Catalina Island, a jewel off the Southern California coast (and home to one of the world’s finest wine mixers), continues to face a critical environmental crisis that has been simmering for nearly a century. Introduced mule deer, once brought in to boost tourism through hunting, have since overrun the island's delicate ecosystem. Without natural predators, their population has exploded, leading to severe overgrazing of native plants, increased wildfire risks, and extreme biodiversity loss. The Catalina Island Conservancy's latest proposal—a five-year ground-based professional hunting program to fully eradicate the deer—represents a science-backed, humane solution to this longstanding problem. Yet, despite decades of evidence and successful precedents elsewhere, local residents and some outsiders continue to oppose any form of culling, prioritizing sentiment over sustainability.
The story of Catalina’s deer woes begins in the 1920s and 1930s, when mule deer were deliberately introduced to the Island as a game species to attract hunters and tourists. Starting with just 22 animals from California's Modoc County, the population quickly grew unchecked, fluctuating between 500 and 1,800 deer today. What started as an economic boon has since turned into an ecological nightmare, setting off a 75-year-old debate about how to manage this invasive species..
By the 1990s and early 2000s, scientific studies began to showcase the deer's destructive impact, including stunted growth in threatened plants like the Catalina ironwood and increased erosion from overbrowsing. The Conservancy, which stewards 88% of the island, has long argued that the deer create a vicious cycle by devouring native shrubs, allowing flammable invasive grasses to thrive, and thus fueling hotter wildfires. Despite this, opposition has persisted, with claims of Conservancy mismanagement fueling the fire.
Meanwhile, the conservancy has continued its annual recreational deer hunting program as a stopgap, but data shows it's ineffective for population control. In 2024, they issued 1,000 tags (up from previous years), but only 379 deer were harvested—far short of what's needed, as deer reportedly respond to pressure by breeding more.
"Hunting alone has not delivered the results the island urgently needs," said senior conservation director Lauren Dennhardt.
In response to immense public pushback, the Conservancy reluctantly abandoned its 2023 aerial sharpshooting plan in May of this year, and is now opting instead for a more measured approach which would include professional hunters on the ground or in vehicles. Introduced earlier this week, this new five-year program aims to eliminate the estimated 1,800 deer efficiently and ethically, allowing native vegetation to rebound and reducing fire hazards in a wildfire-prone region. Alternatives like sterilization, relocation, or predator introduction were evaluated and dismissed as impractical, each deemed to be too slow, too costly, or too risky for the island's rugged terrain.
As of right now, the current plan awaits approval from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, with recreational hunting scaled back to 200 resident-only tags this season to prioritize safety and efficacy.
Despite the clear science, local figures like LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn and groups such as the Coalition to Save Catalina Island Deer decry the plan as "drastic and inhumane," gathering nearly 90,000 signatures in petitions. Some residents view the deer as iconic, integral to the island's charm, while others, including non-locals, push for non-lethal options without acknowledging their failures on Catalina.
This resistance overlooks decades of successful deer eradications on other islands, where culling has led to remarkable ecosystem recoveries. On Secretary Island in New Zealand, a prolonged campaign removed red deer from over 8,000 hectares, allowing native forests to regenerate. In Queensland, Australia, eradicating 272 feral deer from Wild Duck Island protected threatened turtles and restored habitats. Similarly, on islands in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, eliminating invasive Sitka black-tailed deer restored forest ecosystems across multiple sites. These examples demonstrate that targeted hunting not only works but delivers biodiversity gains, reduced fire risks, and long-term ecological health—benefits Catalina desperately needs.
The Catalina deer debate is another example of a problem with a viable (yet deadly) solution that’s been dragged on for far too long. With all of the back-and-forth, it’s time for regulators to approve the plan and for the community to embrace responsible management once and for all.
Do we need to blast them from helicopters? Maybe not.
But let’s not forget that true conservation means making tough choices to save the ecosystem as a whole--not solely an invasive subset of it.
