A Food Chain Story

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Travel Blog
After spending a nice few days dodging raindrops on the California coast just north of LA (hold-up in a funky-good motel in downtown Santa Barbara) we decided to explore going out to the islands that we kept seeing across bay. There are five islands, about an hours boat ride from Ventura CA, that have been a national park since 1980, the Channel Islands. Promoted as North America’s Galapagos we thought it was worth taking a look!

The forecast finally presented 3 clear days so we made plans, which wasn’t easy because the storms have been rolling in off the Pacific pretty regularly. Access to the islands is very controlled, much like the trips we take to Cumberland Island GA (also a National Park). The weather cleared, and with reservations in hand and backpacks loaded we showed up at the dock at 8:00am on Sunday morning. There were about 30 other day-trippers on board so we were excited to think that we might have the campground and the full moon all to ourselves.

Thank goodness we didn’t have to carry our own water, that’s one reason we picked the campground on the big island of Santa Cruz, it had potable water. In spite of the group of a dozen loud teens camped close by (a group from SOAR based in Balsam NC!), we had a great time. The place was lush with green grasses and low shrubs, but very few trees other than the grove of giant Eucalyptus that we camped under. It reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Scotland and Ireland.

The food chain story I wanted to relay: When Europeans came to the islands they brought domestic animals with them. Some of the pigs became wild, reproduced in amazing numbers, and rooted up everything in sight (as we see on Cumberland still today). When the Nature Conservancy and the Park Service became involved they hunted and trapped ALL of the wild pigs, and the rare native flora is beginning to return. The sheep that homesteaders brought in did amazingly well, at one time there were over 60,000 grazing on Santa Cruz. The overgrazing resulted in destabilization of the mountainsides and terrible erosion resulted. Once ALL of the sheep were gone (some were air-lifted out!) the green hills stabilized again.

The island bald eagles disappeared because of DDT softening their eggshells and preventing reproduction. Once the bald eagles were ALL gone, golden eagles came over from the mainland and took over their niche, but goldens are mostly land carnivores instead of fishers like the bald eagles. The rare island foxes (the size of house cats), were a food source for the goldens. In 1997 the remaining 15 foxes were captured and bred in captivity. Now they are doing fine again as are the bald eagles on the island. I love this story!

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