Mike in the Wild

Santa Catalina Island might be the most famous of the Channel Islands, an archipelago that lies around thirty miles off the coast of Southern California.   Its only incorporated city is Avalon, where the vast majority of the island's 4,000 residents live.  Most of the rest of the island is primitive and undeveloped, an untouched 75 square mile landscape protected by the Catalina Island Conservancy.  A number of endemic species (i.e. found nowhere else in the world), like the Catalina Island fox, benefit from this management. But for the first-time visitor like me, Avalon and its surrounding hills, canyons and coastline might be the only wildlife habitat explored on Catalina.   Shorebirds, especially gulls, thrive in the crowded seaport.  Mockingbirds and warblers populate many of the non-native  trees in town.  The sea just beyond any beach seems to teem with kelp and fish, a wonderland for exploring snorkelers and divers.   And a...