WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW -- WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGE
CUTTING THROUGH THE CONSERVANCY’S WORDPLAY: WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW, HOW YOU CAN HELP, AND A SPECIAL INVITATION
Friends,
The slaughter has begun.
For months, the Catalina Island Conservancy has wrapped the opening phase of its deer eradication in a thicket of carefully chosen language: “Pre-Removal Assessment.” “Pilot phase.” “Testing round.” “To inform methodologies and logistics.” “Roughly 200.” “About 2,000.”
At the center of much of that messaging is Lauren Dennhardt, the Conservancy’s Senior Director of Conservation, project manager, architect, and public spokesperson for the deer eradication. Lauren knows a thing or two about shaping the narrative around controversial conservation projects. As we’ve mentioned before, she even has a little side hustle teaching other people how to do it, including how to “translate technical information into compelling narratives” and “insulate conservation efforts from oppositional coalitions.”
Lauren can dress this up for the state, the courts, Conservancy donors, NDSU students, and the public however she wants, but we are smarter than that.
1. “PRE-REMOVAL” = REMOVAL
Lauren calls this the “Pre-Removal Assessment.” “Pre-” means before. So “Pre-removal” means before removal, right? Evidently not in Conservancy-speak.
Lauren, words still mean things.
The Conservancy’s current operations schedule runs from September 1 through October 31. That's 61 days of what its own signs call INVASIVE DEER REMOVAL. Its Operations Notice says trained wildlife professionals will "remove invasive mule deer.” (apparently, if you say “invasive” often enough, people are supposed to stop seeing a deer and start seeing an invasion by invaders. Oh my!)
In her sworn declaration, Lauren nevertheless told the court: “The Pre-Removal Assessment is not the beginning of deer eradication.” In the same declaration, she said Conservancy contractors will “take roughly 200 deer in September and October 2026 as part of a ‘Pre-Removal Assessment.’”
Huh?
Admittedly, the Workplan is less coy. It identifies this phase as “Pre-Removal Assessment — Baiting sites and mobile shooting” and says, “Removal will be accomplished by first attracting deer to easily accessible locations in the interior and shooting from a vehicle.”
The point is, a phase in which deer are baited, shot and killed is not “pre-removal.” It is removal.
2. “PILOT PHASE” = THE BEGINNING OF THE SLAUGHTER
Calling this a “pilot” makes it sound like a rehearsal — a small preliminary exercise before the real thing starts. But that’s not what this is.
Lauren’s Workplan describes this stage as the beginning of “the most rapid depopulation.”
That tells you what the “pilot” actually is. It is not something that occurs outside the depopulation program so they can decide later whether or how to begin. The testing round is itself very much part of the depopulation.
The deer killed during this “pilot” are not practice deer. They will not be restored when the supposedly real eradication begins. They are being baited, shot and killed now.
So remember that while Lauren says the “Pre-Removal Assessment” is “not the beginning of deer eradication” in one place, she says something altogether different in another.
Friends, we know you’ve already clocked it but please make no mistake: The slaughter has commenced. Full stop.
3. “TO INFORM METHODOLOGIES AND LOGISTICS” = INFORM WHOM, EXACTLY?
Lauren says roughly 200 deer need to be killed now to “inform methodologies and logistics for the Conservancy’s eradication efforts.”
But elsewhere the Conservancy waxes poetic about the skilled people supposedly in need of all this informing. According to its own materials, White Buffalo has conducted more than 100 deer population-reduction efforts, spent more than 20 years refining deer-removal techniques, and used methods similar to those proposed on Catalina in other eradication projects.
Of White Buffalo, the Conservancy says “no one can do it better,” calls it “the most qualified operator to carry out the Conservancy’s proposed deer removal,” says “Without White Buffalo, the Conservancy will be unable to implement the Restoration Project,” and tells the court that “Only 20 people in the world satisfy these criteria, and 19 of them work for White Buffalo.”
So according to the Conservancy, it hired virtually the only people on Earth qualified to do this work — people with decades of experience using these methods — and those same people now require roughly 200 dead Catalina deer to “inform” them how to proceed?
What exactly will they know after deer number 200 that they don’t know already? And if this is truly an assessment, where is the stopping rule that says the killing stops once they have learned whatever they supposedly came here to learn?
4. “ROUGHLY 200” OUT OF “ABOUT 2,000” = THE MATH THAT MADE THE KILLING SOUND SMALL
This may be the most consequential part of their convoluted narrative.
The Conservancy told the court it expected to kill “roughly 200” deer out of a current population of “about 2,000.” Two hundred out of 2,000 sounds manageable: ten percent. No appreciable impact. A limited pilot. Nothing to see here.
That framing mattered because at the hearing on our injunction motion, the court focused on whether enough deer would be killed to threaten the herd as a whole, rather than on the irreversible death of each individual animal.
The problem is that neither number is what the Conservancy made it sound like.
“Roughly 200” is not a limit. The permit says “All individuals encountered may be killed.” There is no stop-at-200 provision, no 200-deer ceiling, and no requirement that the killing stop when this supposed assessment has gathered enough information. The court itself acknowledged that “200 is not the enforceable limit under the RMP.”
And “about 2,000” is not a disclosed 2026 count. The Conservancy has produced no 2026 population estimate. Its latest disclosed estimate is from 2025 (and please remember that estimate is the Conservancy’s own–think about that–from the substandard, spotlight count extrapolation method) yet Lauren told the court that about 2,000 deer are on Catalina “currently.”
Our expert — the person we believe knows this herd better than anyone on the planet — estimates that at most approximately 1,200 deer remain. Even assuming the Conservancy actually sticks to its courtroom figure of “roughly 200,” 200 out of 1,200 is nearly 17% of the entire herd, not 10%.
Now add what we are hearing from the ground. We received reports that 27 deer were killed on the first night. If that report is accurate, and the following nights averaged only half that pace, they would pass the Conservancy’s entire “roughly 200” number by about September 14 — tomorrow.
That is the story in one paragraph: the 200 that made this sound small is not a cap; the 2,000 that made 200 sound small is not a current disclosed count; our expert believes the herd may number no more than 1,200; and the first-night report suggests the killing may be moving very fast.
Meanwhile, the euphemisms are becoming bodies. We have photographs of dead deer. We have received reports of orphaned fawns. We have received reports that bags containing dead deer are being dumped in Skull Canyon. People are starting to see the yellowjackets again.
Whatever the Conservancy chooses to call this phase, this is exactly what eradication looks like.
WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW
If you are on Catalina, please document everything you safely and lawfully can — dead or injured deer, orphaned fawns, gunfire, vehicles connected with the operation, carcass bags or dumping, bait sites, road closures and other activity. Take photographs and video, preserve the original files, and record the date, approximate time and location. Something that looks insignificant on its own may become critically important to our court fight.
Please report what you see and hear using THIS INCIDENT REPORT FORM.
We desperately need the community’s help building an independent record of what is happening in Catalina’s interior.
If you are off Island, please use your voice. Contact CDFW, the Governor, your State Senator, your Assemblymember and your congressional representatives. Tell them Catalina’s deer are being killed right now under something being marketed as a “Pre-Removal Assessment.” Demand contemporaneous public reporting of how many deer are being killed and wounded, where the carcasses are going, what this supposed assessment is actually learning, and who is independently overseeing the operation.
Please share this post. What is happening in Catalina’s interior should not remain invisible simply because most people cannot see it.
HELP US KEEP FIGHTING
We are a small, scrappy grassroots organization fighting institutions with resources that dwarf ours. Our legal strategy is unfortunately being dictated in significant part by what we can afford. Litigation, documentation, public outreach and organizing all cost money, and every contribution helps us live to fight another day.
Donate through Givebutter.
Wear the message by purchasing merch at our Bonfire store.
If you cannot contribute, sharing our information matters too.
AND FINALLY, AN INVITATION: A VIGIL FOR CATALINA’S DEER — HONORING SHOKAT
Our community needs something besides another statistic, argument or court filing. We need to come together to mourn and reflect. We are organizing A Vigil for Catalina’s Deer — Honoring Shokat so that our community can gather and grieve for animals we have lived beside, loved and cherished — including those already being lost.
Supporters of this eradication have repeatedly treated the people who care about Catalina’s deer as uneducated, sentimental or simply “emotional.” We reject that contempt. Across cultures, faiths and continents, and across thousands of years of human history, people have honored these animals, mourned them and regarded them as beings worthy of reverence.
Remember, there is nothing ignorant about grief, and there is nothing unserious about compassion. Compassion is not the opposite of science. Grief is not ignorance.
We are going to gather and make room for what this community is carrying. We are going to remember these animals not as percentages in a court brief, not as units in a depopulation program and not as an “invasive” problem to be eliminated.
We are going to remember them as living beings that mattered to us.
A VIGIL FOR CATALINA’S DEER — HONORING SHOKAT
October 3 — 7:00 pm — The Stage on Front Street