Making a Pig Sty of Ancient History
Wild pigs are uprooting Chumash Indian history at Channel Islands.
CHANNEL ISLANDS N.P., CALIF.—Thousands of wild pigs are devastating more than 6,000 years of human history at Channel Islands National Park, digging up ancient burial sites and scattering artifacts on Santa Cruz Island—land sacred to Chumash Indians.
Feral pigs, estimated at 4,000, leave three-foot-deep holes in the ground and mangle heaps of ancient Chumash shells, bones, pottery fragments, and other material.
"The number one priority of a national park is to preserve, unimpaired, its natural and cultural resources," said park spokesman Tom Dore. "The pigs are impairing both, so something must be done to stop them."
Park officials believe that nearly all of the 687 identified archaeological sites on the island have been damaged, ruining the ability of archaeologists to re-create the everyday existence of those who lived there long ago. They compare the damage to ripping a page from a historical record—and without that page, history cannot be accurately recounted.
"It's devastating," said Jeanne Arnold, professor and vice chair of the Department of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. "[Pigs] have destroyed portions of buried houses, unearthed human remains, and displaced craft production localities where people made beads or stones or tools.
"They are devastating the heritage of the Chumash people out there."
The speed at which the pigs can dig makes them particularly troublesome.
"In a matter of hours, a couple of pigs can move as much earth as my students and crew would need 20 or 25 person-days to carefully excavate," said Arnold.
The pigs are descendants of a domestic herd kept on the island in the 1850s. Park officials say the pigs can double their population every four months.
Pigs also contribute to the catastrophic decline of the native island fox. Golden eagles drawn to the island by the plentiful pigs also supplement their diets with the island fox and plant populations unique to Santa Cruz.
The damage the pigs leave behind can resemble a plowed field, causing erosion and spreading fennel and other weeds.
The Park Service recently released a restoration plan for killing the pigs to initiate the recovery of the island's ecosystem, but it will not be easy.
One option is to split the island into six hunting zones, divided by 45 miles of chain link fence, and kill the pigs over a six-year period—at a cost of about $6 million.
Park officials have been developing the plan to kill the pigs for about two years in consultation with The Nature Conservancy, which owns 75 percent of Santa Cruz Island.
Some animal rights advocates oppose the eradication plan, urging park officials to shoot the pigs with contraceptives so the herd can die off on its own.
Park officials, however, say that the extent of the damage the pigs are creating has left them with little choice—the destruction of Chumash history must stop, quickly.
"The pigs are uprooting the resting place of these people, my ancestors," Julie Tumamait-Stenslie, a Chumash Indian and island descendant, recently said to the Los Angeles Times. "I don't like the idea of killing animals, but [the pigs] are not native to the place, and it has to be done for the greater good."
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