Park Service May Increase Holdings on Santa Cruz

Potentially opening up miles of rugged new hiking trails to island visitors, the nonprofit Nature Conservancy is considering handing over about 8,000 acres of land on Santa Cruz Island to the Channel Islands National Park.

“We are talking to the park about a conveyance,” said Diane Devine, program manager for the Nature Conservancy’s Santa Cruz Island preserve. “The terms of the deal have not been finalized.”

The Nature Conservancy owns the mountainous western 90% of Santa Cruz Island, while the National Park Service owns the grassier eastern nub.

The land lies next to the Park Service property and would more than double the park’s holdings on the island.

Devine and Channel Islands National Park Supt. Tim Setnicka would not divulge any further details on whether it would be a sale or exchange.

But if all goes well, the deal could be made final this fall--possibly as early as September, Devine said.

Santa Cruz, the largest of the Channel Islands, is 22 miles off the Ventura coast and is 23.5 miles long and 7.5 miles wide at its center.

It is considered the most roughhewn and topographically diverse of the northern Channel Islands--boasting the 2,470-foot volcanic peak of Picacho del Diablo, jagged canyons, wide white beaches, rich pine forests, steep volcanic cliffs and majestic Caribbean-like sea coves dotted with more than 100 sea caves.

But most of it is off-limits to visitors.

Setnicka hopes that will change.

“Public use is what we do,” he added. “It’s a stretch for a private organization because there are issues of liability.”

The addition could allow hikers to venture onto the peaks of a more mountainous section of the island covered with lush plants, and down to the wide sandy beach around Prisoner’s Harbor facing the mainland. Camping on the beach is another possibility.

“I think it would be exciting for the public to use the pier at Prisoner’s Harbor and then hike toward the east end,” Setnicka said.

According to Devine, the Park Service and the Nature Conservancy have cooperated in managing the island resources for the past five years.

Park rangers helped with a prescriptive burn to encourage the regeneration of native plants, and the two agencies work together monitoring vegetation and sharing research information.

Both groups say they plan to continue to work together to eradicate the wild pigs that roam the island using their horns like rototillers.

“Weeds and pigs are the things we are concerned about,” Setnicka said. “And that’s enough to chew on for a long time.”

But both agree that if the Park Service had some ownership of the rugged area owned by the Nature Conservancy, the rangers might be able to extend their management expertise onto more of the island.

“They don’t have as much staff as we do,” said Carol Spears, spokeswoman for Channel Islands National Park. “Basically, we have more of an ability to be on the ground and working.”

During the latter part of the 19th century and into this century the island was used to ranch sheep--which wiped out many of the island’s unusual indigenous plants.

After a protracted legal battle, Congress helped the Park Service acquire 6,400 acres on the eastern tip of the island in February 1997 from the Gherini family. The Nature Conservancy bought its 54,500 acres in 1978 from Dr. Carey Stanton of Los Angeles for $2.5 million.

If the deal goes through transferring a piece of what was once Stanton’s land to the Park Service, it will not be without irony.

In a meeting in 1976, Stanton met Park Service officials, who asked if he would be interested in donating his land.

According to John Gherini’s book “Santa Cruz Island: A History of Conflict and Diversity,” Stanton emphatically declined and said he thought he had done a better job managing the island than the Park Service had done in managing Anacapa and Santa Barbara islands--which were then part of the Channel Islands National Monument.

Today the difference between what was formerly the Gherini ranch--which the Park Service now owns--and the Nature Conservancy preserve is clear.

Since taking over the island, Channel Islands National Park has been working to remove close to 2,000 feral sheep that roamed the hillsides and ate the grass down to a nub. But the rolling hills of the east side of the island are still short-cropped and crisscrossed with trails from almost a century of sheep grazing.

In contrast, the western end of the island is covered with high native grasses, coastal sage and lemonade berry and coyote bushes.

Native vegetation has made a comeback and is considered by some a model for what the islands in the park can become if allowed to return to their natural state.