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Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands National Park is part of an island chain lying just off California's southern coast. Currently the park encompasses about 250,000 acres divided nearly equally between land and water. The five islands of the park, Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara, and the adjacent submerged lands were set aside as a national park because of their outstanding and unique natural and cultural resources. Channel Islands National Park was designated an International Biosphere Reserve in recognition of its genetic diversity and importance as an environmental baseline for research and monitoring. Additionally, the U.S. Congress has declared the waters surrounding park islands out to six nautical miles as a National Marine Sanctuary.

The park's significance with respect to natural resources lies largely in the isolation of the islands. This has resulted in the evolution of numerous species, subspecies, or varieties of flora and fauna that are unique to the islands. The islands ecosystems, while providing habitat for species that may occur nowhere else, are often "simpler" or less diverse than those on the mainland. Difficulty in accessing the islands has provided some amount of natural protection from human impacts. For this reason, several species of marine birds and mammals, which once commonly bred along the southern California coast, now breed only on the Channel Islands. In 1991, the park was selected by the National Park Service as one of the original prototype Long-term Ecological Monitoring sites.

Channel Islands National Park (nps.gov)
Channel Islands National Park Staff List
Channel Islands National Park Map(pdf)
Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary