The plight of Tule elk, at Point Reyes and elsewhere, has already been extensively discussed on this website before, with little or nothing changing for the better; it just gets worse.  The situation is so disgusting and the people involved are so ignorant, degenerate, and corrupt that it's truly even hard for me to force myself to comment on any of it, so much ignorance, deliberate disinformation, and wanton duplicity.  But, in the interests of saying something in defense of rare and threatened wildlife, let's look at what has already been said about this species in past NPT comments.

There were originally at least six, probably eight or more, elk species or subspecies in North America.  All but four are now extinct; the others are wildlife varieties that have been lost forever.  Of the remaining elk, Tule Elk are generally considered the most unique, and, unfortunately, 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.  Current estimates are that as many as five thousand Tule Elk exist today; however, today's five thousand elk are the recent descendants of that remnant gene pool of no more than a few dozen.  That's an inbreeding catastrophe waiting to be recognized.

Let's try to put it in terms that even the worst narcissists, and that's who we're dealing with, might understand.  Imagine that the more than three hundred million Americans in our nation's current human gene pool suffered a twenty thousand to one gene pool reduction like the one suffered by Tule Elk and only perhaps fifteen thousand Americans survived to reconstitute our population.  Would they be our best or would they be among our worst?  After such a calamity, would our future be more likely to be utopian or dystopian?  Now, go back and consider all the traits, capabilities, and survival skills Tule Elk may have lost.  Remember also that the state of the science on predicting if, when, and where inbreeding effects are going to appear is nowhere near mature or reliable.

Many, if not most of the Tule Elk at Point Reyes are fenced into this Tomales Point area, trapped there so they can't eat grass "leased" at outrageously subsidized rates to a few degenerate ranchers.  More than two hundred of these rare elk died in a previous drought event because they were trapped, without water or forage, in this same Tomales Point area.  And, the response of the National Park Service (NPS) to that previous drought event was to actually be willing to consider killing even more of these rare elk in other areas of Point Reyes, all because those few degenerate ranchers were complaining that the remnant specimens of Tule Elk were eating grass, grass within a NPS unit, that these degenerate ranchers wanted reserved for their cattle.  At that time cattle were already outnumbering Tule Elk by "nearly 10 to 1" in this shamefully mismanaged NPS unit.

How did this situation arise?  In its enabling legislation, ranching was not intended at Point Reyes National Seashore.  As indicated in other articles and comments, the federal government payed ranch owners tens of millions of dollars in American taxpayers' money to purchase these ranches in the 1960s and 1970s, with ranch owners only retaining the right to stay for 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.  The purchase of the ranches clearly indicates that the intent was to remove the ranching operations from the park unit lands.  However, after fifty years, long after ranchers used up the time limits that they agreed to when they accepted those millions of dollars in purchase money, after all of those original ranchers have long been gone, hirelings are still being used to try to squat on the park's valuable lands until corrupt and disingenuous political dodges and manipulations can be used to connive the lands away from the public and eventually into private development schemes.  After all those years, the hired squatters, their trojan horse ranch and dairy operations, and thousands of cattle remain in this park unit.

The NPS's own NEPA analyses and documentation attest that the ranches and their operations pose significant threats, causing damage to park air and water quality, native vegetation, and wildlife; adversely affecting the experience of park visitors; and preventing visitors from accessing a third of their own public NPS lands at Point Reyes.  Even worse, the cavalier and derelict dairy operations at Point Reyes have introduced often fatal Johne's disease and spread the infection into the Tule Elk at Point Reyes.  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.  The pathogen 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 mimicking a fatal form of a chronic wasting disease.  Roughly half of the dairy herds at Point Reyes have tested positive.  Studies have also shown abnormally high levels of the MAP bacterium in humans suffering from Crohn's disease.  Although pasteurization should prevent its spread into the milk supply used for human consumption, the high rate of infection in the dairy herds at Point Reyes, coupled with the ease of contagion through exposure to the dried and windblown manure of poorly contained and managed dairy cattle, raises the risk of infection for both the Tule Elk population and human hikers and other visitors.

As if all of this is not bad enough, the ranchers and dairy operators squatting on Point Reyes continue to complain about "their" grass being consumed by Tule Elk in the park and continue to advocate for, indeed insist on, the continuous killing of Tule Elk in the park, despite the fact that the killing of rare, native, Tule Elk for the benefit of these scoundrel ranchers runs contrary to both National Park Service and conservation biology principles.  Only public outrage and outcry have limited the killing, especially in this election year with so many wildlife advocates watching.  But, I suspect this current drought and heat event may have given the Trump Administration's acting park superintendent, the National Park Service's acting director, and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt another option.  If they just stall and dither a while, leave the Tule Elk tightly fenced into this Tomales Point area, trapped without water and forage; then nature can and will do their dirty work for them.  And, a malicious little politically connected clique of derelict ranchers and dairies that were paid to leave and legally required to leave this NPS unit fifty years ago will have been supported in their schemes to stay in the park and keep their sleazy disease-ridden operations going.

What's a few more dead native elk for a corrupt political regime that ignores the Hatch Act, spits on Congress and its subpoenas, sneers at the emoluments clause, and scoffs at prohibitions against Conflicts of Interest?  Even if they are a rare and threatened species with an already damaged gene pool, the Trump Administration's acting park superintendent, the National Park Service's acting director, and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt couldn't care less.  The intent of this administration has clearly been to undermine the rule of law across the board, normalize lawlessness when it's perpetrated by their cronies, and  ...you know, make America function just like Putin and his oligarchic friends operate Russia and Xi and his party associates operate China.

But, again, as I've said before, it isn't just Trump.  No, no, republicans, republican enablers, and republican appointees are the problem.  If we get rid of Trump, but leave the Senate in republican hands, we won't have accomplished anything close to what is needed.  We need to hold the House and take both the executive branch and the Senate.  We need to vote this November or as soon as we can in our individual jurisdictions and we need to remember that our problem isn't just Trump; it's an entire corrupt political party, from Greg Gianforte and Steve Daines in the north, to Cory Gardner and Ken Buck in the middle, to Lindsey Graham and Ron DeSantis in the south.  So, don't just sit there, get up and vote!

If we win and we're lucky, there might even be enough of a Tule Elk gene pool left to resurrect.

You kind of had me until you went political with all of your BS and then you called his administration a regime. Also you put in Putin's name in there which that has been debunked

I am not sure an anti republican  political rant makes much sense in this case. When the biggest most recent die off of the herd occurred while Obama was president.  That the twenty-five year time limit was up when in 1995 when Clinton was President.  And when the State where Point Reyes is located is controlled by Democrats and both Senators are Democrats.  No doubt there are political shennanigans going on regarding Point Reyes but it appers that if one were to do even a cursory investigation that the problem is not a republican one.   Lets just say money talks and money has no political party boundaries.

Thank you, Humphrey Ploughjogger, for an excellently written and clear explanation.

Although I agree with everything you wrote, I also agree that this is not really a partisan issue; our Democratic, "environmental" Congressman, Jared Huffman,has come down clearly on the side of the ranchers, and wants to give them 20 more years, and allow them to add pigs, chickens and crops to OUR bought and paid-for parkland; he is also in favor of killing some elk to accommodate the criminal ranchers who squat on our land. I guess he is also bought and paid for. This outrage had been going on for decades.

ok Rick B so when some of the ones saying they had proof to the public and en their emails show there was nothing zip zilch yet they still pushed it for their own agenda, some have even testified under oath that there was nothing,  still people like you won't believe it