Not all the news we comment on here at COTTonLINE is bad, only most of it. Here is a piece of strange good news from the Associated Press via Yahoo News. First, a quick geography lesson.
There is a chain of eight mountainous islands a few miles off the California coast. The northern five, opposite Ventura and Santa Barbara, have become the Channel Islands National Park. On clear days these are visible from the coastal highway - US 101.
Perhaps the most famous of the eight is one of the southern three: Santa Catalina. According to the Four Preps song lyric, it is 26 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. Now back to the weird science story.
The AP reports that the California island fox population is on the rebound, after nearly disappearing just thirteen years ago. It is a story of a chain of unintended consequences.
Island famers let some pigs go wild, or more likely, some of their wily hogs escaped and became a feral population numbering eventually in the thousands. The pigs then became a food source which lured in a population of golden eagles, flying killers which also preyed on the foxes, eating up most of them.
To restore the balance, the pigs were killed and the eagles were live-trapped and relocated. Meanwhile bald eagles, which don't prey on foxes, have been reintroduced. Foxes without flying predators have made a healthy come-back.
The AP article has a very nice picture of an island fox, a cute cat-sized predator. I suspect some population of ground-nesting bird will now be threatened by the foxes.
