{"id":570881,"date":"2026-02-06T16:32:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/570881\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T16:32:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T16:32:17","slug":"hunters-and-non-hunters-decry-new-plan-to-eradicate-mule-deer-from-catalina-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/570881\/","title":{"rendered":"Hunters and Non-Hunters Decry New Plan to Eradicate Mule Deer from Catalina Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hunters and non-hunters alike are opposing a mule deer eradication plan on Catalina Island that was recently approved by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. On Jan. 30, CDFW signed a Restoration Management Plan that was submitted by the Catalina Island Conservancy<\/a>, which owns 88 percent of the island. The RMP<\/a> calls for the deer herd to be exterminated by sharpshooters over the next five years.<\/p>\n

The CIC estimates the island\u2019s current muley population at around 1,800 and says it cannot be managed through hunting alone. Hunting groups say this is an overestimation of deer numbers, and that the organization has never had a proper management plan. Their biggest criticism is that CIC wants to eliminate the herd, instead of managing it through regulated hunting.<\/p>\n

\u201cConsidering the backlash, I\u2019m surprised it was permitted,\u201d Sportsmen\u2019s Alliance<\/a> vice president Brian Lynn tells Outdoor Life. \u201cWhy are you paying sharpshooters to knock deer back when hunters would do it? They would pay to do it, and they would eat the meat.\u201d <\/p>\n

Other wildlife groups, including animal rights groups that typically lean anti-hunter, are also speaking out against the eradication plan. They don\u2019t want to see the island\u2019s deer eliminated, either. Dianne Stone, an advisor and historian for the Catalina Island Humane Society<\/a>, has called the plan \u201cimmoral\u201d and \u201cunnecessary.\u201d <\/p>\n

Representatives of both stripes are featured in Killing Catalina<\/a>, a full-length documentary that HOWL for Wildlife<\/a> released on Jan. 28. HOWL\u2019s founder Charles Whitwam says CDFW signed the RMP around the same time the film premiered on the island.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very unique coalition that I have never seen before,\u201d Whitwam says of the different groups he worked with in making the documentary. \u201cPeople on all sides of the political and environmental spectrum have come together to oppose eradication. What\u2019s really interesting is to hear representatives from the Catalina Humane Society saying, \u2018We\u2019re fine with hunting, and that\u2019s the best option. We want ethical hunting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a history of mule deer hunting on Catalina Island, which began sometime after the deer were introduced there in the 1930s. In this sense, mule deer are non-native, but Whitwam disagrees with CIC\u2019s stance that they\u2019re \u201cinvasive.\u201d He says the island\u2019s deer have never been classified as invasive by California wildlife managers, and that they are still considered a public resource of the state. (The island\u2019s bison herd<\/a> is a different story, and Whitwam says he\u2019s unsure how they will fit into the RMP.)<\/p>\n

Whitwam explains that Catalina mule deer hunting was traditionally reserved for island residents and their guests, or hunters who were willing to book with a local guide. The hunt was opened to public, DIY hunting in 2020. Hunters can get Private Land Management<\/a> tags issued by CDFW to the Conservancy, and the organization allocated around 500 tags a year between 2010 and 2023. In 2024, however, the state wildlife commission doubled the number of available tags. Of those 1,000 tags, 750 were utilized by hunters and 379 were filled.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Chase Myhre with a nice muley buck from Catalina Island. Photo courtesy Ben Myhre<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Conservancy\u2019s population count at that time was 1,800 deer. So, 22 percent of the population was taken out during that one season,\u201d says Whitwam. He points out that harvest rates from previous years were closer to 13 percent. \u201cAt the end of the season, the conservancy called that a failure<\/a>. Then they went back to a locals only hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitwam says this \u201cfailure\u201d claim is also undercut by harvest data, which shows that bucks have also been killed with PLM permits, and that harvesting does hasn\u2019t been a real focus of the Conservancy. A local outfitter<\/a>, Ben Myhre, who runs approximately 70 percent of the guided hunts on Catalina Island, has likewise told Whitwam that harvesting does has never been a requirement there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen there\u2019s the population count itself, which we also take issue with,\u201d Whitwam says. \u201cI asked [the Conservancy] how they got their numbers? They said, \u2018Well, we use spotlight surveys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

These surveys are exactly what they sound like: People drive the island roads at night with spotlights and count reflections from deer\u2019s eyes. The Conservancy then takes those estimates and extrapolates them across the whole island. But Whitwam says that when they flew thermal drones while making the documentary, they saw that deer populations were not uniform across the island.<\/p>\n

The CIC and its supporters say these mule deer are damaging the ecological health<\/a> of Catalina Island, while also fueling wildfire risk. In an interview with CBS News<\/a>, Scott Morrison, the conservation and science director for the Nature Conservancy California, said, \u201cCatalina Island can either have a functional biodiverse ecosystem or it can have deer. It cannot have both.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

One of Mhyre\u2019s clients with another Catalina Island buck and the Pacific Ocean in the background. Photo courtesy Ben Myhre<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what\u2019s at stake here,\u201d Lauren Dennhardt, Catalina Island Conservancy senior director of conservation told the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s important for us to essentially do the right thing to make sure that this island stays and gets even better in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Conservancy is still planning to hold a locals only hunt starting in September. The number of available tags has been capped at 200. It\u2019s unclear when the sharpshooters could start killing deer, but they are now required to shoot only from the ground. A previous RPM that called for aerial culling was cancelled due to concerns from the island\u2019s residents, most of whom live in Avalon.<\/p>\n

Whitwam says the town itself could also present a problem for eradication. The city of Avalon, along with an entity called the Island Company, owns 12 percent of Catalina Island. And because Avalon leaders oppose the eradication plan, he says, the city has now established ordinances to prohibit the killing of deer within city limits. The RMP calls for tranquilizing city deer, and then either euthanizing or surgically sterilizing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the city of Avalon] are formally filing objections to the RMP permit and the eradication. And there\u2019s several more lawsuits coming from other groups who oppose this,\u201d Whitwam says. \u201cIt all just stinks to high heaven, honestly. For our department [CDFW], who should be the scientific authority over wildlife, to be completely silent on this, it really poses a bigger problem. Like, what\u2019s going on with our agency that we trust to manage our wildlife? And what are they basing their decisions on?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dac Collins contributed reporting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hunters and non-hunters alike are opposing a mule deer eradication plan on Catalina Island that was recently approved…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":570882,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[27],"tags":[37193,139210,246294,163213,248261,248262,164102,248263,159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":["post-570881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-california-department-of-fish-and-wildlife","tag-catalina-island","tag-catalina-island-conservancy","tag-cdfw","tag-charles-whitwam","tag-eradication-plan","tag-mule-deer","tag-rmp","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wildlife"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116024649019053017","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}