Change in Latitude for Supt., Change in Attitude for Park

When Russell Galipeau was a college student, he had his first meet-the-public job: At a tourist attraction in steamy south Florida, he was a sweat-stained blacksmith’s apprentice, decked out in heavy 17th century garb as he squeezed a bellows over burning coals and tended a red-hot forge.

That was a couple of decades and who-knows-how-many resource management plans ago.

A veteran of 22 years in the National Park Service, Galipeau is superintendent of Channel Islands National Park and still exercises the skills he honed as a fledgling village smith: keeping cool under pressure, melding together ill-fitting chunks of inflexible material in a superheated atmosphere and being pleasant to the tourists.

Last May, Galipeau, 44, stepped into the job that entails gazing at dolphins, tramping island trails and defusing the political landmines that lie hidden in every lovely island view.

His predecessor, Tim Setnicka, held the post for five years before being transferred and later retiring. Setnicka’s critics saw him as arrogant and aggressive, a reputation shaped by a 1997 commando-style raid -- complete with Blackhawk helicopter -- on hunting guides suspected of disturbing Chumash artifacts.

Setnicka also made enemies by booting campers off Santa Cruz Island during a controversial wild-horse roundup and by taking other steps that appeared to pit the Park Service against the public.

While Setnicka was seen by some as in-your-face inflexible, Galipeau has become known as a good-humored, low-key consensus-builder.

“Russell is more affable, more approachable than Tim,” said Greg Helms of the Ocean Conservancy in Santa Barbara. “Before, there was a hard-driving mentality that was quite strong about protecting the resources but not as strong at creating a community of goodwill around controversial issues.”

Galipeau also drew praise from the Nature Conservancy, which owns three-quarters of Santa Cruz Island.

“We’ve had much more of a dynamic team effort with the Park Service than we’ve had in the past,” said Lotus Vermeer, the conservancy wildlife biologist overseeing the Santa Cruz property. “Our staffs have really pulled together and made considerable progress.”

A big, mustached man with prematurely silver hair, Galipeau wants to draw crowds of parkgoers who don’t necessarily own hiking boots or Gore-Tex jackets.

“How many of our programs are in Spanish?” he asked. “Tomorrow, how many will be in Vietnamese or Hmong?”

To start a program in Spanish, Galipeau has dispatched a ranger to Mexico for intensive language instruction.

Ultimately, he wants to establish an Internet connection allowing home computer users to watch underwater demonstrations by Park Service divers off Anacapa Island.

“I want to bring the park to the people,” he said.

If one of Galipeau’s strengths is public relations, it will come in handy as the Park Service braces for protest over the pending slaughter of as many as 4,000 wild pigs roaming Santa Cruz, the largest of the offshore park’s five islands.

“We’re not here to protect all species from everywhere,” he said. “We don’t want to be running a zoo.”

Feral for decades, the pigs were introduced when ranching dominated the island in the mid-1800s. Now they rampage through archeological sites, churn up pristine meadows and attract golden eagles, which dine on the pigs and the increasingly rare island fox.

“I’ve got to break that cycle,” Galipeau said. “The pigs have to go.”

But the pigs will have their constituency -- as did the Anacapa Island rats in 2001, when the Fund for Animals sued over the Park Service’s plan to protect rare seabirds by poisoning the rodents that eat their eggs. Feelings ran so high that a Santa Barbara man was arrested after allegedly slipping the rats food spiked with vitamins. He was acquitted.

“You have folks who believe every individual animal is sacred,” Galipeau said, adding that the park is prepared for opposition this spring when professional hunters start their two-year task of stalking and shooting.

The pigs cannot be shipped to mainland ranches because some may harbor diseases such as hog cholera, introduced by ranchers years ago in a futile effort to control the swine population.

A fight over pigs will hardly be Galipeau’s first fray.

Most recently, Galipeau, a wildlife ecology graduate of the University of Florida who has also been posted at parks in that state and Alaska, was resource management chief at Yosemite National Park. There, he presided over a bitterly contested plan for restoration of the Yosemite Valley. The plan drew more than 10,000 comments from the public, many angry.

Galipeau received plaudits from the Sierra Club despite the group’s opposition to the plan, which was meant to curb traffic and housing in parts of the congested valley.

The plan didn’t go far enough, said the Sierra Club’s George Whitmore. But even in an intensely political atmosphere, Galipeau respected the critics.

“He took public opinion into account,” Whitmore said. “The final plan was nowhere near as bad as the draft.”

Mountain-climbing groups sued over the proposed destruction of a renowned campsite and its replacement with employee dormitories. Galipeau was instrumental in reversing the Park Service’s decision; now Camp 4, the jumping-off place for generations of world-famous climbers, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jay Watson of the Wilderness Society praised Galipeau for insisting on decisions grounded in science and for “helping the Park Service see different ways of doing things.”

For Galipeau’s part, he still sees the Channel Islands, likened by some to an American Galapagos, as he did his first day on the job last spring.

“They were amazing,” he said, lapsing into lush descriptions of sheer cliffs and sweeping views. “They’re still amazing.”