A plan for managing Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore could leave the elk subject to killing by ranchers/NPS file
The National Park Service has released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for a General Management Plan Amendment to determine the future of 28,000 acres of park lands in Point Reyes National Seashore and the North District of Golden Gate National Recreation Area—lands currently leased for beef ranches and dairies. The DEIS was prepared in response to a lawsuit filed against the NPS for the agency’s systematic failure to address on-going environmental issues associated with the ranches.
The ranches predated establishment of the parks, but in the 1960s and 70s, the federal government (using American taxpayers’ money) paid ranch owners tens of millions of dollars to purchase the ranches, with ranch owners retaining a right of use and occupancy of not more than 25 years, or for a term ending at the death of the owner or the death of his or her spouse, whichever came later. When the end dates arrived, however, many ranchers did not want to leave. Many decades later, through an ongoing series of legislative manipulations, 24 ranches, and more than 5,500 cattle, remain in the parks.
(In 2013, then-Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, at the direction of then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, gave the park permission to extend the leases by 20 years, into 2033.)
A key consideration in development of this GMP Amendment is the future of the Point Reyes Tule elk herds. In 1978, 10 Tule elk were successfully reintroduced to a 2,600-acre fenced reserve at Point Reyes to help save the species from extinction. At one time, there were more than 500,000 Tule elk in California, ranging from the Central Valley to the coast. They grazed the Point Reyes grasslands until they were hunted out of existence in the 1850s. By 1870, it is believed that only three remained in the entire state.
A second, free-ranging herd was established in Point Reyes through translocation of 28 animals in 1999. This group subsequently split into two herds. In 2018, the fenced herd had 432 animals, and the other two herds had roughly 124 animals (Drake’s Bay herd) and 174 animals (Limantour herd), for a total of 730 (compared to over 5,500 cattle). Point Reyes is the only national park unit where Tule elk occur.
The park’s website says:
“The majestic animals you see as you travel through the park embody the restoration of the dominant native herbivore to the California coastal ecosystem. They shape the landscape around them as they did for centuries before they were extirpated by humans. They symbolize the conservation of native species and ecosystem processes, one of the primary missions of the National Park Service.”
But now, the free-ranging herds are growing, and expanding into the ranched lands at Point Reyes, and the ranchers don’t like that.
Environmentalists say there is no place for cattle ranching at Point Reyes National Seashore/Karen Klitz
With this General Management Plan Amendment, the NPS has an unprecedented opportunity to phase out the ranches as was intended in the Seashore’s enabling legislation. Yet, contrary to all logic, five of the six alternatives in the DEIS perpetuate ranching, and the NPS’ Preferred Alternative actually expands agricultural opportunities for the ranchers. Brief summaries of the alternatives are as follows:
Alternative A: No Action
The No Action alternative is required by the National Environmental Policy Act, and would allow ranchers to continue to operate under 5-10 year leases. This alternative would not alter or limit the population level or geographic extent of tule elk in Point Reyes. If any elk left Point Reyes, however, they would be relocated or killed.
Alternative B: (NPS Preferred Alternative)
The NPS would issue 20-year leases to the ranchers, and would allow ranchers to diversify their agricultural activities by raising pigs, goats, sheep, and chickens; growing row crops; and establishing B&B’s and retail farm stands. This alternative would “maintain” a herd of 120 Tule elk at Drakes Bay; any additional elk in this herd would be killed (the NPS estimates 10-15 elk would be killed per year).
Alternative C
This would be the same as Alternative B, but the entire Drakes Bay elk herd (currently 124 animals) would be removed and no new elk herds would be allowed to establish.
Alternative D
Ranches would be granted 20-year leases, but ranches with “minimal infrastructure” on 7,500 acres would be phased out over a one year period (beef operations). This would leave 19,000 acres in ranches and allow the diversification of agricultural activities as described in Alternative B. The six dairies would remain. Note the dairies have greater environmental and social impacts than beef ranches. This alternative would “maintain” a herd of 120 Tule elk at Drakes Bay; any additional elk in this herd would be killed (the NPS estimates 10-15 elk would be killed per year).
Alternative E
All six dairy farms would be phased out over 5 years. Dairy operations could be converted to beef ranching, and would be eligible for 20-year leases. The NPS would take no action to limit population growth or geographic extent of free-ranging elk in Point Reyes.
Alternative F
All ranching operations in the planning area would be discontinued, and visitor opportunities on these lands would expand. The NPS would take no action to limit population growth or geographic extent of free-ranging elk in Point Reyes. Following cessation of ranching, the elk fence at Tomales Point would be removed, allowing that herd to be free-ranging as well.
Ranching was not one of the intended purposes of the parks. In the enabling legislation, Congress established Point Reyes National Seashore in 1962 “to save and preserve, for the purposes of public recreation, benefit, and inspiration, a portion of the diminishing seashore of the United States that remains undeveloped.” The purchase of the ranches clearly indicates that the intent was to remove the ranching operations in support of the enabling legislation.
The DEIS itself (pp 1-2) clearly defines the “stated purposes” of the two park units:
The purpose statement identifies the specific reason(s) why Point Reyes was established and lays the foundation for understanding what is most important about Point Reyes.
The purpose statement for Point Reyes is as follows: Established for public benefit and inspiration, the Point Reyes National Seashore protects a rugged and wild coastal peninsula and surrounding waters, connecting native ecosystems, enduring human history and recreational, scientific, and educational opportunities.
The purpose statement for Golden Gate is (NPS 2014a): The purpose of Golden Gate National Recreation Area is to offer national park experiences to all, including a large and diverse urban population, while preserving and interpreting the outstanding natural, historic, scenic, and recreational values of the park lands.
Despite the enabling legislation, the stated purposes, and the apparent pride the NPS takes in its elk reintroduction, five of the six alternatives presented in the DEIS perpetuate ranching, and the NPS’ Preferred Alternative gives the ranchers everything they could possibly want, including the killing of elk every year. The killing of native Tule elk for the benefit of ranchers runs contrary to everything the National Park Service represents.
Additionally, the DEIS makes it clear throughout that the ranches and their operations pose significant threats and cause damage to the parks’ air and water quality, native vegetation, and wildlife. They adversely affect the experience of park visitors, and prevent visitors from accessing a full one-third of their park lands.
Alternative F is the only alternative that is in keeping with the enabling legislation and stated purposes of the parks. If you look carefully at the DEIS, the data all support the adoption of Alternative F, not Alternative B. Alternative F would benefit soils, water quality, air quality, elk, and the experience of park visitors. Impacts of Alternative F on vegetation and soils cannot be easily summarized, but if the NPS would commit to habitat restoration after the cows are removed, both vegetation and wildlife would benefit overall from cessation of ranching. The same cannot be said about any of the other alternatives.
The parks were not intended to support ranching in perpetuity. To grant ranchers new 20-year leases and allow “diversification” by permitting pigs, chickens, sheep, and goats; horse boarding; row crops; processing of dairy products; and public farm stays and tours would be huge steps backwards, and will further harm the natural environment of the parks over the long term. If the NPS’ Preferred Alternative is adopted it’s likely that ranching on these park lands will never end, the land will continue to be degraded, and the millions of dollars the American people paid for these lands (money that has been kept by the ranchers) will be for naught. It’s time to phase out the ranches and manage the parks for the superlative natural beauty and diversity they offer—it’s time to adopt Alternative F.
The NPS will accept public comments on the Draft EIS until midnight on Monday, September 23.
https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?parkID=333&projectID=74313&documentID=97154
For more than 20 years, Barbara J. Moritsch worked for the National Park Service as an ecologist and interpretive naturalist. At various times from 1982 to 2006, she served at Yosemite as well as four other national parks in the western United States. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resource Planning and Interpretation from Humboldt State University, and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Science from Oregon State University.
Comments
Thank you for speaking out, Barbara! Readers can view a documentary of the reality of Point Reyes at shameofpointreyes.org
I would point out that the purchases of land weren't solely from the ranchers. Many of the ranchers were tenant farmers where the landlords (RCA was one) were thinking of selling the land for housing development.
And while there wasn't specifically anything in the enabling legislation that allowed for indefinite ranching operations, that was added by amendment in the 1970s before the Tule elk herds were introduced. It's 16USC459c-5(a):
END RANCHING THIS IS A NATIONAL PARK INTENDED FOR HUMAN USE, AND NATIVE ANIMALS SURVIVAL. eNOUGH CATERING TO CATTLE BARONS AND WELFARE RANCHERS.
Thank you, Ms. Moritsch. More privatization of public resources ...
This is a very different "public resource" than other NPS areas. It was specifically established in part because of a worry about the possibility that it would turn into housing developments and irrevocably change the rural nature of West Marin County. It was private farmland for up to a century before NPS took over. That's the nature of West Marin whether it's NPS or the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.
Allowing private operators isn't all that unusual. We see it with the Presidio Trust.
Thanks for informing me of that. I grew up in Marin. My folks were involved in the campaign to establish the Seashore. They and the people they worked with on the campaign expected ranching to be phased out evenutally.
MALT does great work on private lands, But that's a separate issue from the Seashore. The Seashore ranches were bought out, and so the threat of development was removed. That excuse no longer holds much water 40 or 50 years later. And as you say, that was only part of the reason for ishe Seashore's establishment--but not significant enough to be mentioned in the establishing legislation.
As I have said in previous comments on a previous article covering this same topic, I am all too directly and painfully familiar with ranchers and dairy operators, their problems, and their tendency to expect society to brush aside all other considerations in order to fix their private business and personal problems.
Unfortunately, I also have some knowledge of genetics and the problems that arise when gene pools get depleted. Allow me to restate and add to my previous comments. Out of at least six, probably at least eight, original elk species or subspecies in North America, all but four are now extinct, the others lost forever. Of the remaining elk, Tule Elk are the smallest, have relatively complex antlers, are adapted to warmer coastal environments, are generally considered the most unique, and, unfortunately, are also the rarest. Out of a population estimated from between half and three quarters of a million prior to European colonization, no more than a few dozen survived by the end of the nineteenth century. In notional terms, that represents an evolutionarily recent reduction in their gene pool of up to twenty thousand to one. Yes, current estimates are that as many as five thousand Tule Elk exist today; however, today's five thousand elk are the recent descendants of a gene pool of no more than a few dozen. What does that mean? It means that the remaining Tule Elk population constitutes a remnant gene pool that has already been shredded to the limit and what remains is absolutely priceless from a conservation biology standpoint. Does that mean that every single individual Tule Elk is vital to the survival of the species? Not necessarily; however, given that the state of the science for predicting if, when, and where inbreeding effects are going to appear is nowhere near mature or reliable, it means that, when a species has suffered this kind of major gene pool loss, there's no reliable way to fully know what traits are lost, passed down, or left hiding in which remnant individuals. There is no way to tell what path "genetic drift" has or will take; no way to tell what traits will be needed, wanted, or unwanted under unpredictable future conditions; and no way to even fully define what might turn out to be "desirable" or "undesirable" in this context. It means that, until we have the science to know what we've lost and how much more we can afford to lose, every significant further taking, through either an acute mechanism or an imposed chronic burden, runs the risk, not necessarily the certainty but the risk, of unacceptable additional damage to the species.
As an earlier article correctly pointed out, most of the elk at Point Reyes are fenced onto the Tomales Point area. They are effectively trapped there so they can't eat grass "leased" to ranchers. More than two hundred of these rare elk recently died because they were trapped there, without water and forage, which is so ridiculously immoral that even any ethical ranchers involved should have been moved to remedy the situation. Unfortunately, there were apparently no ethical ranchers involved. As if that situation was not disgusting enough already, the National Park Service is now proposing to enshrine, in Alternatives A through D, administrative mechanisms to continue the removal, lethally in all probability, of more of these rare elk from the "parklands" because "ranchers complain" that these remnant specimens of Tule Elk are competing with their cattle for grass when "cattle at the seashore outnumber Tule elk by nearly 10 to 1" already.
As I indicated in my comments on that earlier article, I ranched for decades; I know what ranching is all about; I also know the difference between marriage and rape; and it seems obvious that this is a case of pretentious ignorance, rampant greed, and spoiled selfishness run amok. At this point, we need these elk more than we need ranchers who are so unethical as to want to continue, much less escalate and further institutionalize, this debacle and I would not disagree with a threatened listing for this species.
As if all of this is not bad enough, the elk at Point Reyes have also already had problems with Johne's disease and the dairy operations at Point Reyes have been implicated in the introduction and spread of this disease. Quoting numerous notes and sources from my own ranching years, Johne's disease is a "contagious, chronic, and usually fatal infection" caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium avium paratuberculosis (MAP). This bacterium is spread by exposure to the colostrum, milk, or manure of an infected animal, attaches to the intestinal wall of the next victim, and causes an inflammatory immune response that deteriorates the victim's ability to digest and absorb nutrients. The results are symptoms that mimic a fatal form of a chronic wasting disease. Although pasteurization should prevent its spread into the milk supply used for human consumption, studies have shown that it is present in nearly seventy percent of dairy operations in America and half of the dairy herds at Point Reyes tested positive. Some studies have also shown abnormally high levels of the MAP bacterium in humans suffering from Crohn's disease. Johne's disease has already spread into the Tule Elk at Tomales Point, Drake Beach, and other areas at Point Reyes and the health effects of the infection may be involved in recent elk die-offs. The high rate of infection in the dairy herds at Point Reyes, coupled with the ease of contagion through exposure to the manure of poorly contained dairy cattle, raises the probability that the dairy operations at Point Reyes were involved in the introduction and spread of this disease to the Tule Elk population and perhaps beyond.
There are numerous reasons to be concerned by, if not downright opposed, to the continuation of commercial livestock operations at Point Reyes. Given the situation, not to mention the true mission of these National Park Service properties, Alternatives E or F are the only ethically responsible options, with Alternative F being far preferable.
You can argue all you want about it, but the amendment to that legislation allowing for indefinite ranching has existed since 1978. This wasn't even like the rider to the appropriations bill that allowed for a 10 year extension for the oyster farm. The addition is part of the basis for how the park has been managed for the last 40 years, and is considered law the same as the enabling legislation. That's kind of the way the law works. The 1st Amendment isn't any less important because it was an amendment and not an original part of the Constitution.
This certainly isn't the only place on NPS land where there's livestock grazing. Just off of Point Reyes, I've hiked on Bolinas Ridge and came across the cattle there. That's technically Golden Gate NRA, even though it's administered by Point Reyes NS. However, I believe that's more like cattle grazing in regional park land near me, where that's not specifically cattle ranches but just grazing land.