Please Don’t Shoot!
Your comments are critical to the NPS’s Draft Plan for cattle ranching at Point Reyes National Seashore.
Dairy and beef cattle ranching has a long history at Pt. Reyes. When the Seashore was established in 1962 there was opposition from the ranching families, but they eventually agreed to a buyout-leaseback arrangement with the National Park Service. The ranchers were generously compensated for their land (more than $300 million in today’s dollars), and it was agreed that they could remain in park for their lifetime or 25 years.
Ranching was not intended to continue indefinitely on these public lands. In fact, there is no mention of ranching in the enabling legislation as a purpose for establishing the Seashore. What is in the Congressional record (16 U.S.C. 459c-6. ) is the following:
“. . . The property . . . shall be administered by the Secretary without impairment of its natural values, in a manner which provides for such recreational, educational, historic preservation, interpretation, and scientific research opportunities as are consistent with . . . the maximum protection, restoration and preservation of the natural environment within the area . . . .”
Ensuring private ranchers a profit is not the mission of the National Park Service. Yet, this is what underlies in the NPS’s proposed plan.
Killing native Tule Elk
Growing commercial crops
Allowing ranchers to add hogs, chickens, turkeys, sheep and goats to their operations.
This land is your land. A lawsuit environmental groups filed over the NPS’s failure to plan or account for the environmental impacts of ranching at the Seashore gives the public the right to comment—for the first time ever—on whether and how ranching fits into our national seashore.
Restore Point Reyes National Seashore urges the following:
Manage Pt Reyes Seashore for those values it was created to protect: the landscape and its wildlife.
Phase out dairy and beef ranching, as was originally intended.
No increase in the level of commercial activity of leaseholders in the Seashore.
Protect wildlife over livestock.
Restore the Seashore’s Pastoral Zone for wildlife habitat, native plant communities, scientific research and education.
Repurpose historic ranch buildings for scientific research, interpretation and public education.
The Center for Biological Diversity has a fact sheet contrasting the impacts of Tule Elk with cattle at Point Reyes.
The NPS is hosting two public meetings on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (draft EIS) for the General Management Plan Amendment addressing active ranching in the park and management of tule elk.
Ask questions. Submit written comments.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019, 5-7 p.m.
West Marin School Gym
Point Reyes Station, CA
Wednesday, August 28, 2019, 5-7 p.m.
Bay Model Visitor Center
Sausalito, CA
