Santa Cruz Island: Restoring Balance

An Ocean Channel original film produced for Channel Islands National Park and The Nature Conservancy.

Islands are special places.

Santa Cruz Island, the largest island in California, has never been connected to the mainland.  As a result, it is home to many unique plants and animals. More than a thousand species inhabit the islands high peaks, deep canyons, pastoral valley and 77 miles of dramatic coastline. Twelve of these species are found nowhere else on Earth. So rich and unique are its flora and fauna that Santa Cruz, and its sister Channel Islands, are often called "the Galapagos Islands of North America."

Islands, however isolated and significant, are also uniquely vulnerable to human impacts.  A closer look at Santa Cruz Island reveals that time has indeed touched this natural paradise.  Santa Cruz Island has become a case study of the broad impacts of non-native species and provides hope for our ability to turn around impacts and restore degraded ecosystems. Eight rare plant species struggle for survival, and the Santa Cruz Island fox -- a small creature that was at the top berth on the islands food chain for thousands of years -- was recently added to the endangered species list.

John Muir said, "When you try to pick out anything by itself, you find it hitched to everything else in the universe."   A prime example of the "connectedness" of ecosystems and the unintended consequences of non-native species introductions was the plight of the Santa Cruz island fox. The direct cause of the decline of island foxes was predation by golden eagles. However, the true cause of island fox decline was put in place by a combination of changes that occurred over a period of 150 years. The combination of the introduction of non-native pigs, the removal of native shrublands by grazing animals, and the extirpation of bald eagles created an unnatural situation in which golden eagles could flourish. The feral pigs provided a year-round food supply for the golden eagles. The grasslands that replaced the native shrublands did not provide adequate
cover for the foxes. The fish-eating bald eagles no longer competitively excluded their cousins, the golden eagle. The result: predation by nonnative golden eagles drove three subspecies of island foxes to near extinction.

The National Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, and other partners began a concerted effort to live capture and remove golden eagles. However, they knew that until the feral pigs were removed from Santa Cruz Island and the
bald eagles re-established on the islands, the long-term survival of the foxes could not be assured.  This film documents the efforts to bring rare species back from the brink of extinction and restore the naturally functioning ecosystem of Santa Cruz Island.

Kate Faulkner
Chief, Natural Resource Management
Channel Islands National Park

Produced by: Michael Hanrahan, Ocean Channel Media Productions
Director of Photography: Dean DePhillipo
Written by: Lisa Grossman
Music: Christopher James Thomas
Executive Producer for Channel Islands National Park: Derek Lohuis

Time: 20 min
Year: 2008