Sen. Duncan Hunter inserts possible hunting clause into Miltary bill.

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A Multipronged Tussle Over the Fate of Herds Living in an Island Park

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: October 9, 2006
SANTA ROSA ISLAND, Calif., Oct. 3
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Close a public park to make way for a private hunt? That is not the Park Service’s preference. When it acquired Santa Rosa Island at the time the Channel Islands National Park was formed in 1986, it accepted a 25-year transition period during which the hunting would continue. It wants the animals off the island. The 1,150 deer and elk, park officials say, compromise the native ecosystem — by munching on seedlings of the rare island oaks, for instance.
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First, Mr. Hunter, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, suggested that military personnel and their guests should enjoy the hunt. Then he said it should continue for disabled veterans.

Neither of these proposals went over. But last week the huge military authorization bill emerged from a House-Senate conference committee with a vestige of the chairman’s original proposal, as inscrutable as the Cheshire cat’s smile. No disabled veterans were mentioned. Not even the word “hunt.”

But by forbidding the park service to “exterminate or nearly exterminate” the animals, Mr. Hunter ensured that, unless someone shipped them out, the deer and elk would remain.........

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1. “They’re trying to get it back to a period that never existed,”

......Ms. Capps, who debated sharply with Mr. Hunter on the House floor the day the military authorization bill passed, said the chairman was showing “the arrogance of power” by including an amendment that could not be voted on in its own right.

“This is about what the park means to this country in terms of its values,” she said, adding, “What if there were a hunting operation like this in Yosemite? The Grand Canyon?”

In the next Congress, Ms. Capps said, she plans to introduce legislation to undo Mr. Hunter’s, assuming, as all parties do, that the Senate will follow the House and approve the military authorization bill when Congress reconvenes after the November election. Likewise, Mr. Hunter plans a follow-up to his bill.

The Vail descendants — the first cousins Tim Vail, Nita Vail and Will Woolley — say they believe that the Park Service goal of returning the island to its natural state is hopelessly utopian.

“They’re trying to get it back to a period that never existed,” Mr. Woolley said. Nita Vail added, “The reality is, any kind of ecosystem evolves.”

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2. link

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/us/09hunt.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin