We all love standing along the shore looking out at the Channel Islands on a clear day because they look beautiful and majestic. We know they are some of the most beautiful and life-sustaining islands in the world, both below and above the waterline.

When a sea bird or shore bird looks at them, they are looking at that place of genesis their species probably depends upon for life itself. Our Channel Islands provide nesting and breeding grounds for 99% of seabirds in Southern California.

The islands are important wintering areas and stopover points for shorebirds. There are 30 shorebird species (and probably more waiting to be discovered), according to the Channel Islands National Park, including snowy plovers, willets, wandering tattlers (my favorite bird name), whimbrels, black turnstones, and sanderlings.

Twelve species of seabirds find what they need in terms of isolation, food sources and undisturbed nesting grounds that are safe from predators.

The Channel Islands are home to the one and only known breeding population of California brown pelicans in the western U.S.

Here are some impressive and thought-provoking bullet points from the website of the Channel Islands National Park (www.nps.gov/chis/learn/nature/seabirds.htm) seabirds to whom the Channel Islands are critically important:

• The largest breeding colonies of seabirds in Southern California
• The only breeding colonies of California brown pelicans in California
• The only protected colonies of California brown pelicans and Scripp’s murrelets on the West Coast of the U.S.
• The largest colonies in Southern California of Cassin’s auklet, western gulls, Scripp’s murrelets, rhinoceros auklets, tufted puffins, ashy storm-petrels, double-crested cormorants, pigeon guillemots, and black storm-petrels

Over time, there have been numerous challenges on various islands. Rats were a huge problem on Anacapa and San Miguel islands. They ate up the bird eggs and baby chicks.

On Santa Barbara Island the problem was cats, livestock and rabbits. Cats and birds rarely coexist peacefully. On Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa islands there were non-native grazing animals like wild pigs. The list of past challenges goes on.

The National Park Service, along with other agencies and volunteers worked long and hard to eradicate or remove threats and to restore habitats that the various birds needed to get chick production back to what it was before.

Happily, it has all been working and enough time has gone by that we can see and measure the positive results of all that hard work.

For me, the crowning example was the removal of non-native golden eagles and the successful re-introduction of nesting bald eagles.

When I’m fishing around Santa Cruz Island and see a big bald eagle leave a high perch, swoop low over the water, come up with a fish in its talons, and carry it up toward its nest or a spot to enjoy its meal, I cheer that bird on.