Looking for the Catalina Island Bison Herd

hey everyone welcome to Sidetrack Adventures this is Steve right now I'm on California's Catalina Island and when you think of wildlife in the state probably the first thing that comes to mind isn't Buffalo or more appropriately bison but there are a few isolated herds including here on Catalina Island So today we're gonna go see if we could find Catalina's bison and along the way we'll talk about their history and why there's a herd of bison here on Catalina Island [Music] thank you before we get started for anyone who doesn't know Catalina is an island in California off the coast of Long Beach it's part of the Channel Islands and is the only Channel Island with a permanent population there are two small towns here but ninety percent of the island is undeveloped and protected by the Catalina Island Conservancy because we decided to do this trip only a few days in advance we ended up having to get up long before the break of dawn to take the 6 a.m ferry from Long Beach to the island in order to be there in time for a 9 30 a.m bison Expedition we are in the ferry terminal and just ran into this bison hopefully this isn't the only one we see today [Music] this is our ride in the Catalina's back country today we booked the Bison Expedition tour through Catalina Island company there were a number of Tours available through different companies but we chose this one because it was actually called Bison Expedition it cost about a hundred dollars per person and I'll let you know later if it was worth it on the tour we're going to cross the island and head to Catalina's windward side and hopefully a herd of bison will greet us along the way [Music] in order to drive out into Catalina's Back Country you do have to drive out there with somebody who's permitted to do so you can't drive out on your own this is actually my first time on the island so I'm pretty excited to see it [Music] we're just leaving town and we're already getting some great views here's a look back at the town of Avalon while vast herds of Bison once roamed throughout the United States historically they weren't found in California so why are they found on this island 22 miles off the coast so to give kind of a short history of Catalina before the arrival of Europeans Catalina was inhabited by the tongva in 1542 a Spanish Expedition led by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived making them the first Europeans to see Catalina and they claimed the island for Spain though I don't think the natives agreed with that here's the gate where we need a permit to go beyond this point [Music] unfortunately by the 1830s the native population had been forced off the island by the late 1800s ownership of the island had changed hands a few times until George Shadow purchased the island for two hundred thousand dollars in 1887 and started its turn towards it becoming a Resort destination so George Shadow defaulted on his loan after a few years and the Banning Brothers purchased the island in 1891 and they added a lot of Resort amenities including building the road we're traveling on now which was originally built for stage coaches [Music] then in 1919 the Banning sold the island with William Wrigley Jr the guy from the chewing gum and the owner of the Chicago Cubs having controlling interest and that brings us to 1924 and the introduction of the Bison this definitely looks like some prime bison habitat in 1924 a Motion Picture company asked to bring bison here for a movie though what the actual movie was is open for debate a lot of sources claim that the Bison were for the film The Vanishing American but none of the scenes in the film contain bison or appear to be filmed on Catalina others claim it was for a film called the Thundering Herd but nothing in that film appears to have been filmed on Catalina either whatever the film 14 bison were brought to Catalina and promptly escaped captivity they were allowed to stay and the Bison did with bison do and by the 1970s there were around 600 bison on the island as the Bison aren't native to the island there was talk of removing them but due to public outcry they were allowed to stay though the size of the population was reduced to 150 with the rest being moved to the Great Plains area they've tried to keep the population around 150 ever since but due to a birth control initiative the population is currently at about 130. but that's why bison have roamed this island for the last century now if they'd only roam into our view [Music] we haven't seen any bison yet but here's a donkey that's dressed like a zebra [Music] you know the Bison tour is going great when the most exciting animal we've seen so far is this woodpecker there's an old barn out there this part of the island is called middle Ranch and there are actually some people that live out here mostly employees of the Catalina Island company [Music] this is the Eagle's Nest Lodge it was built in the 1800s as a stagecoach stop and I believe it's been closed since the 1990s and boy I would love to get out here and take a look around no bison yet but we've just come across this Catalina Island Fox which is a subspecies of the island fox and this can only be found here on Catalina Island [Music] this rock is supposedly called buffalo rock so I'm going to take that as a great sign of things to come [Music] we haven't seen any bison yet but the views have been absolutely incredible the entire time so far [Music] of all the recent rain in Southern California the island is really green right now it reminds me a lot of Hawaii or even Jurassic Park [Music] so we've made it to the other side of the island no bison yet but we did see that fox which was really cool a deer that was too fast to get on camera a bunch of squirrels and that one donkey zebra thing so we're gonna head back I think we're going back the same way we came hopefully we see some bison [Music] thank you this is an old U.S army signal core radar installation from World War II after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor there was a fear that Japanese ships could hide behind the Channel Islands so the islands became a federal military zone quite a few troops were stationed here and the OSS which was the precursor to the CIA even did training on Catalina Island [Music] there is a fence that crosses the island in a few places that was put here to help eradicate the Island's wild pigs like the Bison pigs weren't native to the island but they were pretty destructive to native plants and animals so they had to go and honestly it probably didn't help them that they weren't the tourist attraction that the Bison were either the fences were put up as the pigs were eliminated from a section of the island with the last Pig dying in the early 2000s [Music] no bison yet but we've come across our second island fox I'm not sure how it comes across in the camera but these are about the size of a house cat [Music] well I'm starting to see civilization again as we head back down towards Avalon so I'm thinking the chances are pretty slim that we're going to see a bison today on the Bison Expedition [Music] so we didn't end up seeing any bison but when we purchased the tour there was a disclaimer that bison aren't guaranteed they're wild animals we get it you can't really predict where they're going to be the tour was still pretty cool our tour guide was great we got to see the interior of the island which was pretty cool and we got to see some amazing views so all in all I would say the tour was definitely worth it so it is a little disappointing we didn't see any bison but what can you do it's amazing to think those bison have been here for almost 100 years if you think about it 100 years from now it'll be the bicentennial anyways thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed the video please give it a thumbs up consider subscribing and we'll see you next week

Channel: Sidetrack Adventures

Views: 67,405

Keywords: Catalina Island, Santa Catalina Island, Catalina Bison, Catalina Buffalo, Catalina Bison Expedition, Catalina Bison Tour, Catalina tours

Id: 8UWD70N0rLU

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 26 2023