Plan to kill all the deer on Catalina Island challenged by LA County Counsel, Supervisor Hahn

A plan to shoot and kill all the deer on Catalina Island is being challenged by the Los Angeles County’s Office of County Counsel, who wrote the island’s conservancy a stern letter asking for a stay of the eradication plan, calling it “reckless” and “inhumane.”

The letter from Dawyn Harrison, county counsel, dated Feb. 27, was sent to the Catalina Island Conservancy (CIC) which manages 88% of the island located off the coast of Long Beach, and Charlton H. Bonham, director California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which granted the permit in January.

The CIC’s approved plan for eradication of the deer is part of an effort to better balance the island’s plant and animal life. The plan contends the deer are eating the native grasses, which harm the island’s ecosystem and increase the growth of more flammable, invasive grasses that can fuel a wildfire.

Harrison, along with LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn whose district includes Catalina Island, and LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone, says the total elimination of plant-eating deer will increase the island’s fire risk, not reduce it. They advocate thinning the herd, but leaving a small deer population to keep brush volume down.

This is similar to using grazing goats to reduce the amount of dry brush on hillsides and wild lands. Goats were recently left to graze on hillsides in Glendale to reduce wildfire risk. 

Marrone’s memo to Hahn in part warns that total elimination of grazing deer will surge growth of “fine fuels” that increase wildfire danger to the city of Avalon.

Marrone wrote mule deer eat native plant stubs that are often replaced by invasive grasses, which follows the CIC plan principles. Yet the chief said the fire intensity from the new grasses is not as strong as from the native plants.

Without at least some deer eating vegetation from hillsides, it would “elevate wildfire risk to developed areas, particularly in Avalon and other locations where heavy fuels are present within 200 feet of structures,” he wrote. The island is listed as a “Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,” by CalFire, the highest risk category.

The CIC disagreed with Marrone’s assessment, and dismissed Harrison’s letter and her ask for a stay.

“The Los Angeles County Counsel’s letter challenging the Catalina Island Conservancy’s restoration project is based on factually incorrect information that is not rooted in science and furthers misconceptions about the realities on Catalina Island,” wrote Pepe Barton, a spokesperson for the island’s Conservancy in an emailed response.

“The suggestion that removing invasive mule deer endangers human life is simply false,” Barton continued. “Wildfire and conservation experts agree: removing invasive deer will make the island more resilient to wildfire, not less.”

Barton quotes Robert Fitch, a fire ecologist and researcher, who agrees with the plan that the deer’s chomping on native plants, such as chaparral, thus allowing invasive grasses to grow in their place weakens the island’s resilience to wildfires.

“Reducing flashy fuels in order to decrease ignition risk is a cornerstone of wildfire management in Southern California,” Fitch wrote.

Barton said the Conservancy already does brush clearing and removing, and is working with leaseholders to create defensible space around camps and coves. It will be adding 11 staff members to be “wildland firefighters” while equipping them with protective gear. They will take direction from LAC Fire Department.

Harrison and Hahn argue that the Conservancy is going about hillside management all wrong. Harrison called it “a moral failure” because the killing of these animals living on the mostly tourist island for 100 years is a violation of the animals’ dignity.

“While these deer were introduced to the island a century ago, they are indigenous to California and deserve a strategy that respects their status as sentient creatures,” Harrison wrote.

The population of deer is estimated at 2,040 by the CIC, though they haven’t produced a survey or count documents, Hahn said. The mule deer have been part of the island’s ecosystem for 100 years and have become a favorite of many of the island residents.

Back in April 2024, the CIC advocated using helicopters flying low with sharpshooters to take out the deer. Hahn said 90,000 signatures were collected in opposition to the plan, which also was opposed by the Catalina Island Humane Society, who called the planned aerial shooting “brutal, inhumane, unnecessary and dangerous.”

That plan was dropped. But the new plan to use trained sharpshooters on the ground to carry out the killings over five years also drew Hahn’s opposition.

Harrison noted that the resource management plan included using helicopters to circle the deer and drop aerial nets to entangle them, so that they can be shot more easily while trapped. And also, dogs would be used to flush out deer hiding in bushes or in steep terrain, to expose them to waiting sharpshooters.

“First, the proposed methods of utilizing aerial net capture, nocturnal ground shooting with drone support, and hunting dogs over a five-year period are inhumane and deeply distressing,” Harrison wrote.

Hahn, in a video message listing several points why the plan is flawed, said wiping out an entire population of animals without a proper survey of their population is careless at best. “If you say there are so many deer you ‘have’ to kill every last animal, you don’t guess. You verify.”

Hahn has repeatedly suggested using sterilization to thin out the herd. But the CIC reject that option as too costly and not feasible.

“Proceeding with a five-year mass slaughter without a definitive, peer-reviewed population survey is scientifically reckless and erodes all public trust,” Harrison wrote.

She described their plan as a “moral failure” that attempts to protect endemic island species and their habitat at any cost. Harrison asked the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to adjust the plan to include sterilization and better fire-risk components. She also suggested the CIC issue more hunting permits to the public. Another option is relocating the animals to the mainland, she wrote.

Harrison said by not changing the plan and not taking into account Chief Marrone’s assessment regarding fire risks, the CIC and the state environmental agency that OK’d the permit “are prioritizing plant life over the safety of human residents.”

Harrison wrote that her office reserves the right to use other remedies at its disposal. This could include litigation.

Hahn, who has been fighting plans to eradicate Catalina Island’s deer population for nearly two years, said in her video message she will keep fighting to save the deer.

“We can protect Catalina’s ecosystem without pulling the trigger on total eradication of the deer that islanders have come to cherish. Because once they are gone, they are gone,” said Hahn in the video.