Channel Islands National Park Feature

The Channel Islands are home to species found nowhere else on Earth: mammals such as the island fox and the island deer mouse, birds like the island scrub jay, and plants such as the Santa Barbara Island live forever, on the endangered species list. Thousands of western gulls hatch each summer on Anacapa, then fly off to the mainland where they spend about four years learning all their bad habits. Then they return to the island to roost and have chicks of their own. It all adds up to a living laboratory not unlike the one naturalist Charles Darwin discovered off the coast of South America 200 years ago, which is why the Channel Islands are often called the North American Galapagos.