Go to http://www.turners.com then scroll down to the Weekly Commentary and read about Santa Rosa Island.Please contact Senator Barbara Boxer at 112 Hart Senate Office Bldg,Washington,DC 20510-0501 ph 202-224-3553 email senator@boxer.senate.gov & Senator Diane Feinstein,331 Hart Senate Bldg,Washington,DC 20510-0504 ph 202 224-3841 fax 202-228-3954 email senator@feinstein.senate.gov about the plan to kill the elk and deer.Please contact all of your senators and congressmen.

Santa Rosa Island not Santa Cruz Island

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Originally posted by Skinner.:
Santa Rosa Island not Santa Cruz Island

Thanks for pointing out my mistake!

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Originally posted by scr83jp:

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Originally posted by Skinner.:
Santa Rosa Island not Santa Cruz Island

Thanks for pointing out my mistake!

The NRA ILA is aware of this and sent me an email about the political pandering by our 2 CA senators.

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Originally posted by scr83jp:

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Originally posted by scr83jp:

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Originally posted by Skinner.:
Santa Rosa Island not Santa Cruz Island

Thanks for pointing out my mistake!

The NRA ILA is aware of this and sent me an email about the political pandering by our 2 CA senators.

Everytime I send an email or letter disagreeing with the 2 useless ca senators I receive a form letter thanking me for agreeing with their position.

I guided on Santa Rosa about 10 years ago for several seasons. The trophies were incredible then and they are even better now (partly because the cattle and horses have been removed).

The wheels were put in motion on this whole extermination almost 20 years ago when the National Parks Service forcibly purchased the island from the two families that had been running it as a cattle and hunting ranch for around 100 years. The pigs were killed off right away and the livestock were removed more recently.

It’s going to be very difficult to save these deer and elk from eradication because so many people in the government and lots of ecological activists want it restored to it’s desolate “original†condition (before the introduction of deer from AZ and elk from WA). About the only people that will side with hunters to preserve these great populations would be left wing animal rights people and they aren’t going to want to save animals just to continue a trophy hunting program.

It’s a tough battle.

Kyler

Thanks for your well thought-out and informative post, Kyler.

I'm just down the hill from you, and have watched with glee as the powers that be hired a NZ eradication group for a mere $5,000,000 to get rid of the pigs on Santa Cruz.

My family's been here since 1849--great, great grandpa was well known grizzly hunter, back when we had them--but I missed the benefit of a father who enjoyed shooting.

He lost a young friend to a hunting accident, and he hates firearms.

I've camped on Santa Cruz--wangled my way there as a journalist--but only seen Santa Rosa from a boat. In that other life when I was driving boats for a living.

What the Coasties call sixpack.

Anyway, all the ecological management is confusing.

I'm concerned about the Island Foxes--endangered species--but one of their main predators is eagles.

How do you protect these little foxes?

As to Vail and Vickers (the previous ranching owners of Santa Rosa), they represent a California tradition now almost forgotten. Every one of the other western states honors its western tradition.

Aside from a few mounted posses in parades, and the many who live our agricultural heritage, California has been overwhelmed by the suburban lifestyle.

Most are ignorant of the history of our beautiful state.

Easterners are quick to accuse Californians of being loopy; mainly, not.

It's the immigrants from the east that are loopy.

flaco

Hi Flaco,

You're right, there is some great Western heritage here. Like you, my family has been here for well over 100 years.

But I think some of the Western tradition is still honored quite well. Paso Robles takes their Pioneer Days quite seriously and their Mid-State fair is huge and has an agricultural focus with tons of tradition. Atascadero has it's own Colony Days and rodeo/horse activities are quite popular. There are still plenty of people that would rather ride a horse than drive a truck in this area. Many of them are able to still make a living as real cowboys.

Where we do our hunts the smaller ranches are 3,000 to 4,000 acres and four are over 20,000 with one being almost 100,000 acres.

While this area has seen some changes, it's a lot more wild than people think.

I got to meet Al Vail once and he seemed like a regular local "rancher". Too bad the government felt they needed his ranch more than his family did.

Several times I saw Island Foxes out there. They're dumb as sticks and act more like cats than dogs. You're correct that the eagles take a toll on them and the eagle population is doing quite well.

I remember single days when we would see an honest fifty 4x4 bucks. All but one of my clients took 6x6 or better bulls (one eastern "hunter" refused to get more than 100 yards from the truck and eventually shot a 5x5).

As I said, there are no easy answers to keeping those deer and elk out there. It will sure be sad to see them gone but I'm glad I was able to spend time out there while the hunting was good.

kyler

You need some of those Wyoming wolves! Problem solved.

I dont really know much about Santa Rosa Island..but have heard about it and seen a hunting show or two about it. Wouldnt it make sense for whoever owns the island to offer "discounted" hunts for these deer and elk? That way they are making money and not having to pay some team of shooters to do the job. Does that make sense to anyone else? Just my 2 cents.

Josh,

Your idea is good logic but the problem is that the government owns the island and if you've worked with them at all they are strongly adverse to ideas that make sense.

Seriously, sporting hunting is not a viable way to fully remove populations. It's a great way to make a little money and make hunters happy while removing the first 20% or so of a population. But I've worked with hired hunters charged with the duty of removing whole populations and it's sounds like horrid work. Very little of it is recreational. With some of the guys I worked with each hunter was assigned 5 to 10 huge canyons each day to hike and check for tracks. After the majority of the animals were removed these guys would hike 10 to 12 hours per day and go 2 to 3 MONTHS without even seeing TRACKS much less getting a shot or taking an animal. Not many self respecting hunters would sign up for that as a vacation.

Kyler

A Goolge search turned up this: It was dated Dec 9, 2005. Anyone have anything later?

"An environmentalist group charged Friday that U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, plans to amend a pending defense bill to make Santa Rosa Island, now part of the Channel Islands National Park, an exclusive outpost for military training and recreation.

Santa Rosa, about 46 miles offshore, is the second largest of five undeveloped islands in the national park along the Southern California coast. The largest is Santa Cruz Island, of which 75 percent is owned by the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit group that preserves examples of a variety of native wilderness.

Hunter's planned amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill would give Santa Rosa Island to the Defense Department and make it an exclusive recreational outpost and game reserve for armed services personnel and veterans, according to a news release from the environmentalist group, the National Parks Conservation Association. It also would allow military special operations forces to train on the island.


"This is supposed to be a national park, not a hunting preserve,"the association's director, Ron Sundergill, said Friday.

Hunter's spokesman, Joe Kasper, said Hunter was traveling and unavailable Friday. Kasper referred questions about the Santa Rosa plan to Josh Holly, a House Armed Services Committee spokesman, who released this statement:

"Chairman Hunter has proposed an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill that would broaden the recreational use of Santa Rosa Island to the benefit of wounded and disabled members of the Armed Services who have sacrificed for our country."

Holly offered no further information about the plan.

Hunter, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, proposed a similar measure in May, but dropped it after objections from Democrats and environmentalists.

"This is a bad idea, and that's why its being pushed in secret negotiations," U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara, told an Associated Press reporter Friday. Her district includes the 53,000-acre island.

"All Americans should have access to the Channel Islands National Park, not just top military brass, members of Congress and folks who can pay thousands of dollars to go on private hunting trips, Capps said.

Santa Rosa Island was a cattle ranch owned by the Vail Vickers Co. for 100 years. The family owned company sold the island to the federal government for $30 million in 1986, and continues to operate a commercial elk and deer hunting business there. The contract is expected to expire in 2011.

The National Park Service allows hiking, camping, scuba diving and other activities on Santa Rosa. The island is home to a number of unique species of plants and animals, including the island fox, the spotted skunk, and an island variety of the Torrey pine.

"This amendment is an attempt to grab a large portion of Channel Islands National Park and, in part, turn it into an exclusive commercial elk and deer hunting island compound for a small portion of Americans," states the National Parks Conservation Association news release."

Boxer is a C*nt.. forgive me if my bluntness offended you..

Whoa. Check out this link.

http://www.nature.org/magazine/winter2006/features/index.html

This is from the Nature Conservancy, which I have a lot of trust in - their focus is on protecting habitat and natural areas rather than on anti hunting. As much as I like to hunt deer and elk, and as huge as the animals were, they are an introduced species on Santa Rosa. What would our reaction be if they were, say, armadillos rather than elk?

Another sad case of big game mis-management by the National Park Service and a couple of California's political duds.

Just because a specie is/was introduced somewhere by man does not necessarily make it bad.

And I have seen alot of good done by the Nature Conservaty, but they have their green side.

Arent' most liberals in California originally from 'somewhere else'????

Maybe extermination of them would be a good thing for California and then you boys down there wouldn't have these problems..

just a thought..

The words "sanity" and "California" rarely collide in the same sentence. Anyone who thinks that Boxer or Feinstein are going to take any pro hunting or shooting stance on **anything** is smoking crack.

They are what they are.

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Originally posted by Corax:
Whoa. Check out this link.

http://www.nature.org/magazine/winter2006/features/index.html

This is from the Nature Conservancy, which I have a lot of trust in - their focus is on protecting habitat and natural areas rather than on anti hunting.

From your link:

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Like many of the threats to ecosystems worldwide, the problems that plague Santa Cruz began innocently enough. DDT was developed during World War II to combat disease-spreading mosquitoes. It was effective. But by the 1960s, DDT was the focus of public outrage after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring documented its impact on bird reproduction. The bald eagle, America’s national symbol, was among the species hardest hit.

DDT's effect on bird eggshells and therefore it's effect on population reduction has been widely discredited. The fact that a current publication stills holds fast to this junk science green envirowhacko talking point pretty much discredits them in my view.

"Introduced species"? Seems the same folks that consider elk a "non-native" spiecies don't have a problem with canis lupus being "introduced" wherever they think it would be "beneficial", including "eco systems" where they were not historically.

a close friend of mine spent 5 days on santa cruz this spring netgunning the last pair of golden eagles off the island,up till then the park service had spent 500,000.00 removing 4000 wild pigs and 250,000.00 trying to capture same eagles,claimed to him their endangered fox breeding program raised 200 foxes and they had 20,000.00 in each fox.
they are bleeding money to return the island to natural
so scream yell phone write and threaten,won't change a thing the greenies got the bit in their teeth and the bank account.
wonder what the foxes will eat?

I just got my Winter 2006-2007 edition of "Under Wild Skies", and in the "MamboJambo" section on page 9, there is an article that says in October President Bush signed the Defense Authorization Act which included a provision to save the Sana Rosa Deer and Elk the Park Service and Greenie extermination. The man isn't all bad.