A Scientist’s Fight to Save Catalina Island’s Plant Biodiversity

While driving home from work one day, Kevin Alison spotted a rare flower off the side of the road. From the window of his company’s white pick-up truck, he noticed a large, beautiful purple flower that’s known as a Phacelia — an endangered species of wildflower that grows off California’s coastal bluffs and islands.

As a plant ecologist, Alison knew he had to get a sample of the flower. But when he returned to the same spot, a week later, he discovered the flower was gone. He assumed the flower would still be there. The Los Angeles County Fire Department had recently cleared all the brush. Alison would later join the department as a volunteer, not to put out fires, but so that he could potentially save another rare plant or flower from being swept up by accident.

Alison lives in the city of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island. It’s an hour-long ferry ride from the Port of Long Beach, right off the coast of L.A. County. The island is known for its scenic hiking trails, campsites, beaches and for being a popular tourist destination for cruise ships. But it’s also known for its biodiversity — the island is home to more than 60 different native plants and animals.

Forests, trees and rolling hills cover more than 88% of the island, which the Catalina Island Conservancy manages. As the Conservancy’s native plant manager, Alison’s job is to care for all the island’s plants, though he has an affinity for the rare ones. He spends his time in a lab deep inside Catalina’s interior with no cell service, where he clones plant tissue and propagates them. But his favorite part of the job is spending time amongst the groves of rare plants on the island. He compares his enthusiasm to that of a dog who is excited to play with a new toy.

“That’s how I feel whenever I show people the species that I love,” Alison told KQED.

But cloning plant tissue can’t save the rare plants currently growing on the island. While walking through the Conservancy’s botanical garden, Alison pointed out the island’s native cherry tree, the Catalina Cherry. The leaves on top of the tree grow freely, but the bottom half appears snipped straight across. The marking, Alison said, is the browse line from the invasive mule deer who’ve been eating it.

The deer were brought over in the 1930s to boost hunting tourism. Without a natural predator, the number of deer grew over time and has indiscriminately munched on both the native and nonnative plants. As of 2023, the Conservancy said there were up to 1,800 deer on the island.

In an interview with the New York Times, Lauren Denhardt, senior director of conservation for the Catalina Island Conservancy, said the result of invasive species on the island “has eroded soil, depleted the food supply for other animals and, most alarming, allowed flammable shrubs and grasses to proliferate.”

The growth of these nonnative plants, she said, could create conditions akin to those that fueled the recent catastrophic fire in Maui.

In the summer of 2023, the Conservancy proposed to remove the deer from the island using sharpshooters via helicopters. Although the Conservancy said this was the most humane way to address the invasive deer issue, locals were upset and started a campaign to save the island’s deer population. The Avalon residents won — a year later, the county’s Fish and Wildlife Commission rejected the plan.

In an emailed statement, the Conservancy wrote, “a healthy native plant ecosystem is the best defense against climate change and wildfire risk” and “invasive species, including mule deer, continue to harm Catalina and the rare plants and animals found only on this unique island. We are focused on finding lasting solutions to manage invasive species by working with agency partners, scientific experts and the broader community.”

The organization has been having conversations with the community and hearing a range of perspectives, including strong support.

“I think people are prone to care about something with eyes and a species that’s adorable, and I couldn’t agree more,” said Alison, about the controversy. He understands it’s much easier for people to have empathy for animals than for plants. But for Alison, the timing has made saving the island’s native plants more urgent than ever.

One of the plants he studied that helped him get the job with the Conservancy was the Catalina Mountain Mahogany. A rare tree that has the appearance of a shrub, there are only about seven left in existence.

“They’ve been evolving for thousands of years, and that’s literally going extinct in front of my eyes,” Alison said.

The Conservancy’s herbarium archive keeps samples of rare plants grown on the island. It’s a room filled with filing cabinets where plant stems and seeds are stored inside folders with a description. Plant ecologists like Alison can use these “plant pressings” to trace back a plant’s DNA, almost like a 23andMe kit. If a plant were to ever go extinct, scientists could possibly use these plant pressings to clone it in a lab or, at the very least, keep a record of it.

That’s Alison’s hope.

“I may not be here down the road, but if I can help a species that I thought was so cool to thrive into the future for other people to enjoy, that’s a life well lived,” he said.”

Steven Rascón is a journalist and a radio producer from Northeast Los Angeles. He’s an associate producer for the podcast and radio show Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.