Island habitat could save Northwest subspecies from endangered list
By KATHY GEORGE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
SKAMOKAWA -- Wearing a new winter coat of gray, the young doe was too busy devouring mouthfuls of grass to mind the people staring at her wide black eyes and pointy, perked-up ears.
Besides, she must be used to the gawking. She is a Columbia white-tailed deer, a species so rare it was once thought to be extinct -- and so beautiful that each year thousands of people visit the Columbia River refuge dedicated to its survival.
| |
 |
| |
 |
Dan DeLong / P-I |
| |
Two Columbian white-tailed bucks feed near a wooded area on the Julia Butler Hansen Refuge, which is growing with the acquisition of Crims Island. |
A quarter-century of efforts to end the threat of extinction may soon pay off.
The deer, one of the nation's first protected species, is about to get another island of its own -- expanding a federally managed refuge that already includes four Columbia River islands and 2,000 acres of mainland.
The acquisition of Crims Island for deer habitat is the last boost needed to get Washington's population of about 700 deer off the endangered species list, said Al Clark, a federal wildlife biologist who has worked with the deer here for 26 years.
"It's getting close," he said, adding that a delisting process could begin within two years. "Crims Island has been the catalyst for this."
The deal
Crims, a 600-acre island of tall trees and muddy beaches, is close enough to the Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge that deer can swim to it. But for years, the island's private owners wouldn't sell it.
Then, about a year ago, refuge managers heard that three-fourths of the island's acreage was about to be auctioned. They alerted the Columbia Land Trust, a non-profit organization based in Vancouver, Wash., that has acquired more than 2,000 acres along the lower Columbia River and on the Long Beach Peninsula for fish, bird and other habitat conservation.
A day before the Crims Island auction, the trust signed a deal to keep the land off the market while it searched desperately for money to buy it, Columbia Land Trust director Glenn Lamb said.
Fittingly, it was another endangered species -- Columbia River salmon -- that saved the day for the deer.
The island's backwaters are important feeding areas for young salmon and steelhead. The Bonneville Power Administration agreed to give the trust $427,000 to buy the land to help restore salmon runs affected by its power-generating dams, BPA spokesman Bill Murlin said.
The trust took ownership three months ago and is in the process of transferring the Crims Island land to the national deer refuge, Lamb said.
The decline
Tens of thousands of Columbia white-tailed deer once roamed the lower Columbia, Willamette and Umpqua river valleys in Washington and Oregon. But farmers cleared the land, destroying the deer's habitat, and hunters killed many.
By the early 1900s, scientists believed the deer were extinct.
In 1940, a naturalist named Victor Scheffer proved them wrong. He had heard local sportsmen and farmers describe herds of what they called cottontail deer and decided to check.
What he found stunned wildlife experts and led to one of the nation's most prolonged recovery efforts.
The Columbia white-tailed deer is different from the dozens of other white-tailed subspecies around the country. It has an unusually large, triangular tail that's brownish on top and white underneath. Its slender antlers curve in more than other white-tails' antlers do.
When the Columbia white-tailed was rediscovered, about 400 lived in southern Washington and about 200 lived in northern Oregon.
Farming and residential development had pushed the deer into an area too small to provide enough food, Clark said.
Also, coyotes -- still the major cause of fawn deaths -- have taken a huge toll.
It was clear that without help, the unique population could disappear.
The recovery
The federal government first listed the Columbia white-tailed as endangered in 1967, six years before Congress passed the landmark Endangered Species Act. In 1972, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service created the deer refuge that today encompasses 4,757 acres near Cathlamet and Skamokawa, a historic fishing village on the Columbia.
| |
 |
| |
|
Dan DeLong / P-I |
| |
A Columbian white-tailed deer runs through a field on the Julia Butler Hansen Refuge near Cathlamet. The subspecies native to Washington and Oregon has a large, triangular tail that's brownish on top and white underneath |
Inside the refuge this weekend, three bucks stopped grazing and froze, warily eyeing a group of people watching them through a telescope. Deeper within the refuge's vast fields, three more deer ran and jumped past a huge flock of Canada geese, as if dancing to the symphony of honking.
The first recovery plan for the deer was adopted in 1978. Just last summer, a population of about 5,000 Columbia white-tails in the Roseburg, Ore., area was taken off the endangered list. The key to long-term survival of the Washington population, Clark said, is to establish at least three "subpopulations" large enough to sustain themselves and that have secure habitat.
As it is, two subpopulations meet that test -- one group of about 150 deer on the refuge's mainland, and another of the same size on Tenasillahe Island, one of the four islands already in the refuge, Clark said.
Crims Island, in combination with other small islands within swimming distance, will provide enough secure habitat to support a third viable subpopulation, he said.
About two dozen deer already live on Crims. They were moved there in 1999 and 2000 with permission from the private owners.
Crims is one of the last unspoiled remnants of the deer's original range. The island's native vegetation is virtually the same as when Lewis and Clark passed by in 1805, the federal biologist said.
The species
It's a lot of trouble to save one species that the world once thought was lost.
After all, there are plenty of deer in this country. Hunters are allowed to shoot other kinds. What value does this particular white-tailed deer have?
Clark bristles at such questions. And he has a ready list of answers.
The refuge itself is a tourist attraction, supporting local gas stations and restaurants, he said. And besides being beautiful to look at, the deer might have some undiscovered value to science or medicine.
Most important, Clark said, deer have as much right to exist as people do.
"Would you like to live in a world that has no wildlife?" he asked. "To me, that would be unthinkable."
