elk
WILDLIFE: According to recent surveys, the tule elk population in the Point Reyes National Seashore have been stable for the last year or so, following declines likely linked to the drought.   David Briggs

The first tule elk calves of 2017 have been spotted at Tomales Point and Drakes Beach, said Dave Press, the Point Reyes National Seashore’s wildlife ecologist who leads annual surveys of the population. And though “the forage condition is supreme out there,” Mr. Press said, he cautioned that it’s too early to speculate on the effects that winter rains may have had on the elk. The seashore boasts one of the largest populations of tule elk in the state, where they were decimated in the 1800s. The animals were reintroduced to the park in 1978, first to a 2,600-acre fenced enclosure at Tomales Point. Now there are two additional populations, near Drakes Beach and the Limantour wilderness. Though there have been dramatic fluctuations in the past—particularly for the fenced herd, which dropped by half between 2012 and 2014, from 540 to 286 animals, likely due to the drought—all three herds remained relatively stable between the end of 2015 and the end of 2016. The park counted 290 fenced elk at Tomales Point last fall, compared to 283 at the end of 2015; the Drakes Beach herd numbered 93, versus 86 the previous year. The herd that grazes the Limantour wilderness has numbered at least 126 over the past two years, though Mr. Press said he is less confident in this data. Though still within its expected range, the Limantour group has started exploring further onto the pastures along Estero Road and higher onto the western side of the Inverness ridge, making it increasingly difficult to find them. “It’s just much harder to see them over a greater area, with all that tree and brush coverage,” said Mr. Press, whose team counts the animals by sight. While the elk surveys are typically done around October, the park usually waits to survey the Limantour herd until around January, when the elk are more likely to come out into the open to forage on the green hillsides. Last year, the seashore was forced to halt a planning process meant in part to help manage the herds, which Point Reyes ranchers say are threatening their own survival, when environmental groups sued over a long-delayed general management plan, among other things.