Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz sheep come from Santa Cruz Island in the Channel Islands off California. Ranchers ran sheep there from the early 1800s, probably Merino and Rambouillet types. Some got out, nobody managed them, and isolation plus natural selection turned the escapees into their own breed.

The Nature Conservancy bought almost the whole island in 1978. By then the sheep had overgrazed it and were a threat to native plants, so an eradication program began in 1980. The Livestock Conservancy argued the sheep were worth saving in their own right, and the two organizations agreed on a rescue. In 1988 volunteers took twelve lambs off the island and placed them with five California breeders. More came off in 1991.

Everything alive today traces to those animals, which makes this one of the rarest sheep breeds in the country.

They are small, as island populations tend to be, adapted to heat and dry country, and the wool is unusually elastic.

The Conservancy adds a caveat worth repeating: selection off the island will change the breed over time. What you buy now is closer to the island animal than what will exist in fifty years.