The Great Giveaway Continues

Driven to near extinction, northern elephant seals have made a remarkable comeback— from as few as 100 in the 1920s to about 124,000 in California today. The seals give birth at Point Reyes National Seashore, where the National Park Service goes to great lengths to protect them from human disturbance. If only the Park Service would show such concern for the Seashore’s other rare wildlife, like the park’s iconic Tule elk.
 
Tule elk once roamed these lands by the thousands but were extirpated by the mid-1800s as the land was converted to cattle ranches. Ten surviving elk were reintroduced to Point Reyes in the 1970s. Now there are 500 elk in the Seashore, the only national park where Tule elk exist. This should be hailed as a success in species recovery, but for the Tule elk and more than 100 rare, threatened and endangered species at the Seashore, the future is bleak.
 
When the Tule elk were being reintroduced to the park, beef and dairy ranching were being phased out. Seashore ranchers had been paid upwards of $300 million in today’s dollars to sell their land for a national park, and were permitted to lease back the land for 25 years. But through political wrangling, the ranchers never left. Nearly sixty years later, 6,000 cattle graze in fully one-third of the park, out numbering the elk more than 10 to 1.
 
The ranchers want the elk gone. Once focused on saving the Tule elk from extinction, the Park Service plans to remove them.
 
By the Park Service’s own analysis, barbed-wire fences that trap wildlife; tons of cow manure ranchers spread on pastures, polluting the Seashore’s waterways; soil erosion; and methane gas emissions are among the impacts of cattle grazing at the national seashore. Nonetheless, in their draft plan the NPS calls for more ranching at the Seashore, not less, and killing any Tule elk that encroach on land leased for cattle grazing.
 
Imagine if ranching at the Seashore were to end and the NPS were to uphold its mission to preserve our national parks “unimpaired” for future generations:

• Restoring habitats for coho and chinook salmon, snowy plover, northern spotted owl, red-legged frog, Point Reyes mountain beaver and more than 50 struggling animal species would be a priority instead a casualty of Park Service policy.   

•  Thousands of acres now committed to cattle would instead be repurposed for wildlife and public recreation. 

• Water quality at the Seashore is ranked among the worst in the country. Without tons of cattle manure from the Seashore polluting creeks, ponds, Tomales Bay, and the Pacific, overall water quality would vastly improve. 

•  It is ironic that at a national seashore imperiled by drought and sea-level rise, cattle are the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Removing the cattle would be equivalent to taking 6,000 cars off Marin roads every year. 

As dairy prices fall to all-time lows and beef consumption declines, Seashore ranchers are demanding that the Park Service keep them afloat. They want to raise sheep, goats, chickens and row crops, and offer Airbnb-style guest stays. Though underfunded and straining to fulfill its mission to preserve the Seashore “unimpaired” for future generations, the Park Service is expected to give the ranchers what they want—ensuring that 28,000 acres of our national seashore remain virtually off limits to the public, and precarious for wildlife. 

The Park Service says it will release its plan for ranching at the Seashore this Spring.
Stay tuned.