Channel Islands National Park consists of five islands off the coast of Southern California and is often referred to as “The Galapagos of North America”. These islands, San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa, and Santa Barbara, contain unique plants and animals, some of which are only found on these islands, such as the Island-Scrub Jay (Aphelocoma insularis). In the 1800s, ranchers inhabited the islands and brought with them cattle that grazed so much of the islands for years that the islands have still not fully recovered. However, with the cattle and feral pigs eventually removed from the islands and restoration efforts ongoing, the vegetation that had been depleted is finally able to regrow. Today, Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) have been reintroduced and are known to breed on the islands. This unique landscape, which is vastly underdeveloped, is home to numerous bird species that the WFVZ Bird Museum and Research Center helps monitor to understand how bird species are coping with restoration efforts as well as climate change and to help the National Park Service (NPS) make management plans for the future.
Starting in 2008, the NPS Learning Resource Center brought in Dr. Linnea Hall, the Executive Director of the WFVZ, to help design, implement, and conduct a population estimation project for the Northern Island Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus anthonyi), and this project was two-year effort on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands that involved about 60 volunteer ornithologists, several agency partners, and hundreds of hours of work to organize and execute. Specific people who really helped the WFVZ make this project happen were: L. Dye, Ecologist and Data Archivist for NPS Channel Islands; Dr. T. Stanley at the USGS in Colorado; S. Teel, former head of the Learning Resource Center for the NPS; and the tough group of biologists who combed the hills and plateaus of the islands looking for this species!
Since 2015, the WFVZ Bird Museum and Research Center has been participating in annual breeding bird monitoring on five Park islands (Anacapa, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Miguel, and Santa Rosa). In 2016, the WFVZ took over all monitoring for the NPS. The data from this project form the basis of many decisions about the management of the islands, and they are part of a program that extends back to when it was started in 1993. Dr. Linnea Hall and an amazing team of NPS staff and biologists, as well as private individuals, who are adept at identifying birds by sight and sound, conduct point counts between March and June annually on the islands. If you are a great point counter, and have abilities to hike rugged terrain and navigate off-trail, please contact Linnea to participate in this project (linnea@wfvz.org).
For additional information, please see these references for our work on the Channel Islands: