Two endemic island plants are coming off the Endangered Species List, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced on November 7, at the Channel Islands Symposium in Ventura.
“It works,” said John Knapp, California Islands Ecologist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), in regards to the 50-year anniversary of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). “The islands are a great example of the ESA succeeding.”
The Santa Cruz Island dudleya (Dudleya nesiotica) and the island bedstraw (Galium buxifolium) are two of many island plants that endured the effects of ranching on what is now the Channel Islands National Park. From the 1820s until the late 1990s, ranch animals such as cattle, sheep, pigs, and goats bore a negative outcome across the island biome. As non-native animals grazed and denuded the chain, non-native plant seeds outcompeted with island flora.