The Golden Gate National Recreation Area is again embroiled in litigation with dog owners.
Last Thursday, four groups—Save Our Recreation, the San Francisco Dog Owners Group, the Marin County Dog Owners Group and the Coastside Dog Owners Group—filed two lawsuits over rules released in August that they say place significant limitations on dog walking.
The same groups first sued the recreation area in 2016 over then-proposed changes to dog rules; one year after that litigation, the park service terminated a more than decade-long rulemaking process, settling for its pet policy dating back to 1979.
But this year, the recreation area updated its compendium to include some of the same rules that caused the initial controversy.
“They are trying to achieve through the compendium what they wanted to do with the dog rule, and you will recall what happened with that: They withdrew it,” said Chris Carr, the group’s attorney who filed the past and current lawsuits.
Furthermore, he said, the way the new changes were implemented is unlawful, considering that updates to the compendium are meant to be minor, “and these are not minor or uncontroversial changes.”
The two suits—which name the G.G.N.R.A., the park service and the Interior Department as defendants—tackle separate issues. The first suit relates to process, alleging that the G.G.N.R.A. “has circumvented multiple statutory and regulatory requirements in an attempt to smuggle into law, without requisite process or support, significant limitations and restrictions on dog walking in the G.G.N.R.A.”
The new dog rules are arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act, the suit says, because the park service failed to provide written justifications and explanations for the rules and failed to publish them in the federal register to give adequate public notice and opportunity to comment. “Unless such an action is routine, minor and uncontroversial, and does not cause a significant alteration in public use patterns, it must be undertaken through notice-and-comment rulemaking,” the suit underscores.
The groups argue the rules require an environmental impact statement or, at least, an environmental assessment, as the compendium does not “reasonably fall within the ambit of the categorical exclusion the G.G.N.R.A. relies on.”
The first lawsuit, which, like the second, was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, asks the court to order the park service to set aside the 2019 compendium until it complies with the National Environmental Policy and Administrative Procedure Acts.
The groups point to several specific issues that mirror those that arose in the recreation area’s last planning process over dog rules, which began in the early 2000s and featured a dedicated dog management plan and associated environmental impact statement.
Sally Stephens, the chair of the San Francisco Dog Owners Group, wrote to superintendent Laura Joss in October detailing the overlap and why the changes continue to be problematic in her eyes. Specifically, the compendium includes new definitions of an “unmanaged dog,” a “managed dog” and “voice control,” and new restrictions at seven specific locations, including Muir Beach.
Unmanaged dogs are now defined not as those that “annoy, harass, or attack people, wildlife, livestock or other dogs,” but as those that “a reasonable person would find annoying, harassing or threatening, or that annoys, harasses, harms or threatens another animal or harms park resources.”
“Voice controlled” is still defined as a “dog that is within earshot and eyesight of its owner or handler and that responds immediately to commands to return to leash when called or signaled,” but now includes, “The owner or handler must demonstrate this ability when requested to do so by an authorized person.”
Ms. Stephens expressed concern that the definitions are so broad that they could lead to the exclusion of any dog in the G.G.N.R.A. at the discretion of park rangers.
Regarding the definition of voice control, Ms. Stephens highlighted that park rangers or other personnel are now authorized to take an off-leash dog away from its owner if it doesn’t respond adequately. “This will only increase conflicts between dog owners/handlers and park rangers. One can only too easily imagine the confrontation when a ranger tries to take a dog away from its owner because its recall wasn’t ‘immediate’ enough,” she wrote.
The 2019 compendium also imposes new restrictions at seven locations. In Marin, there are new seasonal closures at Muir Beach, Rodeo Beach and Oakwood Valley in areas currently popular among off-leash dog walkers.
At Muir Beach, dogs will continue to be allowed on the main beach, except “when there is an active surface water connection between Redwood Creek and the Pacific Ocean.” At those times, “all forms of public use, including voice control dog walking, are prohibited in the surface water connection area,” or at least 40 feet from the centerline of the creek all the way to the ocean.
Redwood Creek, where the park service has undertaken a significant restoration project in recent years, provides habitat for endangered coho salmon, threatened steelhead trout and the threatened California red-legged frog.
Although dog advocates see this as an improvement from the previous plan—which proposed the prohibition of off-leash dogs at Muir Beach and Oakwood Valley, an area near Tennessee Valley west of Marin City—the groups worry the changes are just the first steps to a similar outcome.
In her letter, Ms. Stephens asked for more information about the seasonal closures. “What specific species will be impacted? How will people with or without dogs walking through the water impact those species, if at all? This specific information must be included in any written justification for an access closure in the compendium.”
Outside of Marin, the compendium eliminates dog walking on thousands of acres of trails in San Mateo County. In Fort Funston, a portion of a public parking lot and a second area designated for off-leash dog owners will now be reserved for administrative and operational uses by park service staff. Ocean Beach newly requires dogs to be leashed in stairwells leading to the off-leash beach area.
The second of the two suits argues that the G.G.N.R.A. has unlawfully and improperly withheld documents related to the new rules requested this fall under the Freedom of Information Act, evidence of “a pattern and practice of failing to comply with the plaintiff’s [requests].”
During the previous litigation, the Freedom of Information Act served the groups well. In 2016, they sued the park service for withholding documents and data regarding the dog management plan. Emails released as a result of the lawsuit revealed that park employees had used private email accounts to communicate about the planning process, in violation of federal law.
The new suit describes that those emails also showed recreation area staff soliciting letters-to-the-editor in Bay Area newspapers from nonprofit supporters of dog-walking restrictions. Staff drafted talking points for them, and, the suit states, deliberately excluded scientific evidence from the planning process that could have supported lighter restrictions.
Following the 2016 lawsuit, the park service, with the help of the Interior Department, conducted a 10-month internal review while suspending its finalization of the dog management plan. According to a park press release from 2017, the review concluded that the use of personal email by employees to conduct official business “was inappropriate,” but that the reviewed emails “ultimately did not influence the outcome of the planning and rulemaking process.”
Nevertheless, the park’s then-acting director, Michael Reynolds, said at that time: “We can do better and in the interest of upholding the highest standard of transparency and trust with our Bay Area neighbors, we have determined that it is no longer appropriate to continue with the current dog management rulemaking process.”