Although some well-intentioned people on the coast have in recent years taken to jocularly identifying themselves as "Friends of the Coyote Brush," if coyote brush were to actually spread much more on the Point Reyes Peninsula or in the Olema Valley, it would be an environmental disaster.
So writes Dr. Robert Curry, emeritus research professor of Environmental Geology at UC Santa Cruz. Dr. Curry also directs the Watershed Institute of the California State University system, and his main work is for the state’s Regional Water Quality Control boards. He has studied the Point Reyes Peninsula and Bolinas Lagoon since 1963 and worked on ecological restoration of natural parks for the past 20 years.
"My students and I have worked with weed-control and erosion-control problems in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since its first transfer to the National Park Service," he noted in a March 12 report, which analyzed land management at Rancho Baulines.
That Olema Valley horse ranch near Bolinas Lagoon has been operated by Mary Tiscornia for the past 30 years, but the Point Reyes National Seashore (which manages this part of the GGNRA) is trying to evict her.
On her behalf, attorney Stephan Volker of Oakland brought in Dr. Curry to evaluate her operation of the ranch and – judging from GGNRA and National Seashore management elsewhere – what will probably happen to the ranch if the Park Service evicts her.
"On Feb. 5," he reported, "I visited GGNRA lands within Marin County, including the Rancho Baulines site. My last careful site evaluation was almost 12 years earlier as part of a multi-day University of California class field trip. I was amazed at the differences in degree of invasive-plant takeover between the Rancho Baulines site and the GGNRA lands further south over the past decade. At Fort Baker, for example, it seems that the National Park Service has simply given up any pretext of management of pampas grass and French broom....
"The Point Reyes National Seashore lands are also in bad shape from exotic-pest invasion. Cape ivy and French broom seem to be the primary problem species at the present time."
However, Dr. Curry added, "current research by my students in the former Fort Ord public lands [now under US Bureau of Land Management jurisdiction] is proving the efficacy of livestock management for control of exotics and for preservation and even enhancement of habitats for rare and endangered species....
"What is remarkable and clearly evident is that the Rancho Baulines lands are in the best condition of any similar habitats in public or private ownership on the Point Reyes Peninsula. Despite large volunteer work parties to remove invasive species at nearby Audubon Canyon Ranch and the Point Reyes Bird Observatory site, both are heavily draped with Cape ivy. Without [requiring] similar control efforts, the lands presently leased from the National Park Service by Mary Tiscornia at Rancho Baulines are in reasonably good shape....
"In my professional opinion, the current management of Rancho Baulines lands [for grazing horses and cows] is effectively preserving the mosaic of forest and open grassland that creates such a picturesque site. Any future land manager will be hard pressed to come up with a more cost-effective way to preserve this mosaic of ecosystems and open vistas of Bolinas Lagoon and Point Reyes....
"The mosaic of forest and meadow parklands, particularly the grass-covered hillsides and bottomlands that are resistant to fire, was born through continued grazing throughout the Holocene (last 11,000 years), presumably by elk.
"Without grazing by at least the present number of livestock or substitution of native grazers, this site would soon require several fulltime employees with tractor and hand-mowing equipment throughout the year. Large, open hillsides that could not be tractor-mowed would require enormous labor for hand control. Without grazing or hand control, fire and shrub cover would ensue as we see on Mount Tamalpais further south and on parts of Point Reyes to the west."
"Termination of grazing can lead to the loss of grassland habitat and its displacement by dense chaparral such as coyote brush (Baccharis pilularis). This unnatural succession leads to a significant loss in species diversity, particularly among birds and flowering plants.
"Plant succession studies conducted by Professor Joe R. McBride of UC Berkeley’s School of Forestry and Conservation and by wildlife biologists at the East Bay Regional Park District confirm that light grazing is the best means by which to maintain grassland habitat in California coastal valleys.
"These studies show that grazing maintains habitat for many animal species, including golden eagles; burrowing owls; buteos such as red-tailed hawks; buntings; meadow and horned larks; Brewer’s, rusty, and red-winged blackbirds; loggershead shrikes; kit foxes; garter snakes; tiger salamanders; and ground squirrels (which provide prey for many other species).
"Dense chaparral also poses a significant hazard of wildfires that burn much hotter and longer than grassland fires, resulting in...sheet erosion and waterway sedimentation."
It’s not that the Park Service hasn’t repaired some buildings and cleared some non-native weeds from creekbanks at Rancho Baulines, but let’s face it: the National Seashore has an egregious history of squandering the jewels of the Olema Valley.
Two examples: when the Park Service in 1974 bought the historic Randall House, which had been built in the 1880s, the National Seashore immediately proposed demolishing the building. It also let the public steal the home’s carved-wood banisters and other Victorian-era ornamentation. Eventually rangers boarded the place up, but the only thing now saving what remains of the Randall House is a colony of rare bats that has taken up residence there.
Immediately south of the Randall House there were – until 19 years ago – two popular recreation spots known as the Hagmaier ponds. When a ferocious rainstorm in 1982 breached the dam of the larger, more-scenic pond, the Park Service insisted it could never come up with $100,000, the estimated cost of repairing the dam, so all that remains today is the smaller, far-less-inviting pond.
In short, it is primarily grazing – not the sometimes lackadaisical, sometimes overly zealous Park Service – that is protecting the Olema Valley’s cultural heritage, native plants, and wildlife. Like the Taliban, who couldn’t stand to have two magnificent (but non-Islamic) statues of Buddha in Afghanistan and so destroyed them, park staff are so fanatic in their opposition to a private resident’s maintaining Rancho Baulines (although they themselves can’t afford to do it very well) that they are in the process of destroying it.
Such Park Service mismanagement is not unique to West Marin. In East Marin, the City of Sausalito is now considering a lawsuit against the Park Service to block its grandiose plan to turn Fort Baker into an immense tourist trap that would create severe parking and traffic problems.
Those who think it’s time for a shakeup in the Western Regional Office of the Park Service may want to contact our new US Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton. Her staff can be reached at 202 208-3100, by emailing <gale norton@ios.doi.gov>, or by writing her at the US Department of the Interior, 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240.