By Julienne Dallara

Fairly recently I became aware of a little-noticed news story about an island off the California coast, near Santa Barbara, that was being proposed as a preserve for hunting excursions by disabled veterans. Being somewhat familiar with the rough but beautiful uninhabited islands off the coast of Southern California, my interest was piqued. Hunting opportunities for returning war veterans with the government picking up the tab? Score one for the good guys! But my idea of who the good guys were would change from one side to the other many times as I investigated this story.

My first questions were how are they going to get hunters in wheelchairs out to this remote island, and how will they be able to move around after they are there? Will they have to pave the island? Which led to a more sweeping question: How far should we go to provide recreational opportunities for those of us with disabilities?

Shooting Elk in a Barrel
Santa Rosa Island was purchased by Vail & Vickers, private cattle ranchers, in 1902. They brought over mule deer, Roosevelt elk, cattle, and even a few pigs, before selling the island to the National Park Service for $30 million in 1986. Traditionally, the public cannot hunt on National Park Service land. On SRI, though, there was this pesky little problem of the non-native animals grazing and degrading the environment. The soil, no longer anchored by plant life, eroded with the wind and water, and the once-crystal streams grew dirty brown with silt. Cattle waste polluted the already meager water supply. Marine life fell victim to the pollution. Eventually, a federal legal settlement stipulated that non-native elk and deer must be destroyed or transported off of the island by 2011. Or, as the court put it in their settlement agreement of 1997, “NPS will share the ‘unusual costs’ of the removal of those deer and elk. ‘Unusual costs’ is defined as the cost of using trained professionals and helicopters.”

Translated, this means sending up a helicopter with shooters equipped with automatic weapons and letting them wipe out the deer and elk. On this point the environmentalists and the hunters agree — shooting elk in a barrel is cruel, inhumane, and simply bad sportsmanship.

There are other places for hunters with disabilities to hunt, places like “Hunts of Hopes and Dreams,” a nonprofit organization established for people who “love the outdoors but have terminal illnesses or disabilities that prevent them from actively participating in these traditions.” They don’t hunt in national parks, and they have charities set up to handle the costs of hunting, which can be significant. A private elk hunt on Santa Rosa Island can cost upwards of $17,000. Private hunting trips have been a staple of the SRI economy since Vail & Vickers bought the island but are now threatened by the court’s decree to completely eradicate non-native game by 2011.

Enter Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter from El Cajon, Calif., who thinks he has a better idea than simple mass annihilation: disabled vet hunting trips.

Not that any of this came under Hunter’s jurisdiction. As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he had no power to determine the fate of this island belonging to the National Parks Service in the Department of the Interior. But back in May 2005, he managed to slip his proposal into the massive defense spending bill for 2006. To quote section 2878 of that bill:

“The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into an agreement to make available to paralyzed and disabled veterans and members of the Armed Forces, including persons assisting a paralyzed or disabled person, hunting and other recreational activities on the portion of Channel Islands National Park consisting of Santa Rosa Island.”

It may be that Hunter came up with this unique and P.R.-friendly idea solely to help out returning war veterans and disabled hunters, both groups representing warm-and-fuzzy demographics that can be trotted out when his presidential campaign takes some heat — Hunter is campaigning for president on a decidedly right-wing platform. But it is also tempting to consider his close relationship with military brass as chair of the House Armed Services Committee.

In a May 2, 2006 letter to Rep. Lois Capps, in whose district Santa Rosa Island falls, Hunter states: “I have never been to Santa Rosa Island. Nor have I ever met the owners. I was driving down the beautiful California coastline with a number of returning Iraq veterans from the U.S. Marine Corps when one of them mentioned the pending extermination of deer and elk on Santa Rosa Island and the fact that it would constitute a wonderful recreational area for disabled veterans who hunt and fish.”

Joe Kasper, Hunter’s spokesperson in Washington, D.C., reiterates that the congressman “has never set foot on Santa Rosa Island and never intends to do so,” a quote that comes up frequently in newspaper articles covering this issue. According to Kasper, that quote is supposed to eradicate “…visions of cigar-chomping Superior Court and general cronies” using the island for “military junkets and tax-payer-funded hunting trips.”

For many who use wheelchairs, though, Hunter’s vow that he never has and never will set foot on the island tends to underline the questionable nature of the entire project: Why propose building a hunting area for hunters with disabilities on extreme terrain when accessibility has not been seriously considered?

Accessible Recreation: How Far is too Far?
As for the practicality of vets with disabilities hunting on the island, there seem to be two different viewpoints. In a letter to Hunter dated August 28, 2006, John Melia, executive director of the Wounded Warrior Project, writes:

“The Wounded Warrior Project applauds any effort that supports our endeavors to assist severely injured military personnel … we believe that Santa Rosa could offer the wounded another chance to participate in meaningful and enriching recreational activities such as fishing, hunting and camping.”

On the other hand, Paralyzed Veterans of America at first supported the idea, then withdrew their support after they did what Hunter never did — brought someone in a wheelchair over to the island.

To get to Santa Rosa Island requires a boat ride across 45 miles of open channel. The crossing is rough and choppy, reportedly a challenge to even hardened seamen. To land on the island requires an open water transfer from boat to a fixed pier — one that doesn’t rise and fall with the waves or the tides. Once solid ground has been accessed, a wheelchair user must push or be pushed over deep canyons, gullies and streams, through open grassland and up rough and rocky hills.

Doug Vollmer, head of government relations for the PVA, got the assignment to find someone in a wheelchair to check the feasibility of such a project. Vollmer says cautiously that PVA supports the idea of expanding opportunities for people with disabilities but doesn’t want to promote something “that puts our members in jeopardy.”

Vollmer, who has worked for PVA for 28 years, also said: “Hunter took it [SRI] on as a personal crusade and it spun out of control. It is an admirable idea, but at what expense to the National Park Service do we press this cause?”

Steve Martin of the National Park Service agrees. In a statement before the Senate sub-committee on energy and natural resources, Martin said: “It is necessary to end the hunting operation to open up the island for other recreational purposes, such as hiking, camping and sightseeing on a year-round basis. So long as a hunting operation continues, 90 percent of the island will be off limits [to the public] for general recreation for four to five months of each year.”

Perhaps, to maintain the politically correct party line, Martin added, “Santa Rosa Island is currently the most accessible of the five islands that are part of Channel Islands National Park. It is the island where the NPS can most easily and cost-effectively welcome American citizens who have physical disabilities, including our men and women in uniform who have become disabled in the service to our nation.”

Nothing About Us Without Us?
In order to have a fair test, Vollmer had to employ the least intimidated individual to check out the practicality of hunting on Santa Rosa Island from a wheelchair. Vollmer found Al Kovak, Paralympian, marathoner, swimmer, extreme athlete, former Navy Seal and a C7 complete quadriplegic.

According to Kovak, “You’d have to have a Hoyer lift to lift the guys over the water. It would very dangerous.” He adds, “The PVA was to oversee making the island wheelchair accessible, with trails of hard-packed dirt. We sometimes lift the hunters up in cherrypickers. They are allowed to shoot from jeeps. They just want to get their kill.”

Still, who picks up the tab if the island is converted to Department of Defense-owned land in 2009, as Hunter proposes? Kovak says: “Duncan Hunter always has an answer to every question. When I asked about cost to the hunters with disabilities, he just said, ‘don’t worry about it.’

“The ironic thing is that for a while the golden eagle was endangered, so they protected it,” says Kovak. “Now they are afraid that the changes to the ecosystem caused by the deer and elk are making the Santa Rosa fox extinct. Yet the number one predator to the Santa Rosa fox is the golden eagle! Vickers & Vail care very much for the animals on the island, but then they shoot them. I don’t know how that works.”

Kovak says he found himself “like a little toy between the paws of a cat” with both the National Park Service and the Hunter camp expecting him to side with them.

“I always like to offer solutions, not just point out problems. When I was a Navy Seal, we used the next island over, San Clemente Island, for a bombing range. Bring the deer and elk over there, make trails for everyone through what is left of the island, it could work. Better than traveling 45 miles across open water hauling a barge full of deer.”

The whole project evokes the disability movement rallying cry, “nothing about us without us.” Vollmer said it best: “Don’t pretend to accomplish something for a disability [group] when it really has very little to do with the disability. Don’t use people with disabilities for some hidden agenda — these are important causes that need to be fought for.”

Other politicians, including California Senators Feinstein and Boxer, warned Hunter that his non sequitur attachment to the 2006 multi-billion dollar defense-spending bill would jeopardize the life of his main bill, and it was quashed. Rep. Capps vehemently opposed the bill.

In 2006 Hunter brought the idea back later as its own bill, where it failed again. Never one to be discouraged, Hunter then wrote it into the 2007 defense spending bill and, curiously, it slipped in. Currently, this oddity with the varied pedigree is law, with Feinstein, Boxer and Capps all challenging it and the media referring to it as “Duncan Hunter’s Big Blunder.”

To date, no disabled person has gone hunting on Santa Rosa Island.