Cattle Battle

SANTA ROSA ISLAND —  The Vail family and their Mexican vaqueros have run their cattle on the rolling hills of this remote island for almost a century.

Now, they say, the National Park Service is trying to run them off the island--wielding the Endangered Species Act as a weapon.

When park service officials look at the undulating grasslands of Santa Rosa they see streams flowing heavy with cattle urine, and fragile, endangered plants threatened by the trampling hooves of the Vails’ boisterous herd.

They see a beautiful island ecosystem under park protection that they are charged with overseeing for the public--and posterity.

The Vails see their livelihood--and their faith in the federal government--being destroyed.

A little more than a decade ago, the island 45 miles off the Ventura coast was drawn into the Channel Islands National Park.

As Russ Vail tells the story, the government forced Vail & Vickers, the firm named for the two families that owned the island, to sell. So they brokered the best deal they could.

“We didn’t want to be in the park in the first place,” Vail said. “But they drew a line around us. We made the best of it. The bill was passed and we were taken.”

In what he refers to as a gentlemen’s agreement, they consented to sell the island for nearly $30 million and keep ranching until 2011.

There was but one proviso: that the ranchers continue to manage the island in an environmentally sound way. In 1986 that meant doing things the way they always had.

But environmental standards have become more stringent, the amount of scientific data available from the island has increased and even interpretations of the original agreement between the ranchers and the park service have changed with time.

Now, 11 years later, the Vails are fighting to keep their ranch afloat.

The National Park Service--with angry environmentalists and the State Water Quality Control Board demanding improvements--has put together a new 14-year Resources Management Plan.

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The plan--the third since the Vails sold the island, and by far the most restrictive--would require the ranchers to fence off vast tracts of the island to grazing cattle and drastically reduce the number of animals that can graze in the other fields still open.

The park service contends that there never was any agreement with Vail & Vickers to let it continue ranching on the island.

“We are aware of no agreement between Vail & Vickers and the park service regarding continued use of the land,” said Kate Faulkner, chief of resources management for Channel Islands National Park, who was involved in assembling the plan.

But park Supt. Tim Setnicka, who talked with government and park officials who made the original deal, disputes that.

“In essence, the understanding is the Vails would have the ability to ranch substantially as they had in the past for 25 years, once purchase of the property occurred,” Setnicka said.

The park service says it needs to restrict ranching to satisfy the state water board, uphold the Endangered Species Act, live up to its mandate and stave off a legal challenge.

In effect, under the plan, the Vails will lose about 16% of their grazing land by next spring, and close to 50% over the next four years.

John Reynolds, director of the Pacific west region of the National Park Service, is expected to approve the plan.

And the Vails must agree to the terms of the plan before the park service will grant them a new special use permit to ranch the island--a process they will go through in the next few months.

The ranchers will also have to phase out the deer and elk that live on the island as part of their hunting operation.

The Vails say the plan will send them belly up in no time flat.

“With all the land they are asking us to set aside, we will be put out of business,” said Tim Vail, Russ’ son and a onetime cowboy who now makes his money as a horse surgeon. “Pretty much right away ranching will become untenable.”

The Vails feel betrayed.

But senators and congressmen who helped them hammer out a deal are no longer in power, and the Vails, who settle cattle deals with a handshake and a promise, say they were too naive to write everything down in their government agreement.

“We feel just like the Indians,” said Tim Vail, leaning against a dusty cattle enclosure fence in the blazing island sunshine. “A treaty was made, and then not kept. We are outraged.”

The Vail and Vickers families bought the 54,000-acre island in 1902. The Vickerses were primarily silent partners in the operation. Shortly afterward, the firm Vail & Vickers brought cattle to the island as part of a “stocker” operation, fattening animals for market on the lush island grasses.

Today the ranch is run much as it was nearly 100 years ago.

Untouched dunes curl across white sandy beaches, chubby sea lions wallow on giant rocks and brown pelicans swoop low over the waves in formation.

On the grassy slopes and sandy beaches are many rare species--such as a sturdy grove of Torrey pines, a tiny patch of Munchkin dudleya, and in the spring, nesting western snowy plovers.

Four generations of the family have worked the land and moved the cattle. The cattle cycle follows the seasons.

Each fall, frisky young cattle weighing about 350 pounds arrive on the island to be fattened up. For 18 months they roam the fields.

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Starting in May, the cowboys round up the heaviest cows, now about 900 pounds. On the final day vaqueros rise from their bunks at 4:30 a.m. and drive the cattle down a long pier--a thunderous cloud of hooves and dust--onto a boat specially designed for shipping the terrified animals across the Santa Barbara Channel to Port Hueneme.

For the first nine years both parties were largely satisfied with the agreement.

But then in 1995, 16 endangered species proposed for listing were found on the wind-swept Channel Islands. Ten of those exist on Santa Rosa, or did historically. Some evolved to survive in Santa Rosa’s harsh island ecosystem, and are found nowhere else on earth.

In addition, after taking samples of water in the island streams and finding excessive amounts of fecal coliform from cow manure, the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a cleanup or abatement order to the national park.

Since failure to comply meant steep fines, the park appealed, and set to work on the current resource management plan.

Armed with information on the pollution and the endangered species, a watchdog environmental group filed suit in December, charging the park service with mismanagement.

The suit by the National Parks and Conservation Assn. awaits a hearing in federal court.

The new plan is an attempt to comply with the latest environmental standards, as well as fend off the legal challenge.

In the eyes of Brian Huse, whose Washington, D.C.-based group filed the suit, the Vails were paid $30 million for the island and the grazing rights that they held.

“Vail & Vickers owned Santa Rosa for a long time, and they act like they still do, even though the island is now public park land,” Huse said. “Santa Rosa is a national park, not a private ranch, or a game park.”

Huse alleges that the Vails are essentially getting to graze their cattle for free and doubts that there was ever an agreement. “It is not in the deed of sale,” he said. “It is not in the legislation. And it is not in the special use permit.”

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As pressure mounts for the park service to act, it has officially taken that same line. Except for Supt. Setnicka.

He said he has talked to Bill Ehorn, who was park superintendent when the agreement was made, and former Rep. Robert Lagomarsino, who helped draft the original Channel Islands National Park legislation.

The problem, he said, is that the agreement is not written down anywhere.

But Setnicka points to the 2011 date used by both sides as evidence that there was an accord. Lagomarsino also recalls that an agreement was reached.

“My understanding was that they would be able to stay there for at least 25 years to continue ranching,” the former congressman said. “If I’d known how this would turn out, I probably would not have included them [Santa Rosa] in the national park.”

Setnicka said the Vails’ mistake is that they treated their agreement with the government like a cattle deal.

The Vails say the endangered species legislation and the newest resource management plan are being manipulated to muscle them off the island before their time is up.

They said they have cooperated with the parks and already fenced off certain pastures where endangered plants grow and where the Western snowy plover nests.

“They are moving us off parts at a time so we can no longer exist,” Tim Vail said.

Setnicka worries about the larger message this dispute could send. “I think there is a big question of trust on the part of the federal government side,” he said. “The next time we say something and reserve these rights, what is someone going to say?”

In the meantime, the Vails are unlikely to throw in the towel. They have fought the federal government before--in a 17-year battle with the military. Huse says they have hired a lobbyist in Washington.

On Wednesday, Rep. George Radanovich (R-Fresno) weighed in, introducing a bill in Congress that would force the park service to reissue the cattle company’s special use permit without any reduction in the number of grazing animals allowed on the island.