Park Service staff will closely monitor reproduction among the 465 tule elk on Pierce Point as rangers prepare to move 35 to 70 elk to Drake's Estero uphill from Limantour Beach within three years.

Twenty-nine female elk were given contraceptive shots and radio collars last summer by a team of biologists.

Contraception and relocation to Limantour are central to managing the herd, Superintendent Don Neubacher on Saturday told the Citizens Advisory Commission for the Point Reyes National Seashore and the GGNRA.

But "Limantour" is actually a misnomer for the National Seashore's proposed 23,000-acre tule elk range. The actual range will eventually stretch from the top of Inverness Ridge near Inverness and Inverness Park south to the edge of Bolinas. Ironically excluded from the range is Limantour Spit.

Initially, a fence would be built at Limantour "to prevent the elk from wandering over to the Golden Gate Bridge," said park biologist Judd Howell.

If this "trial relocation" works, the Park Service plans to allow the elk to roam freely on the Limantour range by the year 2005, Neubacher said.

Although the freely roaming elk would not be fenced in, the forested slopes of Inverness Ridge are expected prevent elk from entering Paradise Ranch Estates and other populated areas, Assistant Supt. Frank Dean told The Light.

"We'd make a commitment to make sure the elk wouldn't go beyond the proposed boundary into people's yards and into town areas," Dean said.

"Public safety threats due to elk-human conflicts have been rare in national parks," notes the park's elk-management plan. "The greatest threat by elk to human safety appears to be the potential for automobile collisions and accidents."

The herd's "management limit" is set at 600 to 800 animals, Supt. Neubacher said. About 350 to 450 animals would stay at the Pierce Point location, while 250 to 350 would range in the new preserve.

The superintendent stressed that cows won't be squeezed out of the park by the elk, adding that "our plan clearly does not promote elk in agricultural lands."

Continued ranching in the National Seashore was written into the legislation that established the park in 1962, Neubacher said, and the park plans to maintain that policy.

However, representatives from the Committee for the Preservation of Tule Elk and In Defense of Animals told advisory commissioners that ranching should be eliminated from the proposed Limantour range.

Seven dairies and six beef ranches operate in the National Seashore, along with 15 beef ranches in the Olema Valley area of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Commissioner Merritt Robinson told The Light, "We made a promise to the ranchers that we wouldn't damage their economic position. I want the park's tule-elk-management plan to speak to this issue."

Meantime, the elk continue to mate at Pierce Point, and Commissioner Amy Meyer wondered aloud during Saturday's meeting in Point Reyes Station whether the park's managed-pregnancy program was "making a dent" in the herd's growth.

Since only 20 percent of the herd received contraceptive shots, the population was "hardly dented at all," biologist Howell replied. "We're just trying to see how effective the PZP [porcine zona pellucida] is on the elk."

If the shots are effective, future elk cows won't be rounded up and netted from helicopters; they'll be "zapped" with PZP dartguns, Neubacher said. "This is more humane and cost effective, finally, than culling the herd with shotguns."

Meantime, the Park Service will continue tracking elk, testing fecal samples for Johne's disease (a debilitating illness which has afflicted the herd and is contagious to cattle), and for fertility rates.

Park staff will also monitor the herd's impact on the native grass and the endangered Myrtle's silverspot butterfly.

Those wishing to comment on the proposed tule elk plan can write Supt. Neubacher, Point Reyes National Seashore, Point Reyes Station 94956, before Dec. 12.