[Magdalen] Blue skies, smilin' at me...

[Charles Wohlers]

If you scroll down, you will see several pictures of the Torrey pines, which 
exist only on Santa Rosa and in a grove just north of San Diego. The Torrey 
pines seem to be doing well - we saw lots of young trees, many in areas 
indicating that the grove was expanding. Competition from invasive species 
seems to be decreasing since the NPS took over 20 years ago (the island had 
been one huge cattle ranch) and removed the cows and introduced deer & elk. 
There are now no non-native mammals on the island. We did see some 
non-native invasive plants - e. g., ice plant - but generally fewer invasive 
species than on the mainland.

There are quite a few endemic species there, but they do seem to be holding 
their own. We did see (and close-up) Channel Island foxes, which, as this 
article notes, are probably the cutest endangered species around: 
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2016/6/the-fates-of-channel-island-foxes-and-isle-royale-wolves

Chad Wohlers
Woodbury, VT USA
chadwohl at satucket.com



-----Original Message----- 
From: Cantor03--- via Magdalen
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2016 2:10 PM
To: magdalen at herberthouse.org
Cc: Cantor03 at aol.com
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Blue skies, smilin' at me...



In a message dated 10/17/2016 1:32:35 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
charles.wohlers at verizon.net writes:


If  you scroll down a few rows you'll see pictures of our visit last month
to
Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands Nat'l. Park (near LA).
Some interesting pines on those islands (maybe not Santa Rosa)
including a rare variety of Torrey Pine.  There are problems  with
alien species.



David Strang.