Photo by Robert Burroughs

In almost every place you might drive, you’ll find heaps of rotting, rusted, crumbling military junk.

From an eagle’s view, San Clemente Island rises out of the ocean like a bristly beast, black and twisted, shrouded in swirls of summer fog. Every so often, screaming banshees of glass and metal, traveling at the speed of sound, swoop over this hunk of land-flesh like horseflies searching for a place to draw blood. On the southern tip of the island, at the very heart of the taboo, explosions light up the sky. A bird looking for refuge might be tempted to fly another 60 miles to the mainland rather than risk such a place. San Clemente Island, on first look, is no paradise.

Dense patches of cactus that blanket the island make foot travel slow and tedious.

Yet, strangely, the closer you get to the island, the more alluring it becomes. As the morning sun lights the hilltops, broad fields of yellow grass ripple in the breeze. In the deeply eroded canyons are muddy pools of glistening water and graceful arcs of green almost big enough to be called trees. Hardy red and green succulents speckle rocky outcroppings. Along the rugged coastline, sheltered coves come to life with thousands of fat, squirming seals.

Even for military personnel, at least two-thirds of San Clemente Island is off limits, but nobody seems rabid about enforcing this rule.

Forbidding at first glance, intriguing at second, San Clemente Island, the southernmost of the eight Channel Islands, looks very much the way most of Southern California looked until a few decades ago. It is the disaster of the Southern California mainland, the world’s largest artificial paradise, that has increased the environmental value of San Clemente Island a hundredfold. On these 56 square miles of rock and cactus, we still have a relatively undeveloped patch of Southern California as it used to be.

Collins learned that the fox didn’t appear on San Clemente Island until about 3800 years ago, long after the island was inhabited by Indians.

If San Clemente looks dark and rugged from the air, then on the ground, at a walking pace, the island’s landscape takes on a dazzling complexity and beauty. Succulent plants grow in unusual shades of red, pink, purple, orange, and yellow. Tangled masses of cacti, a classic indicator of overgrazed land, dominate the ground cover, and in season they put on a flower show unequaled by more friendly plants. On some hillsides, fields of windblown grasses range in color from green to yellow. Rising above this mosaic are chocolate-colored outcroppings of lava rock, and in the distance, the cobalt-blue sea glistens. It is the kind of landscape the human eye can learn to love.

Fur trappers had eliminated the sea otter and the elephant seal by the turn of this century, but in the last few years, both have returned.

San Clemente Island is off limits to the public; and the Navy has been so disgusted with some news coverage of the island that it is reluctant to grant journalists access to the place. But many civilians have one excuse or another to visit — construction workers, archaeologists, conservation volunteers, families of Navy personnel stationed here — that it is not impossible to find a way onto the island.

The western side of the island is mostly a series of neatly stepped terraces that indicate former levels of the ocean.

Even for military personnel, at least two-thirds of San Clemente Island is off limits, but nobody seems rabid about enforcing this rule. The military police spend a lot of time sitting in their pickups, looking through binoculars, watching girls on the decks of sport-diving boats slither in and out of their wetsuits. All boats are required to stay at least 300 yards from the shore, and the Navy does appear serious about enforcing this rule.

Today, fragments of artillery projectiles, machine gun shells, and twisted lead bullets from the World War II era still litter San Clemente.

The main road runs the full length of San Clemente Island (about 20 miles), from the airstrip at the northeast end to China Point at the south end. Countless smaller roads branch off this main artery, though most are poorly maintained and, left to erode, have chewed nasty scars into much of the landscape.

In almost every place you might drive, you’ll find heaps of rotting, rusted, crumbling military junk: ship cargo boxes, abandoned travel trailers, broken-down machinery, old concrete pads, miles of electrical wire and steel cable, used smoke-flare canisters, hundreds of mine detonating switches. As with the military everywhere, waste is the rule.

Dense patches of cactus that blanket the island make foot travel slow and tedious. Cholla needles can easily pierce a leather boot. Perhaps at one time these cacti were interspersed with chamise, Ceanothus, red berry, and other chaparral plants; but if they were ever present, they have now been eliminated by feral goats. Fortunately, though, the goats have left a network of narrow paths through the cactus that a cautious hiker can travel without too much pain.

Some reports say the goats were left by the Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo, who stopped here in 1542. In those days it was considered prudent for seagoing explorers to have a living larder on islands such as this. The native plant communities of New Zealand were destroyed in this way, and those of Hawaii and the Galapagos were seriously damaged. But there is no real evidence that Spanish explorers left goats here, and those reports are most likely myths. Destruction of the island by an out-of-control goat population probably didn’t begin until the American occupation at the end of the Mexican-American War, in 1848.

After that war, the island was managed by the commerce department, which divided the land into tracts and then leased them to sheep and cattle operations. Even today, straight rows of weatherbeaten fence posts dating back to this era run from nowhere to nowhere, still trying to force the illusion of order onto the island’s coarse features.

Most federally owned land in the West has been damaged by overgrazing. And San Clemente Island, as rugged as it may appear, is far more vulnerable to the ravages of cattle and sheep than most of the West. From the end of the last Ice Age (roughly 10,000 years ago) to the coming of the ranchers in the mid-1800s, San Clemente Island had not been inhabited by any land mammal (except for humans) larger than a fox. The island’s fragile plants had evolved without pressure from hoofed herbivores of any kind.

San Clemente Island’s goats had no commercial value and so were not harvested. Eventually, the ranchers left them to run wild. Goats are primarily browsers — they eat the leaves and tender shoots of trees and shrubs — and are able to thrive in places where other animals cannot. Even in the summer drought, the goats can thrash patches of cactus with their horns until the plants are broken up, then eat the moist and fleshy interior. And goats multiply very rapidly. Some say they can double their herd size in 18 months. Left to roam free over the island, they eventually increased to about 15,000 animals, 267 goats for every square mile of land.

No one will ever know the full extent of the environmental damage caused by the goats, because the first partial botanical survey of the island wasn’t done until 1884. But it is known that at least eight plant species on the island became extinct, and many trees and shrubs were eliminated everywhere except deep in the canyons and on the steep eastern escarpment where the goats couldn’t get to them. As goats consumed grasses and other ground covers, the soil was exposed to rain and wind erosion. Without organic material to hold moisture, the island’s sparse rainfall quickly bled into the ocean. Once this process began, it accelerated and became nearly irreversible, and San Clemente Island became even more of a desert than it already was.

Although cactus is the most common and most cursed plant on the island, lichens are perhaps the most bizarre. This ancient pact between fungi and algae has been wonderfully successful; more than 100 varieties of lichen grow in thick, bearded, grayish-green tufts from nearly every rock. Though they grow very slowly, these lichens tolerate cold, drought, and strong sunlight and can take some of their nourishment directly from the surface of rocks. They might be the ideal life form for a place like this.

San Clemente’s rugged spine closely follows the eastern shore, where a steep escarpment plunges from the island’s highest point, Mount Thirst (1964 feet), almost straight into the sea. The western side of the island is mostly a series of neatly stepped terraces that indicate former levels of the ocean. Along the southwestern side of the island, these terraces are sliced through by steep, twisted canyons, some of which are 500 feet deep. It is in these steep canyons, inaccessible to goats, that we find many of the island’s trees and shrubs: the Catalina cherry, the Mexican elderberry, toyon, and lemonade-berry.

The most intriguing animal on the island is a small, catlike fox, which can be seen almost anywhere, day or night. With no competition from other predators, the foxes are unafraid and come boldly into campsites to steal food. Though they are related to the mainland gray fox, Catalina’s are much smaller. At one time, biologists thought perhaps this was an isolated population of the tiny Central American fox, but no fossil evidence from the mainland supports the theory that the Central American fox ever lived this far north. And even if it had, how would it have reached San Clemente Island? Unlike the northern Channel Islands, once connected by a land bridge to each other and to the mainland, San Clemente, Santa Catalina, and San Nicholas Islands have been isolated for millions of years.

To solve the riddle, Paul Collins, a biologist from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, studied fossil records and 27 archaeological sites on the southern Channel Islands. He learned that the fox didn’t appear on San Clemente Island until about 3800 years ago, long after the island was inhabited by Indians. He concluded that the foxes were brought to the island as pets by the Indians.

But why would Indians keep foxes as pets? Well, not only are the foxes cute and intelligent, but they also played a part in the Indians’ religious and ceremonial life. Just as other California Indians kept eagles, hawks, falcons, badgers, or young bears as clan totems, some Indians of the Channel Islands kept the fox. In several sites on the Channel Islands, foxes were buried with humans. At one, a child was buried with a fox skull on either side of its head; at another, a man and woman were buried side by side with a fox skull between their pelvises. Though there are no such sites on San Clemente Island, at several locations there, foxes were buried alone in a ritual way. So the evidence is fairly convincing that even the fox is not truly native to the island but was brought here by humans.

Only two reptiles live on San Clemente Island — the island night lizard, found only on the Channel Islands, and the side-blotched lizard, near extinction on all the Channel Islands except San Clemente. The island has no snakes, no worms, no mosquitoes. Of its five species of rodent, only one, the island deer mouse, is native.

Two hundred species of birds have been seen on the island; ten subspecies are found nowhere else. At least three subspecies have become extinct due to habitat destruction. Bald eagles once nested on the island — it’s said that at one time they were common — but they haven’t been seen for many years. Ospreys were also native to the island, but they have disappeared as well. Ravens are plentiful and can almost always be seen noisily flapping about overhead.

Although the shoreline is rocky and the beaches scarce, life along San Clemente Island’s margin is more abundant than on most of California’s mainland coast. Fur trappers had eliminated the sea otter and the elephant seal by the turn of this century, but in the last few years, both have returned. And this July, naturalists spotted the island’s first northern fur seal.

San Clemente’s sea lion population has increased to 2500 — not nearly as many as on some of the Channel Islands (San Nicholas and San Miguel Islands shelter as many as 200,000) but far more than can be found on the Southern California mainland.

On the windward, west side of the island, in the protection of a rocky cove, sea lions have established a calving site. From the hills above the cove, their barking can be heard two miles away. The huge bulls, which weigh about 1000 pounds, jealously guard their harems by lunging about clumsily and tossing their bulk back and forth in a threatening way. Some of the bulls have open, flapping battle wounds. The cows, meanwhile, lounge higher in the rocks, nursing their newborn calves and mostly ignoring the males’ theatrics. This summer’s population count estimates that more than 900 sea lions were born on San Clemente Island this season.

Some evidence suggests that San Clemente Island was inhabited by humans 40,000 years ago, though the main occupation began about 8000 to 10,000 years ago. The Indians, called “Canalinos” by the Spanish missionaries, moved from island to island and from island to mainland, in small, tarcaulked plank boats. The Chumash lived on the northern Channel Islands; Gabrielenos lived on the southern islands, including San Clemente. Though they spoke different languages, the Gabrielenos traded with their Chumash neighbors and adopted many of their customs.

The Indians gathered seeds, roots, and acorns on the island, though these were scarce; the shoreline and the ocean were the main sources of food, and here the island was generous.

At one time, more than 1000 Indians lived on the island, but during the early 1800s, as all over California, the island’s population was decimated by European diseases. In the 1830s, Spanish missionaries removed the remaining Indians from the island and resettled them at the San Gabriel Mission. Often in California, this meant that the Indians had been forcibly converted to Christianity; in this case, though, there is evidence that the missionaries were also trying to save the remaining Indians. The following quotation, taken from an 1856 issue of the Sacramento Union, explains:

In the year 1811, a ship owned by Boardman and Pope, of Boston, commanded by Capt. Whittemore, trading on this coast, took from the port of Sitka, Russian America, about thirty Kodiak Indians, a part of a hardy tribe inhabiting the Island of Kodiak, to the islands in the Santa Barbara channel, for the purpose of killing sea otter, which were then very numerous in the neighborhood of these islands. Capt. Whittemore, after landing the Kodiaks on the island and placing in their hands fire arms and the necessary implements of the chase, sailed away to the coast of Lower California and South America. In the absence of the ship, a dispute arose between the Kodiaks and the natives of the islands, originating in the seizure of the females by the Kodiaks. The Kodiaks, possessing more activity, endurance, knowledge of war, and possessing superior weapons, slaughtered the males without mercy, old and young.

During the California gold rush days, and as late as the 1880s, Chinese merchant ships visited San Clemente and even had large camps on the island’s southern end. These ships probably carried Chinese laborers destined to be smuggled onto the mainland, but the crews also harvested abalone. The meat was dried and sent back to China, while the shells were shipped to Germany and made into mother-of-pearl buttons, inlays, and other decorations. Archaeologists excavating these Chinese camps have found pottery from Canton, metal opium boxes, and metal fish hooks.

The most mysterious artifacts found on the island are large, doughnut-shaped stones, about 18 inches in diameter. At one time they were thought to have been made by the Indians, though their use was unclear. Now archaeologists believe the stones were used as anchors on the Chinese junks.

In 1934 the U.S. Department of War took over the island. At that time, in anticipation of the United States being drawn into a world war, the military snatched up huge tracts of land all over the West. They designated San Clemente Island a bombing and artillery range for ships and planes. Recruits at anti-aircraft gunnery schools practiced their skills on target planes flying over the island. Today, fragments of artillery projectiles, machine gun shells, and twisted lead bullets from the World War II era still litter San Clemente. These rusted, 50-year-old relics already seem to have an archaeological significance, like old Indian arrowheads, marking the end of one form of warfare and the beginning of another.

After World War II, there was talk of returning the island to civilian use. Oil companies wanted the island as a staging area for offshore drilling. A Los Angeles County supervisor talked about building a prison there. Environmentalists wanted to see San Clemente become part of Channel Island National Park. Instead, the Navy took over San Clemente Island. During the late 1950s, it was the testing headquarters for the submarine-launched Polaris missile. The southern third of the island became what it is now, a bombing and artillery range, or, as one Navy officer put it, “a giant bull’s eye.” From San Diego’s, coastline, particularly on calm autumn nights, you can sometimes hear the bombing and shelling on San Clemente Island.

The settlement of Wilson Cove, on the northeast shore, is the center of most of the buildings on the island. Perched on a rocky ledge overlooking a small natural harbor, Wilson Cove looks more like a weather-beaten New England fishing village than a military installation. The town itself consists mostly of dilapidated barracks-style buildings, the government-brown paint on shiplap siding is peeling and cracking in the sun. Slowly crumbling into the ocean are a mess hall, a few administration buildings, a tiny library, a car wash, a tennis court, a bowling alley, and a condemned concrete pier. Incredibly fat and lazy cats, half wild, lounge about. One extra-fat tabby has commandeered the seat in the phone booth, drowsing there as if waiting for the call that will transfer her back to the mainland.

It would appear that the Navy has given up on this poorly maintained and decrepit community. The newer developments are near the airstrip, farther inland, or else down the coast — San Clemente’s version of urban sprawl.

Everything consumed on the island must be brought from the mainland, including fresh water, which arrives by barge once a week. The few springs and small reservoirs don’t provide nearly enough water for the residents. The island has its own sewage treatment plant, but all garbage is shipped back to the mainland.

About 130 Navy personnel are stationed full time on the island, with probably twice as many civilians employed here. These civilians include everyone from the airstrip fire fighters and the construction workers building the new Navy SEAL facility to the shy young woman who runs the bowling alley three days a week.

On weekends, though, the island is nearly deserted. A private airline, under contract to the military, shuttles commuters in a prop;jet back and forth to North Island as often as five times a day. Most sailors and civilians prefer the mainland’s weekend diversions, but a few lonely-looking men remain, beer bellies peeking from under their football jerseys. Unless they are fond of fishing and snorkeling and don’t mind walking to the shore, they have little to do except drink beer and watch golf tournaments on the big-screen TV.

But many of the Navy and civilian personnel appreciate the outdoor recreation on San Clemente. They talk about goat and pig barbecues, about having a quiet cove to themselves on their days off, snorkeling for three-pound lobsters, harvesting abalone while scarcely getting their feet wet, and spear fishing five-pound sea bass anytime they like. Some of their tales are either exaggerations or obvious violations of the California fish and game codes, but then game wardens here are even more scarce than they are on the mainland. For surfers there is a fine, uncrowded surf spot, known as Stone Gate, and an off-limits break. Spot X, inside a restricted zone.

But love of the ocean and the outdoors doesn’t explain the remarkable cheerfulness of many of the island’s residents. Perhaps the charm and magic of any island is the feeling of living outside, or beyond, the routine of the mainland. San Clemente definitely has that feeling.

At night, after the fog rolls in, the island is perfectly still — not the sound of a single car or the hum of electricity, only the occasional bark of a seal and the quiet lapping of waves. If the fog lifts, it’s sometimes possible to see the slowly revolving beam from the lighthouse on Catalina Island, 20 miles to the northeast.

For anyone alive and in possession of a TV during the last decade, San Clemente Island is practically synonymous with goats. But the island has other feral animals as well. In 1952, pigs were introduced. Intelligent, highly adaptable, and aggressively omnivorous, pigs can cause more environmental damage than any other animal, rooting and ripping their way through a fragile landscape in a frighteningly quick and efficient way. A single feral pig was once found with 2000 native plant bulbs in its stomach. Amazingly, in 1962, the California Department of Fish and Game introduced another nonnative herbivore, the black-tailed mule deer.

If it weren’t for the Endangered Species Act, the goats, pigs, and deer on San Clemente might have multiplied until the island was nothing but a sterile rock. The increased environmental awareness of the American public, which began in the mid-’60s, demanded that the federal government, including the military, manage public lands in a more responsible way. The military now recognizes that if it wants to hold on to its bases in the West, it must have credible resource management plans for those lands.

In the early ’70s, the Navy, in cooperation with the California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, began work on a plan to protect the seven native plants and animals of San Clemente Island. The first obvious step was to get rid of the goats. A cynic might assume the Navy had some other objective for removing them. But Jan Larsen, the Navy’s natural resource manager on the island, insists that “protection of endangered species was the only goal.”

The Navy began an ambitious trapping plan, and almost immediately newspapers and television began reporting the story — not as an effort to protect endangered plants and animals, but as the slaughter of the goats. It was a classic example of the press whipsawing an environmental story for its emotional impact without understanding the real issues involved. For perhaps the first time in the history of San Clemente Island, a major effort was underway to protect the island’s fragile environment, and some reporters covered the story as if the Navy were using the animals for target practice. The public uproar astonished the Navy and frustrated Jan Larsen. “It was like I couldn’t go to work every day without everybody in the country looking over my shoulder to see what I was doing,” he says, still cringing at the memory.

But the Navy stood its ground against protests by animal-rights groups and followed through with the goat-removal program as humanely as possible. Two-thirds of the goats were trapped and removed alive. A sport-hunting program eliminated more. Eventually, the 15,000 goats on the island were reduced to such small numbers — fewer than 150 — that they were almost impossible to find among the island’s steep canyons. It was essential that all the goats be removed, or in a few years the population would return to its old levels.

To locate the remaining goats, Larsen’s crew devised an ingenious scheme they called the Judas Goat Program. “We went over to Santa Catalina Island and trapped eight goats, fit them with radio telemetry collars so we could track them, and brought them back to San Clemente. Because goats are gregarious and tend to congregate together whenever possible, the Judas goats led us to the remnant herds.”

After following the goat herds for several months and recording their daily habits, sharpshooters began eliminating them. “As of today,” Larsen says, with considerable relief, “the only goats we are positive are on the island are two adult females and three of their offspring.” All deer have been removed from the island; and though there are still about 200 feral pigs running loose, they too are being eliminated.

Today the Navy uses San Clemente Island for what it calls “ship-to-shore exercises,” one of those wonderfully silly military terms, which translates to “artillery bombardment.” According to the Navy, live bombardment is restricted to just two percent of the island; and three-fifths of the island is a buffer zone around this bombardment area. As Jan Larsen says, “That buffer zone automatically becomes a wildlife refuge. You can’t build there, you can’t have any human activity. So wildlife [protection] is very compatible with military activity.” It’s hard to imagine wildlife not being affected by the noise of live bombardment, but Larsen says, “Noise is not a problem. Even right next to the impact zone, wildlife is relatively unaffected by the sound. They know it won’t hurt them, so they ignore it.” When land exercises are conducted on sensitive areas of the island, the Natural Resources office must first give its approval. “I can either okay them, not okay them, or put restrictions on them,” Larsen says, and he insists the Navy abides by his restrictions.

The Navy also tests sonar equipment off San Clemente Island, and Navy SEALs train on the island; there is a large radar installation, a new 9300-foot landing strip, a new pier, and much more evidence of the Navy’s determination to hold on to this uniquely private piece of real estate.

A visitor to San Clemente Island has to wonder if the military’s stewardship here has been a good thing — not for the Navy itself, but for the island’s plants and animals. There is no question that some wildlife on San Clemente has benefited from the Navy’s occupation, most notably the sea lions and seals. If the badly damaged plant communities can be restored, other wildlife will benefit as well.

But the Navy freely admits that their most important objective on the island is “fleet readiness,” which means their war games come first; protecting natural resources comes second. As just one example, Navy ships lob millions of dollars’ worth of artillery shells onto the island’s hills in just a few hours of training exercises, yet the island’s tiny native-plant nursery, which has been under construction for several years and still isn’t reproducing native plants to re-vegitate the island, survives only by volunteer help from conservation groups.

Archaeological sites on San Clemente are in better shape than, say, Catalina Island, where most sites were plundered by collectors and grave robbers long ago. On San Clemente Island, only about one-fifth of the sites have been disturbed, which is remarkable.

The Navy and others compare San Clemente Island with its nearest neighbor, Catalina Island, arguing that without the military’s presence, San Clemente would have become just another Southern California bedroom community. But it is clear that San Clemente has not fared as well as San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz islands, which are under the protection of the National Park Service. Jan Larsen believes the difference is relatively minor though. “On a scale of 1 to 100, the human impact on San Clemente Island might be a 3. The impact from goats would probably be in the 80s. Now, on one of the park service islands, the human impact might only be 1, but we’re still in that ball park.”

Perhaps someday in the future, the Navy installation at San Clemente Island will turn up on a congressional list of military bases to be closed, but don’t count on it. In the meantime, those who would like to see the island might consider getting a degree in archaeology or watch the bulletin board at the unemployment office for a federal job announcement for a part-time bowling alley manager. If you can scuba dive and are handy with plastic explosives, you could join the SEALs. Your only other options are to wait until war is obsolete or for the arrival of the next Ice Age, whichever comes first.