(Music)
I'm gonna skip these notes, try these
different notes. So good evening, how's
everybody doing? so is it okay with you
if i take my hat off so I can see you
all?
okay good cause otherwise I'm gonna get
pretty hot, and if you've ever heard
me talk before what you need to know is
I'm pretty informal so you can ask me
questions as we go along but if you want
to get out of here within an hour you
might want to think about asking
questions at the end, becuase if you get me
me on a tangent I could go on forever and
ever and it might be better than what I
have written to talk about.
Alright so we'll go there and so it is
all about tomorrow so we're going to
spend as much time talking about what
we've done in the last decade but also
what I want to focus on is where the
future challenges or as I like to put it
you know what keeps me up at night and
then also want to talk a bit about
making the park relevant how do we all
need to do that. But it is the centennial
so it's my job to ask you questions
now and I come with prizes. So are you ready? okay
they're all like two the three to four
part questions so you have to listen to
the question and then you can raise your
hand and then I'll identify you
now you have to answer all parts we need
the second part wrong then i go to the
next person and then if you started it
off and raise your hand again you have
the benefit of the answer from person
two all right so we'll see what
we can do here
ok let's start off easy
are you ready?
how many parks are there in the National
Park System what is the largest what is
the smallest; three parts?
this is great this will eat up all my hour. if
you're close i start giving you brownie
points.
come on I know you're not all that shy
59 total ok so when I say national parks
I mean in the entire system so that you
start over yet, no, national park service
units, no all units: monuments, memorials
historic parks. but I'm gonna give you
credit to start because that was really
good.
okay yes? okay you're getting close, now
you go to the second one because you're close
but now what's the largest? okay who's
next?
no or else you would keep going. yes how
many? state park
ok so the largest, how many number how many
in the park system
yeah well she was close
ok she was a lot closer but what's your second choice?
No. Who's next? whoo, ok, Elias? Wrangell
St. Elias. keep going what's the smallest?
no. Ok last chance.
no. good try though, good try. ok so
you're gonna win congratulations. 413
parks, 413 remember they all represent,
you know, who we are, the fabric of
America, so they go anything from
national parks to national memorials
to national historic parks you know. so
we really have the whole gamut. the
largest one is Wrangell St. Elias National
Park and Preserve, 13.2 million acres
about the size of West Virginia.
alright and then the smallest I have to
read it.
Thaddeus Kosciuszko and you know
what that is?
oh you're looking it up. ohhh. Ah-ha! Well let's see
she didn't chime in so that's pretty good
it's only .02 acres and he
was an engineer during the Revolutionary
War in fact Thomas Jefferson said he was
one of the best Patriots they had ever met
and he's also responsible for designing
and building the fort at West Point.
Ok, so there we go, so that was number
1 ok so now you're nice and warmed up.
yes? Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Wrangell St. Elias
in Alaska so if you know Alaska
Alaska looks like this right? Wrangell St. Elias
is this whole corner here. it butts up
to Kluane National Park, the Canadian park.
Alright now I have a refrigerator magnet.
you can add, alright, so here we go
alright little tougher this time okay
how old is the National Park System, what was
the first national park, and who was the
president?
yes
ok
right. Grant.
alright very good all right now
this one you get the mug now this one is
not easy. In fact I had a couple times ago
Oh ok I get it. Ok. So. what is the
origin of the National Park Service
arrowhead? now you can't see it anymore.
Oh it's up there.
the origin of the National Park Service
arrowhead so basically what does it mean?
if you look at it it's up there,
what do you think it means up? it's up there too.
raise your hand okay going for another
one
okay now you're all warmed up right
yes sir?
right right so it was actually first a state
park it was a grant by Abraham Lincoln
but he granted it to the state of
California to take care of in the year
186...4 which is what's going on then is
the Civil War so you can imagine, you
know, what's going on in the country
and the president has this bill on his desk
and says hey, hey, what do you think about
establishing this park you know and it's like
really it's a civil war but he was so
foresighted that he, you know, he did. so that
was really good and it wasn't 1890 in which the
federal government took it back from
the state of California. there's a lot of
really good reasons for that, one is the
way it was being managed. they thought it should
be taken care of at a little higher standard.
ok so let's, let's start talking
about this evening. so as we said this is
the centennial and I asked you all of
our questions so it's been a great year
to celebrate
we've had a wonderful year here at the
the Channel Islands we've had lots of
celebration, we've reached out, touched hundreds
of people, thousands of people and I'll
even tell you what some of the programs
we do this year we've gotten up to some
of ours are reaching up to 5 million
people and it's all because of some of
the innovative technologies that we are using but
let's start in the beginning. and so
everybody knows with this guy is right?
oh, Pinchot, he's a little older than
Pinchot by maybe almost 100 years
but uh
not quite a hundred years. this was hard and
the reason I want to bring this up is,
you know this idea of a national park is older
than we all think, we think Yellowstone
in 1872, we think Yosemite,
but what really what was happening is
you have people like this gentleman
who's George Catlin that when he was
traveling across the middle of the
United States he was an artist and an
entrepreneur and a writer. he
determined that, hey look there's this
great section of the United States that
really ought to be set aside of what he
called 'the nation's park'. let me read to
you what he wrote and I believe it, yeah.
I'll tell you exactly what the year was.
he wrote this in 1833. so Catlin
became acutely aware that the balance of
nature was being destroyed because robes
were being made of bison and nothing
else was being used of the meat and
where the Indians were being asked to
hunt the bison, it would be paid in
whiskey he thought this was a big
mistake in 1833. he goes on and what he
wrote in his book letter and notes on
the Manners, Customs and Conditions of
North American Indian he said this
strip of country, this is roughly the strip he
is talking about, which extends from the
province of Mexico to Lake Winnipeg on
the north, is almost one entire plane of
grass which is an even must-be useless
to cultivating man. Can you imagine that,
useless to propogating man. It is
here and here
chiefly that the Buffalo dwell and with and
hovering above them live and flourish
the tribes of Indians whom God made for
the enjoyment of the fair land and its
luxuries is a melancholy contemplation
for me who has traveled as I have through the
realms and seen this noble animal in all
its pride and glory to contemplate it so
rapidly wasting from the world, drawing
an irresistible conclusion too, which one
must do, that its species is soon to be
extinguished and with it the piece of
happiness if not the actual existence of
the tribes of Indians who are joint
tenants with them and occupant and
occupancy of this vast and idle plain
and what a splendid contemplation too when
one who has traveled these realms and
can duly appreciate them, imagines them
as they might in the future be seen by
some great protecting policy of the
government preserved in their pristine
beauty and wildness and a magnificent
where the world could see for ages to
come.
what a beautiful and thrilling specimen
for America to preserve and hold up to
the view for refined citizens in the
world and future ages: a national park
containing man and beast and all the
wild and freshness of their nature's beauty. 1833.
I think that's some pretty forward
thinking that even back then when you
know we're really thinking about as the
the American destiny is that we're
thinking about how it is that we move
how is it that we conquer these new
lands how do we push people out of these
lands
how do we make it profitable for ourselves?
and you have one gentleman who is saying
'wait. maybe there is another purpose for these
types of lands.' so George Catlin. you
guys are more familiar with these two
right?
who are they? and John Muir, right, and
so the reason I put Teddy up here and
John Muir is this is, you know, one of
those famous conversations because John
Muir was very concerned about the
preservation of the world, and very concerned
about Yosemite because there was a
person who was in charge of forestry
under Teddy Roosevelt, and I heard his name over
here
Gifford Pinchot who is definitely that
the what they would say the father and
conservation or wise use of resources
because you know when you look in the
dictionary and you look up the word
resource and what do you see? you see the
definition says oil and gas and timber and
coal. that's what we thought of as
resources. today we don't think there's
natural resources being those things
necessarily it would be biology they
would be plants and animals and nature
things of that sort but in this
conversation
You know, part of it is talking about Hetch-Hetchy
and should you damn Hetch- Hetchy or not so
you know Muir was the more of
everything is connected to the land and
we got to preserve these very pristine
and beautiful places. now Teddy Roosevelt
becomes very instrumental in the
National Park Service because in 1906
Congress handed him a very unique law
and now it's called the Antiquities Act and
with the Antiquities Act, it gave the
president
actually the authority not Congress but
the president the authority to set aside
land that were specifically, specifically
for scientific novel or really to stop
the pillaging of archaeological sites in
the southwest.
we're very concerned that a lot of our
culture, we weren't calling it 'our heritage'
at the time but a lot of our culture of America was disappearing as people were
robbing from old Indian sites and there
was, you can find a lot of our history in
Europe and the museums instead of an
American museum or better yet in America
on the sites where they were originally found.
so Teddy used that power of the pen and
he created lots of national parks but at
that time they were called national monuments,
places like the Grand Canyon, that was a
national monument at first, Teddy Roosevelt created that site. he also
started the National Wildlife
Refuge System because as you all know Teddy
Roosevelt was an avid hunter he also
believed they need to protect the
species so he started that process
also. something like 33 different
national monuments were created under Teddy Roosevelt.
so he really believed in using his
authority to protect our wildlands. you
know the one thing I always like people
to remember is just this: all the things
that you'll see up on the screen that
tell about who we are it's really the
National Park Service's Organic Act that
was established in 1916 by Congress and
I would read it to you but I'm gonna let
you read it yourself. I want to point out
a couple things about it and I gotta
remember where the point is, I think it's here.
so you notice it says scenery
and if you heard me talk before, I do
like to talk about scenery because that
word 'scenery' comes in there by a very
famous landscape architect, anybody want
to know who that was who made sure that
word got in here? Olmstead.
Frederick Law Olmsted. It's actually his son
who made sure it got in here because Frederick
Law had passed away and most of
you know Frederick Law Olmstead because
he designed Central Park and what else
did he design? Yosemite Valley.
oh yeah yosemite valley. so the way you
go into the valley today and where you
pull out with your
car and view the waterfall, that was
Frederick Law Olmsted's design, of how that
would be done. so that's how scenery gets
in there. You, remember, scenery is a big
part during the early 1900s
because we as Americans are trying to figure
out who we are when we compare ourselves
to the Old World, you know
Europe, you know they had all these great
man-made features but what we had were these
great natural features, these cathedrals
like Yosemite and Yellowstone, and so
scenery becomes very important but you
also notice that it says natural and historic
objects so keep that in mind and then
the wildlife... Hey Bryson, it spelled wildlife
wrong again for me. I you know you guys
mm, is that spelled wrong? It is one word
isn't it? yeah is that right, is that what
happened. now actually Bryson didn't
misspell it, that's actually how it is
spelled because Congress intended that be
all nature.
okay so we
don't have these fancy words like
ecosystem and things like that yet.
alright so wildlife was purposely
spelled this way. but look at this, it's
to provide for the enjoyment of the same
and such matter that will leave them
unimpaired. that is the real trick whenever
you look at a national park and think
what's going on and why can't I do this, and
why can't I do that, well part of that is
because the managers are trying to figure
out is that going to cause impairment, because if it's
going to cause impairment Congress said
no, you cannot allow that and it's it's very
interesting under different
administrations this word it's
redefined a few times. but look at it also says
for the enjoyment of future generations
some people have said you've got a dual
mandate National Park Service you're
supposed to conserve unimpaired but for
the enjoyment of future generations and
how do we do that because as generations change
everybody's needs, desires, wants, they all
change too. Well the courts have said National
Park Service you can't provide enjoyment
for future generations
unless you have conserved things
unimpaired so it's not a dual mandate it's
you have to do
this and this before you can do this and
the courts have made a very clear so
that's been a big argument up into the 1990s
how do you do that balance. so let me
tell you a little bit more about Channel
Islands so if you're not familiar with our
legislation, a few things I wanted to point
out. the first one is, look, nationally
significant we got natural there's that
word wildlife spelled correctly this
time and marine, ecological, ok you don't
need to read it but look at this world
scientific values.
that's very unusual in a park. this is one of the
very unique parks, where they said science is
important, science. and also administer on a
low-intensity, limited-entry basis. what does
that mean to you? well what it means is
visitor use within the park used to be
limited/ carrying capacity but look again,
remember where it said impairment with our Organic
Act? look what it says here: to ensure
negligible adverse impact and if
you've heard me talk years ago I always
would ask people how much is negligible.
Is it this much, or this much? Tell
me how much negligible is, you know,
that's really up to the manager to try to
figure out but also look at special
fragility and sensitivity of park resources.
That's what makes the Channel Islands a pretty
tough place to manage. so let's talk
about some of the challenges that I've
tried to deal with since I've been here.
you all know about the creation of
marine reserves that was done. a lot of
the idea of coming about and looking
at a new way to manage fisheries was
based on a lot of long-term research-
science- that was done in this park.
looking principally at abalone but
also because Anacapa Cove had been closed
to all fishing since 1981, so you could
go in that area and see, what does an area
look like that might resemble some form
of naturalness and what you could see were
big differences from areas that were
fished versus areas that weren't fished. So that led the state of
California to look at maybe a different way
to manage fisheries resources and so
here you have, oh, i'm sorry
the... you have the marine reserves and
then the conservation area that set
that are set up around the island.
now you realize that our boundary only
goes out one nautical mile this dotted
line is the state's boundary and it goes
out three nautical miles and then you
get this darker boundary which is the
National Marine Sanctuary. so within that
one mile we got, we have three people
doing jurisdiction: National Park Service
and of course the state here and
the marine sanctuary, and then the marine
sanctuary has this whole area also.
and you all know that we do we do manage
this cooperatively with the Nature
Conservancy. Santa Cruz Island, the west
half or actually three
quarters basically of Santa Cruz is
managed by the Nature Conservancy, and
then this part by the National Park Service
and then this is owned by the United
States Navy. right but we managed it
with the navy. well yeah that's a good
question for the Nature Conservancy and
I can't speak for them but you know that
for the Nature Conservancy they're not
traditionally a land holder but you
know this is a very important piece of
property for them because you know they
have a constituency and
they've done some remarkable ecological
restoration in partnership with us and
and by them owning land and by them
practicing ecological principles and
doing some of these restoration projects
they are actually better at trying to
export that technology to other
countries and help them accomplish some
of their ecological restoration
challenges. now you all know that we had
rats right well remember that
and you probably all know we were sued
over getting rid of the rats. now
that happened you know right before I
came but and you all know that we had
pigs and that happened while I was here
it was the eradication of the pigs and you know
one of my... well it's sad when you see
your picture in the newspaper and
posted in the hall of shame but you know
these are these are hard decisions
making ecological decisions are very
difficult and they're difficult because
there are no easy answers and we always
seem to forget how did these things get here
to start with
and somebody made a decision
maybe not the rats they may have had the
decision of the ship wreck but on the
pigs somebody made the decision to put
pigs out there and so I would make a
decision
to take the pigs off. you know but it was always just surrounded
in a little controversy but the reason
we're getting rid of the rats was
because of the murrelets right
The Xantus murrelet, now, that's what we called it
then: Xantus murrelet, now what's it called now? the Scripps's
Murrelet right and so now take a look at
this, because of the work we did
now how many you know all about the
Scripps's Murrelet?
ok so a few of you. so you know that, you
know, most seabirds in general mostly
birds once they hatch from their eggs
and then they go visit mom now these
this case when they're about two years
old they're about the size of a cotton ball, they jump
off Anacapa Island you know, if you've ever been there, two
days old, right, two days old, they jump off
this hundred-plus foot cliff sometimes
they miss it
most times they don't. they bounce all
the way down and they hit the water and they
get on mom's back and go back to the
nest and then they eventually fledge and
then they only come back when they're
sexually mature. so I would think we
should give this bird chance to live I
mean like that's a pretty hard life but
when you got rats eating your eggs or
even sometimes the adult birds then you
know they could easily disappear so I
want you to know that with all the work
we've done on the Scripps's Murrelet and
also the work that's been happening in
Mexico and the Coronado's that we have
been able to bring this bird back and in
fact these were some of the headlines
from the Fish and Wildlife Service news
release island restoration supports
conservation to specific species in
seabird. Now what they're talking about is
the Scripps's and the Guadalupe Merlins in
this case so what we were able to do is
protect this animal and prevent it from
having to go on the endangered-species list by
being a little bit proactive like getting
rid of a non-native animal the rat. but
you know there's other things we've done
for seabirds that we don't often hear
about and one is the actual restoration
of the land. so this is Scorpion
Rock. look at Scorpion Rock in March of
2007 and look at it in February 2015.
this was all about getting non-native plants
off and then starting a nursery and
putting native plants back on and so now
what we're seeing are birds coming back
to this little islet and nesting
and then they're very well protected
this was closed to people so it's not
just getting rid of the non native
animals sometimes you have to have to
restore some of the habitat that's
been overrun by non-native species of
vegetation
well I don't know what happened there
but i must have been a briefing yet so
then there was the fox right the whole
fox situation and that was, that really
came into play as soon as I got here. the
first thing that Tim Coonan handed me when I
came into the office was, you know the
previous superintendent wouldn't sign
the fox restoration plan, will
you sign it? and so I was like, well I thought I was
here to help restore these islands and so i
read through and said this is really a
good plan and so
I signed it and start putting it in
place and within a year- now i can tell
you it's a lot easier to restore a
species if it's not on the endangered
species list, but when it's on, there are some
rules you have to go by. but you know we
had all the foxes like on Santa Rosa,
they were all in captivity and then on
San Miguel, they were all in captivity, and on Santa Cruz
a majority of them were in captivity and I
want you to know because of all the
support from the public is that you all
got behind us, we were able to get money,
the Nature Conservancy was able to get
money, people like you gave money; you know I
can't tell you how many school kids
donated pennies to the Friends of the Island Fox
to buy radio collars so that we could put them
on the foxes. it was this year in the
centennial, what a great birthday present,
the fox was taken off the endangered
species list. fastest recovery of a
mammal off the endangered species list in the
history of the Endangered Species Act. you know and a
lot of that was because you all support what
we're doing and I have to say thank you
for doing that is, because you could have made
this a very rough challenge for us. but
what about, we all know about the bald
eagle, right?
no no we didn't have any bald eagles, why
didn't we have any bald eagles because DDT
right so we had
to try and figure out, you put them back
and they were always here so one of the
things we always talk about in ecosystem
management is it's like building a
puzzle right like building a puzzle
there's nothing more frustrating when
you go to build that puzzle to find out
that you're missing a piece, right, you
look all over the place, you look on the
floor, you can't find it. ok well here's one
of the missing pieces: the eagle and then
you find out when you're building it
you've got too many pieces right as I go
well how'd that happened well those are your
non-natives so it gets really
frustrating when you're trying to build
that ecosystem puzzle.
this is one of the ones we want to we
want to put back yeah and there's lots
of great stories that we have about
bald eagles. lots and lots of stories.
but here's what I want you to know is on
the northern Channel Islands, 9
breeding pairs, at least 14 eggs last year
its percentage, i'm not going to
read all those to you, 8 chicks fledged and
this is where Princess Cruz is,
it's over on, that was the one, you know the one who was born
here. now look down below here, this is
the Pacific Region Bald Eagle Recovery
Plan.
these are the goals of the plan and
here's where we are: all islands at
sixty-three percent success rate or just
off the goal, fledglings attempts, they
want 1, her nest, we're at .95
so almost there. So it could be the last couple
years, the drought could have played a
big a big role in that
but the but the beauty is you can now go
to the Channel Islands and see bald eagles.
well here's one we never hardly ever
talk about because most people don't
know that we re-established peregrines out
there too, right peregrines, and you know I
love this one it's like everybody show
me your ring finger you know here
because we can see all these little
tags, you can't see them here and here but here
but yeah actually do you not love these guys but
you know we look at their their success
over time and again let's look at the
target is sixty-eight percent and 1.5 and
look where we are
a nest success for peregrine falcons
and productivity
so now you go out there and see
peregrine falcons that was the pieces that was missing and
this should give you some idea what the
trend is for a peregrine falcons now the
reason you see this gap here is that
there wasn't a lot of monitoring going
on between 2007 and then we got a- I'll
call it a bucket of money- from the
Montrose Settlement Funds which was the
DDT lawsuit we were able to look at them
in eagles more comprehensibly but you
can see we're on a good upward trend for
numbers of territories of peregrine
falcons. give you some idea where they are.
yeah isn't that amazing?
I you know I looked at I was saying, my goodness
can we get any more peregrine falcons
on San Miguel and then they said
well why are you looking at San Miguel,
look at Anacapa you know.
yeah look how small it is. what's that? and
it does right and and we're going to do
something even more unique and I'm going
to talk about it now. here is we're going
to put a cam- one of those webcams- on a
peregrine nest and it will be the
first webcam that we've been told of a
wild
nest. all the other ones you see are on
buildings
and this is gonna be one of the first ones so
you're going to be able to watch
hopefully peregrines from, you know, the comfort
of your home having breakfast in bed and
would be kind of nice. so you know I had
some infrastructure problems and as you
know this one was a headache for most of
us and that's the course the new the new
stairwell on Anacapa. we replaced the
pier at Santa Rosa I remember my first
trip to the pier with my daughter who was
two and Dwight Willie saying oh I'll carry her
to the dock and as the boat hit the
side of the pier, and you guys know
as the boat hit the side of the pier and you just hear
this ratcheting back and forth and I'm thinking
oh my goodness but what have I gotten
into. you know when you're biologist you're
hoping to come here and do a lot of
biology and cultural resources and when you
come here and you have to do
infrastructure problem challenges it's
a little tougher for us. you remember that's
the old Anacapa stairway, remember
that we actually had to put PVC pipe on the
handrail because they were rusting away
so
poorly that you would slide your hand
down you would cut yourself and pieces
of slag were falling off and then
hitting people in the head so that was
quite the challenge to get that fixed.
but you know the other thing was the we
took on the old schoolhouse on the
Santa Rosa ranch and remember this is
what it used to look like and now what
we've done is we put it back to its
original size so the original
schoolhouse assistance building right
here so now we're back to the the period
of significance for the Santa Rosa school house
instead of being converted to a
residence for somebody so if you go out
there today you'll see a little bit
different building. In fact there it is
there you go.
now let's talk about some challenges.
ok yeah, so and then you're going to say
well yeah but you forgot that one and
you forgot that one so I didn't want to
be here all night so I didn't want to
get them all here tonight but here's one
the big one
Anacapa crane. so condemned that crane
I don't even know how many years ago but
it takes time to get money and it's been
in line and then so you all understand
when we go to get money we compete on a
national basis and so they look at all
the parks and what are their needs for
line item construction and then decide
who's going to get what money when.
so we thought we were gonna get money in
2016 and then somebody else important enough
it looks like 2018
we're going to finally get a new Anacapa
crane and my staff will be so happy when
that happens so we have to quit lugging
things up the stairs but also we won't
have to use anymore to take stuff out there so
Anacapa crane on the horizon.
oh so that's a great question
so we pull in and there's actually a
pipe that comes in right here and so
either with the barge but what we've determined we
can actually do it cheaper with the Ocean
Ranger with some big tanks and we use a
large fire pumps and then we actually
push the water all the way up to the
water building factories. and uh and
Sterling is going to come talk to you
about this at the next conversation that
he has on Shore to Sea but this
the veil and vicars our ranch house
built i believe in 1890 and so
you know has no foundation, bet you
didn't know that, I bet you didn't know it doesn't
have any shear wall protection I bet you
didn't know it still has two wire
electricity it needs a new roof and it
sort of ratcheting so Sterling is going
to oversee a project to put a foundation
on and get some new windows in it get a
new roof on it and make sure that we can
protect this historic resource and share it
with the public and tell the story of
the ranch in years on the island. now
what you're going to also notice when
you go out there is unfortunately this
tree right here is part of the problem.
we thought we could save it. I've already
received numerous letters, I'm not looking for
anymore so just to be honest with you I have
received numerous letters about not
cutting that tree and and I appreciate
not cutting the tree because they do add
character to the house so we're gonna we're going to
go ahead and start growing a new
cypress tree so that when we do have to
take this one out we can start to bring
a new one back up and try and rebuild that
framing of the house with the cypress tree
in the future but right now it is it's
in a bad place.
no it's not native, it's not native but
because of cultural landscapes we
try and keep some the integrity of
the landscape and since it's a
non-invasive tree in that area what we
feel okay that we can manage it and we can
put it back to non-invasive
There's other areas where we want to look at
trees and be careful what we put back because we
don't want to create an invasive problem.
so here's something keeps me up at
night when you get that call that says
oh did you know there's a squid boat on
your beach and my first question is or
thought is... what do you think it is? rats.
that's what I think-rats- so we're
actually working on a biosecurity
plan and gonna work with the squid
fishery to see how is it that maybe we
can react very quickly to put rat bait
on these boats immediately so when they
go ashore because this one was actually
high and dry.
I mean can you see it's actually land right here
and it found the only rock at
Skunk Point.
I mean it's unbelievable like the only
rock, and I'll tell you, the owner was very
very cooperative we did get rat
poison out there he said his ship was
clean. it was very clean
we had no worry but what happens if we
do get a dirty boat out there and it does
have rats on it?
yeah we've got only about 48 hours to
try and get get the rats at 48 hours
they can penetrate into the island so we
have that keeps me up.
we've had five boat groundings this past year.
now the other thing,
yeah they're not all squid boats, a lot of them are
pleasure craft we've had one sink also
for the thing that you all probably
don't know if you all drove here you know
you had to have car insurance right
you know boaters don't have that kind of thing. you can
but how many do? and so it's really up to
vessel assist to try and figure out are
they going to get reimbursed? there is no
federal pot of money.
there's a federal pot of money to get
all the oil and greases off the boat but
not get the boat off the rocks.
well then it becomes a problem for the
sanctuary and myself just because, now we got
this boat and what happens if it breaks up
and we got a mess everywhere so that
that keeps me up.
(murmuring) oh he got pulled off
yeah he got pulled, he paid he he paid
everything to a salvage company and
everything came off nicely without, well
he had quite a bit of damage to his boat but..
What's that? he did save the boat
yeah, they had to put floats on it right
away because it did have a considerable hole
in it. so I like to use this cartoon
to talk to you a little about climate change. Now I
understand the environment may be
changing and we won't be talking about
climate change for while but even if we're
not talking about it I'm going to talk
to you about it.
ok and I'm going to talk to you about it
because it really means something more
to me than it does most. so this was Santa
Barbara one year ago
Santa Barbara landing cove on the
island one year ago.
ok remember that El Nino we were
supposed to have
and all the rain we got last year? ok
right. We didn't get any rain but we got a
very angry ocean very angry. we saw
20-foot swells out here. now I couldn't
find the most recent picture but this
pile is no longer there, that pile is no
longer there,
that pile is no longer there, and that
the crane is because the crane is on a
pedestal- concrete pedestal- down here and
it's mounted to it so we have had some
engineers go take a look at it and we've
done the bathymetry and we're hoping
to get some money to try and get this
back open within the year so Santa
Barbara will remain closed for a period
of time.
ok so then there is Scorpion and
so a lot of people if you don't
know the story the others like will
Russell why don't you tell us
okay well I actually had done an engineering
analysis on this pier a couple years ago
and that's why we have these
guardrails put up, because they found that, you
know that would help strengthen the pier
a little bit because they're welded onto
this bridge. now you all know this is a
rail car, a flat bed rail car. So
California's like the only state that
adaptively reuses rail cars. It's a great
idea.
unfortunately they don't hold up very
well in marine environments they rust pretty
quick. and so after this little storm I
had them go out and take a look and the
engineer came back and said he didn't
believe that the railcar could hold its
own weight. so then the question was, well how
many passengers can you allow to go on
that pier. and there was a mitigation
we I could have allowed people to go out
on that pier if we would have, if Island Packers
been out there every
time and we would have had water jugs
set up on the pier that would mimic the
weight and they would fill up the jugs
and if it if it held up then you could
let people off and then every time you
went out there you have to retest. every
time. it didn't seem very practical to me.
so what we've done is we've actually
done an environmental impact statement
and we're looking at a new pier and but
before we even get to the new pier
where the existing rail car is we
actually have a manufactured gangway
that was supposed to be put in place
last week but they couldn't get a barge
and so now it's scheduled for the 16th. we're
going to put a gangway here that's about
90 feet long.
what's really neat about this is we've
engineered it so that this gangway, when we go
to build this pier, this gangway would get
picked up and it will become this
gangway right here. so we're trying to
save some money. and what we're also
looking at is powering in, making sure
that all of our piers are in a
situation where we can power-in so our
boat will no longer go here and use
ladders either. you remember Joe Wysocki
and he died. he died because he fell
from a ladder and he fell from that ladder and
he hit his head on a boat and what we
want to do is try and take the some of
the degrees of movement out of boats. Island
Packers can do that because they power in to
a pier but we didn't build most of our
docks, especially Anacapa and Santa Barbara,
to be powered-in to. They're not supported
at the base so we need to rethink how we
do all of our design so you can power in.
why do you power in? keeps the boat from going
up and down as much and then going
side to side it's a and they can hold it
steady. well we're going to do the same
thing with our boats is we're going to
widen this end so our boat can come
long side and we can match up to this
landing right here.
Now I say it's a landing. our goal is to get rid
of ladders. we are going to try and get
rid of ladders this is going this gangway
will be adjustable so that when Island
Packers comes in, we will be able to take
it and match it up with the bow of the
boat. it'll be a little bit of a gap for
you to step across but you will always step
forward and when you are on the island
and you get back on the boat you're
going to face forward and step across
to the boat. no more holding onto a
ladder and stepping backwards. now it's
gonna be a long process because we have
5, uh 4, 5 piers we have to work on. something
we just have to maybe do some wells but
in this particular case and this is
scheduled for construction starting in
the winter of 2017. so hopefully
we'll have temporary access hopefully in
another week and then we'll have this
with the moving forward and backward, I mean
never moving backward we're always moving
forward to get on and off the boat by
the early 2018... yeah the end of 2017
yeah 2017-2018, right, sorry, right. no not right
right right, not January, right. so all the all the
environmental documentation is done and
now we're working on the design phase in
fact I just want to Denver, took this in
front of our development advisory board
and they told us to continue moving
forward. (murmuring) no, I've actually been given
the money to move this forward.
yes. (murmuring) so that's been asked, so I'm gonna go
back to the engineers and see what we
can do about it being a dock you know.
it's it's not as nice a place as
Prisoners. So as long as it
doesn't drive the price up because I do
have a fixed price we have to work with
so be looking for this.
yes? uh-huh and the end of calendar year
2017
oh yeah next next week next week this
boat is going next week that's what they
promised me but they promised me two
weeks ago also and before that they
promised me a few days for that but it
was about a barge, they couldn't get a barge lined
up yes
yeah so that that's really good
that you noticed that
Oh
you mean here? right so we've looked at
all the bathymetry it's all sand and we've
also made sure that there was no eel grass
so we'll have no eel grass disturbance
that's part of the reason why we
couldn't go back here was because there
is a rock right here so low tides we had to
skiff and also what people
they only think about maintaining this,
every winter we gotta maintain this and
so that gets washed away and what other
folks don't realize this is a
significant cultural resource. it has
actually burials, so we want to
always try to avoid that
so yes it is a little longer it does
come out about it comes out to the same
of actually just a little bit deeper
than this but it was the it had to be
this far-out to get to deep
enough water for our boats
yes yes when we proposed steel piles
also because it would sea level rise
course as well as I was discussing this
with our development advisory board is
you know they want to know what
BFE was- base flood elevation plus
2 so here flood elevation here is 9
and then plus 2 would be 11 I had a plan
for that. I tell them I don't really care how
far the water comes up here but I care
is how high the water is here when it hits
this pier. that so we plan for it to come underneath
underneath it so that was
important but yeah to be steel pile
and so if we do have a large sea level rise
in 50 years
you can take the piles and raise it.
so concrete, you can't do that.
alright so this is my next challenge too
is the scrub jay you know and the concern
with the scrub jay it really comes down to
you all know that corvids are very
susceptible to West Nile virus. now we
don't have any West Nile Virus on the
island- yet- but the climate change
predictions would show we can change the
climate enough on Santa Cruz that we
actually would have a a period of
incubation for West Nile Virus and we do
have the mosquito that carries the West
Nile virus already on the island.
so now we're trying to figure out so
what do you do about this bird?
You know did it exist on all the other
islands, maybe, maybe not. There's some anecdotal
information that says that they did and
if they did, do we put them on the other
islands? and what are the risks of doing
that? what will it displace, you know,
remember that islands aren't do go through
some theory they call Island
biogeography where sometimes things come
and sometimes things go and now we're at a place where
you let a species actually go but do you
let it go if it's being human driven
and if you believe climate change is
a human-driven force this really complicates it.
so I'm going to poll a bunch of scientists together
help me on the science side and then I'm
going to poll a whole bunch policy people help me with
what do we do about policies. and this is
one of my new problems you know for the
first time I have you on the boat you
know what this is
undaria and I'm going to tell you for
the first time we've now found it
on Anacapa Island. It's not supposed to be an open
ocean but we have it. Undaria, that's a any
of these docks underneath is the seaweed
that's growing on the docks and so it's
probably come out from boats and one of
the concerns were having is where we
find it on West Anacapa is also a big
area where there are lobster fishermen so the
question is you know they're they're
dropping their pots in this and when they bring
their pots up and then they're relocating the pots
are they moving the undaria to
different places. now you can't pick on
just fishermen here because it's on the
bottom of their boat so we got to figure out how
do we prevent this from occurring in the
future. so the big part is how do we keep
the islands good
how do we have next the next generation
love the park like you love the park. as
we all know there's about 16 million
people between here and Orange County. 152
different cultures.
how do we get those 152
different cultures to say that these
national parks are as much theirs as they are yours?
well we start that today. today was a great day.
we had kids- kids- who were naturalized
because their parents went through
citizenship and they became citizens today.
celebration here today, kids from 13
different countries. man it was a great feeling to
see these little kids and we gave them these
gifts and welcome to their National Park
and tell them that you now own a part of
America, something you didn't own when you
lived in that other country and so
take pride in this great place that we
call America and take pride in your
national parks so we started today building
relevancy- reaching out to new citizens-
saying these places are important,
this is the fabric of America, our
national parks, we want you to visit them,
we want you to enjoy them, because we're
going to need you to protect them and of course
there's Channel Islands Live right and
we keep improving on the technology
working with the Ventura County Office of
Office of Education but also with the
new partner this year
explore.com or .org
and explore.org because of their work
with us and also the ocean cam, you know we've
now reached 5 million people this year. 5 million!
How many people don't even know what happens
in the ocean and this is one way we
we can then make the park relevant to
people and show them what's happening
underwater, talk to them, but also show them
the ocean cam. you know if you're really
feeling stressed out,
there's nothing better than putting on
that ocean cam and watching the kelp.
I mean there's only one thing better than
that and that's the jellyfish of
Monterey Bay you know but you know, try
it next time you're stressed out just
put on some good Enya music
you know and watch the kelp go back and
forth. part of the naturalization
ceremony we did a little clip of Kelly
Moore doing a welcome underwater welcome
welcoming them as citizens to the United States
and kids loved it, kids really loved it. So again it's bringing
it into the classroom and then having
the kids talk to the diver and seeing
that it's really it's really there, it's
not fake, it's not a movie, it's not
something watching on TV, it's not National Geographic. and
then you know this afternoon
even I learned myself and some of you
may know Sammy Gueurra
Samwell who works for us you know he was born
in a Mexican national park and became a
citizen in 1999, and he works for the national park service, so
we could talk about him with these kids
who think you know is there a place for
me in the National Park Service, well there's Sammy
and he works for the National Park Service and
he's from Mexico, and he became a citizen. So
this, you know, we need to try and recruit
these these kids and remember that these
places are theirs. Course, then we had the
Secretary out this year and Lois Capps,
Congresswoman Capps, and it was an exciting
day too because when we took these
these kids out, we took like 90 kids out
that day, it couldn't have been more
perfect they call it management weather
I guess because I was on the boat it was
flat as can be.
we pull into Prisoner's and there's a humpback
mom and calf had to turn the boat off she
brought the calf right up to the boat and
this silly little sea lion didn't like
all the attention so he dived down, gets a
mouthful of fish, pops his head up and
starts looking around and then the
dolphins come in on cue and then as soon
as we get onto shore you know the
Secretary is asking the kids about the
fox and what happens a fox comes
running out. so it was like wow we couldn't
make this any better you know it was
really great but you know that that's
what's so amazing about this park is you know
how close we are to I guess we call it
civilization, but at least urbanization, and
and how we can get away and we can go
have this Serengeti experience out here in our
backyard but it's all because you guys
all care
it really is good you all care. and then
we got the the old bunkhouse on Santa
Rosa which is now a field station for Cal
State Channel Islands and so this past
year there's a sign, you know they had over
3,500 students nights out there. bringing
students and as you may know that Cal
State Channel Islands is a
Hispanic-serving institution, bringing
students out here that have never been in a
national park, never been on a boat, never
been on an island and spent the night.
and I was out there the other, well a few
months ago with the Director of the
National Park Service when we were delisting the
fox we went on a little hike
and there was one of the students out
there and she had brought her sister and she was planning on
bringing her parents and they had never been
in a national park before and was this is great,
Where you from? Oxnard. well you know so
we are changing lives and now she sees
this is this is my home and I'm gonna
bring my friends and I'm gonna bring my family and it was
great. what was she doing? She was doing
photo monitoring, hiked out to Lobo Canyon
with her sister to take photographs, report
some data, things like that. I just think it's great that we're
changing their lives
they were given a national award for the
National Biological Stations
Association as meeting diversity goals
in the most diverse program. they've only
been in the program for 2 years. so they're
doing a really great job at Cal State. now how
do you get involved, you get involved with
people like Channel Islands Park Foundation
this is our nonprofit arm of the park
and they're the ones who can ask for
money and then have projects up and they do
have a website so you can go to Channel
Islands Park Foundation. I'm not allowed
to ask you for money I can just tell you how
much money I need but the other big
thing is I want you to find your park
and when you find your park I want you
to do a couple things actually three. I
want you to learn something new, I want
you to tell us how we are doing, and I
want you to ask how you can help.
because we're going to need your help we're going to
need your help and we're gonna need your
kid's help and we're going to need their kid's help
because if we want to keep our national
parks strong we got to believe that our
national parks are important for us as
people. so with that, let me thank you all for
coming and I will stay here and answer
as many questions as you want until
Bryson kicks me out of the room but I am the
boss so maybe I get to stay a little longer.
alright thanks everybody! (clapping)
there we go now the hard part. in the
10-year plan or the new plan is there
any plan for handicapped access to Santa
Rosa or other islands? ok so Santa
Rosa, so the question was, did everybody
hear the question, handicap access?
ok so the 10-year plan is with the GMP
(General Management Plan) used to be, now they're
for your phones
ok and so that's part of the reason why
we're doing the Scorpion Pier the way it is so it
can accommodate a wheelchair, or you know
actually, a group out of San Francisco
can't think of their name, but the last 2
years they have taken out a couple
paraplegics, quadriplegics and some blind
individuals and actually have them
crossing the threshold and this year
they skiffed them to shore and those folks had a
great time so you know what I decided we
gotta buy one of these water over the
sand wheelchairs so now we have bought one
of those, we are going to buy a couple more,
station them out there because at these
travels, they're called Traveling Companions,
so if Traveling Companions is going to work with
us to help get folks that have
disabilities and challenges out there we
need to come halfway with them. Rosa
of course you can get there by air.
you also know we've also doing an
experiment you can go to San Miguel by
air now too.
it's a little bit pricey to tell you the
truth but if you fill the airplane it
seems pretty reasonable but you can go
to San Miguel you can fly there instead of going by
boat. but on Santa Rosa you know we tried
with a dock with a crane at the end of
the dock we had that pod and have you
ever thought it looked like a spacecraft
that was sitting there.
well when we have bought that thing the
either nobody asked or the vendor never
told us. they have a lifespan really a lifespan.
we kept it covered and protect it
they also had annual maintenance that was
about 1-2,000 dollars a year of
annual maintenance and then after seven
years you had to buy a new pod. that was a little
frustrating so you know so the best we
can do right now is aircraft until it's
time to modify that pier in some way
so it'll always be tough and I'm just not sold
that the pod idea is going to work and
most folks with challenges they want
to have their own, they want to be under
their own control, so even with the gangway
approach at Scorpion the slopes, most
of the time, are going to be at the right
angles for them to wheel chairs up
themselves but there will be a couple times
on extreme lows, you know they're in the
king tide periods we're gonna have to
help post. so Rosa by air for now I
put enough money in that pier for right now I'm
going to focus on Scorpion. yeah?
okay Bryson you take over, I'll just...
try to answer the questions. you've got
Island Packers yes and you have Channel
Islands Aviation that fly to
the the islands right why can't you set
up a program of having private pilot's
besides Channel Islands maybe a limited
number each week or something like that
fly to the islands? yeah so typically
aircraft delivery is is prohibited in
national parks and so if you're doing that as
a commercial enterprise you have to come under
concessions operations. I will tell
you that if you are pilot and if
you are interested in doing something
like that we will have to fly a new
perspectives in the next year or two
look for other vendors if you're interested but it
is that we are prohibited there's
there's only one I know of airstrip in a
national park where private pilots are
allowed to land that's technically in the park
and on park property and that's Grand
Tetons there's a whole airport actually. and there's other places in
Alaska but in Alaska, Congress allowed it
they said access by aircraft was allowed
so one thing to keep in mind with national
parks is generally things are prohibited
unless Congress said it was okay and that's
very different from other land management
agencies. people always ask why can't you hunt
in the national park. Well it's because
Congress didn't say you could.
yes? Bryson's in charge of the mic. I am aware
that Island Packers has been negotiating
with the Santa Barbara Harbor
District to try to run boats out of there.
the closest point to the islands would
probably be Prisoners Harbor. were there
any plans to perhaps build a campground
and a ranger facility at Prisoner's?
yes so in the General Management Plan there
is a small campground and campground
that is proposed as you go up the Navy
Road and then you make that first turn,
that bench that's right there, that's
where we proposed it but we also proposed to
build some ranger housing so as you go
across the creek and you turn right
down the well road is that as we've been
removing the eucalyptus as we found out it's a
lot flatter up there than we thought but
we also found out there's a lot of
archaeology up there. we're gonna have to figure
out how to protect that because you know
that was a known village site so yes in our
plan and if you it is on our website you
can see what our plans with that area
but most of the public want to see it be not
developed one like Scorpion or Santa Rosa
they want to see it more primitive.
Russell, I know there's in the plan a
different type of concession for kayakers
and in the future but also like the
Truth Aquatics concession they have
there where they, is that going to be kept in
serviced by a boat being able to go
ashore but they stay on the boat?
thanks for the gnarly question. so I'm so
there's only one so there's concession
and there's commercial use authorization
ok and what makes the difference is the
amount of money they make.
ok so concessions when we award a
contract they pay the park service or the
government a franchise fee. A commercial use
authorization, so if you wanted to come and
say I want to lead guided hikes I'm an
outfitter I would I would charge you a
annual fee maybe something like a couple
thousand dollars you know we figure out
what the price is and then you're not
bound by any federal labor laws. a
concessioner is bound by federal labor
laws so they have to pay Davis-Bacon
wages they got to do all these other
things that they didn't have to do
if you were a commercial use opearator so there's
no some differences in the type of
licenses you get and the difference is
whether you're doing work if you're
doing work in the park and you're
required to be in the park and have
facilities in the park vs you're doing
work that's incidental to the park so in
the old kayaking way we looked at it is
you can do all the kayak business
outside and in fact you used to have to
carry all the kayaks on Island Packers
right and then you can do the business
and then when you were done put them back
on Island Packers take them out, so that's
incidental to the park so that would be
a commercial use authorization but what we
found over time with kayaking is it
was having an inconvenience to the day
use because it was really tying up the
boat for long periods of time where they
were staging kayaks so we allowed them to
start staging kayaks at Scorpion.
well then that became more popular and
then we had to go through a commercial use
authorization that required competition and
then when we start looking at their books
every year they were starting to meet
the threshold that was set by the
concessions law so in the General
Management Plan we said we're going to
move kayaking from at Scorpion
to a concessions operation it will be awarded
to one company. that company should be
announced in December. so starting next
year it'll be one company operating out
of there and then they'll be giving the park a
franchise you know instead of $2,000
or $3,000 check at the beginning of the year.
yeah they're moving a lot of people,
they're kayaking they're giving great
experiences that are out there so when
it comes to Truth Aquatics it's a little
bit tougher because at Truth Aquatics
what they specialize is multi-day parties
right and but they want the advantage of
going to the island.
well Island Packers does have the sole
landing rights because they're the
concessionaire so where we have allowed
Truth Aquatics to land is with where
there's an agreement with Island Packers
that they're not competing with them for
users so again since they're a multi-day
operation and they're focusing on the
outer islands Island Packers have said
so far that's okay Island Packers could say
that's not okay and I would have to live
up to the contract and so you can't
land if you want to land.
so it became an issue at Scorpion
because everybody wants to go to Scorpion
And Anacapa that's true and so there was
some there was some actually shipping
people from a Truth boat to Island Packers
now but that that has to all be
orchestrated and that doesn't usually work
on either of their schedules very well so
we're going to see how that plays out
in the future but it is an exclusive
contract, it was open for bid, and Island
Packers did win that, well, I'll tell you, Island Packers
is the only one that bid, so if
you all been out there Island Packers does a
remarkable job and I will tell you if
you're on Truth and you're on a
multi-day they do a great job too you
know we really got great partners, folks,
we've gotten really good partner that
are out there it's great that so many
people love the islands. we have time for
two more questions. I was wondering is
the bat native to the islands do we have
any bats on the islands? yeah we do we have a
couple pieces of bat maybe more but
you're probably thinking of the Townsend
big-eared bat. well the
mosquitoes I'm thinking if you've got
the mosquito problem with the carrying
the West Nile disease if you have the
bat that might limit it eliminate them. it would help
keep them down that's for sure
yeah we do have bats. ok. you know most of
the time you you hear about the Townsend
big-eared bats because we have one of the
only maternity colonies.
unfortunately in a historic building.
which, you know, it's like now how do we
manage this building and protect it, we
got to open the door so the bats can get
them but you know that's that's part of
that balance of natural and cultural
resources. so if you've ever gone to the
visitor center at Scorpion and you can
see there's the bakery behind it but you
always wonder why can't I go back to the
bakery why they got it fenced-off, that's
usually because the bats are there and then when the
bats aren't there then we let you go
look at it.
yeah we wish we could replicate that
habitat but it's it appears that the
temperature is just right for that
maternity colony and and it is one of the
only maternity colonies of the Townsend
big ear bat. you know that it's nice
having all these unique things until
you're the manager
and then it really adds some big
challenges.
alright we have time for our final
question any final questions for tonight?
alright well right thank you very much.