Santa Barbara Island became part of Channel Islands National Monument in 1938 and part of Channel Islands National Park in 1980. In 1991 the park constructed a new ranger residence and visitor center. Above the ranger building stands a maintenance shop with water storage and solar collectors. As has been the case for over 50 years, fresh water is pumped to the water system from boats at the landing cove.

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As early as 1932, the Bureau of Lighthouses suggested transferring Santa Barbara Island, as well as Anacapa, to the National Park Service for preservation and on April 26, 1938, the both islands became part of the newly designated Channel Islands National Monument. The Lighthouse Service reserved two parcels on Santa Barbara Island and rights of ingress and egress from the two parcels and the landing area.

The National Park Service set to work evaluating Santa Barbara Island’s resources and developing a management plan. E. Lowell Sumner, Jr., Regional Wildlife Technician, and R. M. Bond of the Soil Conservation Service, submitted a report on the biology of the islands on June 28, 1939. They recommended that the park service obtain assistance from the Coast Guard and State Division of Fish and Game in patrolling the islands and adjacent waters, and stressed the importance of removing the “hordes of exotic house cats so that certain threatened species of animal life which constitute a unique feature of the island can return to their original condition.” Sumner illustrated the need to post the islands with signs proclaiming the island protected as a national monument: “Santa Barbara Island . . .should be posted at the earliest possible moment. Upon the arrival of our group, we found a party, brought by a fishing boat, already ashore with a gun. No shooting was heard, and the individuals involved promised that they would not go hunting again on the island. They professed ignorance of the recently changed status of the island and, in the absence of any signs indicating that the island was a national monument, such ignorance was not at all improbable. In former years considerable slaughter of sea-lions has taken place in this vicinity and the animals need just such a sanctuary as Santa Barbara Island affords. “

In his report, Sumner described the familiar cycle of overgrazing on Santa Barbara Island: destruction of native vegetation, introduction of large numbers of noxious weeds, soil erosion and scarring. He counted approximately a thousand sea lions on the island, and noted brown pelicans and eagles. In March of 1940, Meryl B. Dunkle of Long Beach, then doing research for his doctoral thesis, visited Santa Barbara Island with the Los Angeles Museum’s Channel Islands Biological Survey. He covered the island “very thoroughly,” adding twenty species to the known flora, and observed an adult sea otter and two sea elephants. 

In 1949 the monument boundaries were expanded to include “the area within one nautical mile of the shoreline of Anacapa and Santa Barbara Islands.” On Santa Barbara Island, this meant that the rocky beaches, offshore rocks and Sutil Island and Shag Rock would be protected.

In 1950, biologist Lowell Sumner reported only two rabbits, noting that “the ecological effects of this new rabbit introduction were as yet scarcely evident.” But when Sumner filed his inspection report of the islands on May 27, 1953, the picture had changed dramatically. The native vegetation was destroyed almost to the point that the sheep had formerly destroyed it. Sumner wrote: “It is typical of such irruptions that they begin unobtrusively but after several years commence to snow-ball in their effects. The present one has now reached disastrous proportions. The rapidity with which such biological changes can take place on small islands where predators are largely absent illustrates the danger of allowing several years to elapse between biological inspections.”

Beginning in 1954 the National Park Service began removing the estimated 6,000 rabbits in order to protect the island’s native vegetation and control excessive erosion and the spread of non-native plants. By 1981, all the rabbits were removed, check dames were in place to slow erosion, and fiber matting was laid down to hold seeds and seedlings of native plants. 

After Santa Barbara Island became part of the new Channel Islands National Park in 1980, the NPS determined that visitor numbers should be limited and relocated the campground and any future development to the small area above the landing cove. The NPS constructed a new dock with hoist and a boathouse. In 1991 the park constructed a new ranger residence and visitor center on the site of the Quonset hut. Above the ranger building stands a maintenance shop with water storage and solar collectors. As has been the case for over 50 years, fresh water is pumped to the water system from boats at the landing cove.