Channel Islands National Park

The National Park Service official who removed Tim Setnicka as superintendent of Channel Islands National Park said Tuesday that his decision was based solely on the needs of the agency and not on any controversies kicked up during Setnicka's tenure. "It would be an overstatement and an exaggeration to say anything else was going on here," said Arthur Eck, deputy regional director in Oakland. Transferring managers is common in the park service, he said.

Tim Setnicka, the hard-charging, controversial superintendent of Channel Islands National Park, was abruptly transferred last week, leaving his professional future and that of several major island restoration projects in limbo. Setnicka, head of the five-island park and marine sanctuary park since 1997, will work in the National Park Service's western regional office in Oakland, where he will perform as yet unexplained duties, officials said.

Catering to those seeking a more isolated wilderness experience, Channel Islands National Park hopes to expand the length and number of trails on Santa Cruz Island while building several remote campsites in the back country. The proposal, put forward by park Supt. Tim Setnicka, is part of a plan to attract more visitors to Santa Cruz, the largest of the Channel islands. The park service controls about 25% of the 62,000-acre island, while the Nature Conservancy owns the rest.

The triumphant return of bald eagles to Channel Islands National Park was somewhat muted Tuesday morning when the four young raptors refused to leave their nesting boxes on Santa Cruz Island, where they have spent the past five weeks. The boxes were opened as a crowd watched from a foggy hillside, but the eagles didn't budge, preferring to dither on their perches instead. Park officials said one bird finally flew out about 7 p.m.

"Don't run. Shuffle your feet," the naturalist tells the fifth-graders. That's a tall order for 10- and 11-year-olds who have been cooped up on a boat and are ready to scamper up the trails on this wind-swept island. When they round the first bend, all of the rules make sense. Baby sea gulls are everywhere. Nests pop up every 20 feet. Clueless chicks, camouflaged by downy, mottled black and tan feathers, wander in every direction.

Fifty years after pollution drove them off, bald eagles were returned to Channel Islands National Park on Monday, marking the first step in a five-year effort to restore the powerful predators to the sanctuary. The four eaglets, with their 9-foot wingspans and enormous yellow talons, shivered as they were carried up a ladder in driving rain and placed in locked nesting boxes on Santa Cruz Island.

An animal advocacy group has temporarily halted a $700,000 National Park Service plan to rid Anacapa Island of thousands of black rats that officials say are threatening survival of a rare bird species. In a letter sent to the park service Monday, lawyers for New York-based Fund for Animals argued that the plan to drop poison pellets from helicopters over Anacapa, an island off the Ventura County coast, would unintentionally kill migratory birds, a violation of federal law.

Cal State Channel Islands will host a question-and-answer forum on Nov. 13 with former state senator and U.S. Rep. Robert J. Lagomarsino. The university near Camarillo is home to the Lagomarsino Archives, a collection of tens of thousands of papers, photographs and awards generated during Lagomarsino's 34 years in elected office. The forum, scheduled for 3 p.m. at the university's library, will serve as the unveiling for the archives' newest exhibit on Channel Islands National Park.

State and federal officials have recommended keeping 25% of the waters around Channel Islands National Park off-limits to fishing. The move came after fishermen, environmentalists and other interested parties failed to reach an agreement on the management of Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Monday's recommendation will be considered by the state Fish and Game Commission, which meets in August in Santa Barbara.

Two years of consensus-building and compromise among fishermen and environmentalists failed Wednesday to produce a plan to establish the nation's biggest marine reserve off California. Federal and state officials had been looking to the Marine Reserve Working Group to develop a community-based consensus on a reserve plan around the five islands that make up Channel Islands National Park.