Environmental groups suing the National Park Service over the Point Reyes National Seashore’s ranch management plan asked a judge last Friday to issue a preliminary injunction to freeze the process and prohibit new long-term ranch leases until the park updates its 36-year-old general management plan.
The motion—filed in federal district court and brought by the Resource Renewal Institute, the Western Watersheds Project and the Center for Biological Diversity—alleges that the park’s decision to prioritize the ranch plan over a general plan up-date was politically motivated.
It also points to what plaintiffs call the “mismanagement” of tule elk as one of the harms resulting from the failure to update the general plan, which the seashore worked on for about a decade in the 2000s. That plan was shelved in a virtually complete draft form, the environmental groups say, when park officials decided to pursue other projects.
The seashore, plaintiffs say in their motion, has “intentionally delayed issuing a new or revised General Management Plan and supporting Environmental Impact Statement that gives due consideration to non-ranching or reduced ranching alternatives, while instead pursuing the [ranch plan] to cement existing expanded cattle ranching on the public lands of the seashore for another 20 years.”
But the suit argues that it is illegal to issue the ranch plan—which the park has stated would support ongoing ranching and evaluate longer 20-year leases and di-versification, among other things—without an updated general plan that more broadly guides priorities and evaluates changes over the past couple of decades.
That argument has led to fears among ranchers and their advocates that the suit could bring the downfall of ranching in the park, which has been ongoing for well over a century.
By stalling the ranch plan and long-term leases, the preliminary injunction would burden ranchers who say they need long leases to secure financing for improvements and want to diversify operations to boost their financial sustainability.
Ranchers are also eager for new guidelines for how the park will manage tule elk, which eat forage on ranchlands. A group of ranchers, the county and the federal government will respond to the injunction request in court by Sept. 9.
Rancher David Evans and his wife, Claire Herminjard, said in a statement this week, “We are looking forward to having the opportunity to finally be able to tell our side of the story to the court, as well as to the public, and we are grateful to the many local environmental organizations, community groups, public officials, and members of the general public for their support of our multi-generational pasture-based and organic ranching efforts in Point Reyes.”
Seashore officials have stated they will not comment on ongoing litigation.
In the late ‘90s, the park announced that it was updating its general management plan, and through 2008 it provided periodic updates. In 2003 it released summaries of five conceptual alternatives that it would consider. But the actual draft was never released.
This month, as part of the suit’s proceedings, the park turned over to the plaintiffs part of its administrative record, which included what the environmental groups say is a full draft of the new general management plan.
“They had completed a nearly 800-page document. It was ready for public release,” said Chance Cutrano, director of special projects and strategic initiatives for the Mill Valley-based Resource Renewal Institute. “That was the shocking thing. They went to these lengths to complete this for 10 years.”
The environmental groups say the draft included one option to reduce ranching by up to 48 percent, or 12,000 acres, to preserve natural resources and make way for habitat restoration. Mr. Cutrano said the preferred alternative was a different one that balanced natural and cultural resources in a “progressive way” that included the Coast Miwok heritage.
The park did not issue a public explanation for dropping the update process, although it offered a brief one last year, to a group now involved in the suit. Two years ago, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a Freedom of Information Act request that asked for documents related to the drafting of the general plan, among other things.
In a March 2015 response letter, the park told the nonprofit that the planning effort had been “eclipsed by other park priorities,” specifically efforts to restore the Giacomini Wetlands, remove axis and fallow deer from the seashore and evaluate Drakes Estero and Drakes Bay Oyster Company—all of which required their own environmental evaluations.
In late 2013, when the seashore announced that it would create a ranch plan, a seashore spokeswoman told the Light that the park service was reevaluating how general plans were done, and that it wanted to get started on the ranch plan because of a recent memo from the Interior Department mandating 20-year ranch leases in the seashore.
The environmental groups now suggest that the decision to shelve the general plan was politically motivated. In their motion, they write: “Between 2009 and 2012, the agency faced significant pressure from ranchers and their political allies to authorize long-term commercial ranching at the seashore.”
The suit cites letters between Senator Dianne Feinstein and then-director of the park service Mary Bomar in 2008, in which Sen. Feinstein expressed serious con-cerns about the viability of ranches without long-term leases. It also refers to letters from Supervisor Steve Kinsey and Sen. Feinstein in 2012, expressing concern for ranchers because of the free-ranging elk eating forage in the pastoral zone.
When the ranch plan process kicked off, park officials said it was in large part a re-sponse to a 2012 directive issued by then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. When he decided Drakes Bay Oyster Company would not get a permit to keep operating, he also ordered the seashore to start issuing 20-year ranch leases, and the ranch plan was said to be part of following this order.
But the lawsuit also takes issue with the order from Mr. Salazar, whom they say is “a cattle rancher himself.” They describe the order as “effectively [issued] by fiat, without public notice or opportunity for comment, and without any [environmental impact statement].”
They also argue that the outdated general plan harms elk because there is a “lack of guidance concerning resource management that should have been provided by an updated [general plan].”
They point to the dramatic elk population drop in 2014 at a fenced enclosure as one example of flawed management. (The park created an elk management plan in 1998, but said in the years before the lawsuit was filed that this too was outdated.) The ranch plan was evaluating what to do with the elk in the pastoral zone, but not in the fenced enclosure at Tomales Point.