Channel Islands National Park

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Channel Islands National Park
Wild coastline of the Channel Islands
Wild coastline of the Channel Islands
Channel Islands National Park (USA)
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Coordinates: 34 ° 0 ′ 30 ″  N , 119 ° 25 ′ 0 ″  W.
Location: California , United States
Next city: Santa Barbara
Surface: 1009.94 km²
Founding: March 5, 1980
Visitors: 366,250 (2018)
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The Channel Islands National Park is a national park , located in the Pacific Ocean on the Channel Islands is, an archipelago off the coast of southern California . Five of the eight islands are part of the national park.

The park encompasses a six nautical mile expanse of Pacific water around the islands. Half of the total area of ​​1009.10 square kilometers is under water.

From plankton to dolphins , Californian pelicans , cormorants , sea ​​lions , seagulls and blue whales , the park is home to over 2000 plants and animals. Of these, 145 are species, such as B. the lizard species Sceloporus occidentalis becki or the lichen species Caloplaca obamae endemic .

The park administration maintains two visitor centers on the mainland in Ventura and Santa Barbara and two small so-called visitor contact points on Santa Barbara Island and Anacapa Island . Access to the islands is regulated by rangers who issue sightseeing permits at the visitor center.

history

Chumash Indians lived on the islands until the early 20th century . The archaeological finds go back 10,000 years. On March 5, 1980, the islands were raised to the rank of national park.

The island gray fox

An example of a species found only in the Channel Islands is the island gray fox . It lives on six of the eight Channel Islands and is an endemic species of fox descended from the gray fox . Due to the island dwarfing that has occurred here, this species is one of the smallest foxes in the world and is little larger than a house cat . Five of the islands on which it is native belong to the national park.

The island gray fox is considered critically endangered and has been protected by American federal law since 2004. A number of factors contributed to its population decline, all of which resulted from human-forced habitat changes. This includes the fact that domestic animals went wild on the islands and destroyed the foxes' food sources, the native bald eagle has declined sharply since the 1960s due to DDT pollution and the golden eagle settled here instead, whose prey range includes the island gray fox belonged to. Bald eagles were released into the wild on the islands from 2002, and in 2006 they brooded again in the national park.

Islands

Web links

Commons : Channel Islands National Park  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ California VisaVis , Falk Verlag AG, Stuttgart, 1998, page 214
  2. ^ National Park Service
  3. ^ National Park Service: Channel Islands National Park - Bald Eagles , accessed May 7, 2012