncontrolled, making future fires more likely and more dangerous.
Fire followed Santa Rosa Island deer cull
“Notably,” Campa and Wigglesworth summarized, “Hahn pointed to the recent fire on Santa Rosa Island,” which burned over a third of the nearby island between May 15 and June 4, 2026, “as an example of the potential ‘devastating consequence’ of eliminating an island’s deer population.
“For decades, deer had populated Santa Rosa Island,” Campa and Wigglesworth wrote, “but they were eradicated from the island at the end of 2011,” ostensibly “to restore its native ecosystem and protect its natural vegetation.”
The Santa Rosa Island fire killed about 80% of the rare Torrey pine trees that killing the island deer was supposedly done to protect.
“We now know that this fire started accidentally,” Hahn said in a media release, “but the conditions that are allowing it to rage were deliberate: the deer population that used to graze brush on Santa Rosa Island was wiped out in 2011. Now we are seeing how quickly fire can move through heavy, unmanaged brush.
“Catalina Island Conservancy plans to do the same thing”
“The Catalina Island Conservancy has a plan to do the same thing on Catalina,” Hahn objected, to no avail.
Los Angeles County fire chief Tony Marrone “has said that eliminating the entire [Catalina] deer population would increase the risk of wildfire on the island,” Hahn continued.
ANIMALS 24-7 had already made the same points in depth and detail in Mule deer are again in Catalina Island Conservancy crosshairs, published on February 4, 2026.
Paradoxically, the Catalina Island Conservancy claimed it planned to kill all the mule deer, a native California species if not always native to Santa Catalina, in the name of fire suppression, after decades of animal massacres undertaken by the Conservancy in the name of protecting rare native plants––a description which cannot, incidentally, be applied to wine grapes, not even some transplanted from Santa Rosa Island, where they were introduced in 1884.
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.
The Catalina Island Conservancy in 1975 began an aggressive and well-funded effort to “restore” the 75-square-mile island to pre-European settlement conditions.
From bullfrogs to bison
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 casualties included 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, descended from a few 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.
Deer introduced in 1928
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.
The Santa Catalina Island mule deer population had by October 1947 increased to about 2,500, when the California Division of Fish & Game opened the island to deer hunting during the regular annual California deer season.
Hunted since 1948
Since then, the estimated Santa Catalina Island mule deer count has fluctuated with climatic conditions from the 1947 high of 2,500 to a low of about 1,700, sustaining an annual hunting take of 200 to 400.
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.
Drone ban
The rationale for the Catalina Island Conservancy drone ban is as suspect as the timing of it.
Catalina Island Conservancy flack Pepe Barton alleged in a media release that, “A near collision between a small plane and a drone near Airport in the Sky [the Catalina airport] has prompted” the drone ban.
According to Barton, “On the afternoon of May 19, the pilot of a Cessna 182 was flying southwest of Airport in the Sky at about 3,000 feet when a drone appeared in the plane’s flight path. The pilot had to act quickly to avoid a midair collision.
“Conservancy rangers responding to the incident later spotted a drone descending toward Goat Harbor. Based on its location and flight path, they believe it may have been launched from a boat offshore.”
Drone pilot Steve Hindi is skeptical
Showing Animals Respect & Kindness founder Steve Hindi, a licensed private pilot who also happens to be among the most experienced civilian drone pilots in the world, and certainly the most experienced at using drones to document cruelty to animals, found Barton’s explanation unconvincing.
First of all, Hindi pointed out, Federal Aviation Agency rules limit the flight ceiling of civilian drones to 400 feet.
There is no rational reason why a drone pilot would venture up to 3,000 feet, especially if the object was to get photographs with print or web-quality resolution.
Second, cloud cover over Santa Catalina Island normally hovers at 1,500 to 2,000 feet. A drone flying at 3,000 feet would have a hard time seeing anything, even on a clear day.
Having pioneered the technique of flying a drone from a boat many years ago, Hindi agreed that this could have been done by someone, but noted that the combination of wind and waves would make bringing the drone back safely extremely difficult, with a high risk of losing the drone.
Drone-detection technology
Concluded Barton, “The Conservancy is backing up the [no drones] policy with an investment in aviation safety by adding drone-detection technology at the airport.
“This technology can detect drone activity and use federally required Remote ID broadcasts, when available, to provide information that can assist staff and authorities with investigating unauthorized flights.
“Conservancy rangers may direct unauthorized operators to land their aircraft and leave the area. Violations may also result in warnings, loss of access to Conservancy land or referral to the FAA, California Department of Fish and Wildlife or Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
“The Conservancy may also seek to recover the cost of any damage to Conservancy resources.”
In other words, the Catalina Island Conservancy may sue any Los Angeles-area news media or animal advocacy group that tries to get drone video showing the mule deer culling.
Please donate to support our work:
www.animals24-7.org/donate
Discover more from Animals 24-7
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Certain ill-advised members of the self-proclaimed “most intelligent” species will undoubtedly reap what they sow, and their innocent victims , as is usual with their ilk, will not be credited where deserved, nor will they be here to receive the credit.
With gratitude.
California has ALWAYS been corrupt, looking back through history, but lately the things they are doing in that state are even MORE unconscionable and worse than ever.
They will deserve everything they get, disaster wise.
It is certainly an unfortunate fact that our species is the most lethal on the face of this earth and we prove that daily. While other animals must kill to live, as is their natural way of being, we choose to kill for defensive purposes, to maintain ‘law and order’, to support certain Industries, as well as for pleasure.
We are also responsible for making monumental mistakes which result in the deaths and disruptions of humans, animals and ecological systems galore.
One of those mistakes occurred on Catalina Island, which seemed acceptable at the time, was to import a non-native ‘invasive’ species to a closed ecosystem so that it would procreate and thereby become targets for pleasurable blood-sport hunting.
As nature would have it, the mule deer did indeed proliferate and in doing so caused harm to the original plant and animal species.
In order to bring flora and fauna back into its original healthy state, the deer now have to be eliminated which will be done over 4 years by professional hunters. There will be a ‘pre-removal assessment’.
The resulting meat from the fallen will be either left to be consumed by native animals or given to feed other creatures on the mainland. A few deer will be sterilized and be allowed to live on the Island. L.A.County Supervisor Janice Hahn, some native Islanders , animal activists and even some hunting groups oppose this drastic measure, but it appears that this cull , agreed to by the Catalina Island Conservancy, and a judge will stand.
Again, animals will pay the price for humans errant decisions and that will always be the case.