The Point Reyes National Seashore has proposed removing the fence enclosing the 2,900-acre tule elk reserve at Tomales Point—a step that some ranchers say could force them out of the park. Seashore officials said that eliminating the enclosure would give the elk access to more nutritious forage and water, which have become scarcer with drought and climate change.
Environmental activists demanding the removal of the fence have held protests and filed lawsuits saying that park service mismanagement has caused the elk to die of thirst and starvation. They greeted Friday’s announcement with cautious optimism.
“We’re thrilled that the park service appears to be actually considering dismantling the deadly Tomales Point elk fence,” said Jack Gescheidt, a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the park brought by Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program. “The fence’s removal is long overdue—decades overdue.”
The park is exploring the removal as it drafts a management plan for elk at Tomales Point. That plan is separate from the general management plan, which the park amended in 2021 with updated policies on agriculture and the seashore’s free-ranging elk herds. Both plans are involved in
litigation.
The park will take initial comments and hold a virtual meeting later this summer before it drafts alternatives as part of an environmental assessment. A final decision about the fence is expected next summer.
In a press release last Friday, park staff said that along with the fence, the park service would remove the temporary water infrastructure installed in recent years and consider ways to make the historic Pierce Point Ranch, which lies within the enclosure, more welcoming to visitors.
For now, the fence separates around 300 elk from nearby cattle and dairy ranches. But elk find ways through the fence, and two free-ranging herds already compete with cattle for forage and water elsewhere on the park’s historic, leased ranchlands.
Peter Obstler, an attorney for ranchers closest to the elk reserve, said the fence is vital to their operations and urged park officials to keep it in place.
“In my clients’ opinion, tearing down the elk fence is tantamount to an eviction—and a breach of the promises made to them by the government,” Mr. Obstler said. “You’re about to release 350 elk—a herd that is projected to grow to 500 or 1,000 within five to 10 years—onto 4,000 acres of land with no wildlife management plan for these animals.”
The park’s announcement last week did not say how the elk released from the reserve would be managed. The updated general management plan for the seashore approved culling for one of the free-ranging herds if it surpassed a population threshold.
California’s tule elk, which are native to the state, had nearly vanished when the Department of Fish and Game reintroduced them across the state, including to Tomales Point in 1978. The herd multiplied behind the fence over the following two decades.
By 1998, the population threatened to overwhelm the capacity of the reserve, and the park drafted a tule elk management plan, recommending the relocation of 27 elk to a wilderness area near Limantour Estero. Within a few years, some of those elk made their way onto cow pastures near Drakes Beach, setting up a clash with ranching operations.
Melanie Gunn, a spokeswoman for the park, declined to provide further comment on Friday’s announcement, citing the lawsuits challenging the general management plan and the management of elk. The park remains engaged in mediation with ranchers and environmentalists over the general plan and is committed to finding a solution, Ms. Gunn said.
Along with its press release, the park posted the 4,000 public comments it received concerning the management of Tomales Point. Most of the correspondence called for not just taking down the fence, but for eliminating ranching altogether.
“Let the elk roam free,” one comment declared. “Sunset the ranching and let the visitors roam free too. This is OUR public land.”
Another stated, “I am deeply distressed at the policy that allows dairy cows to graze in a national park. They have destroyed the landscape and habitat for native animals, turning almost half of the park into a biological desert.”
Meanwhile, the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association pleaded with park officials to keep the fence in place. The group said removing it would be a betrayal to ranchers, who were operating on the land for more than a century before the park was established.
“The fence was constructed to keep the elk off the ranch lands,” they wrote. “This was a sensible decision, as the introduction of elk was not to harm the ranching. Ranching was a historic, cultural use that Point Reyes National Seashore was, and still is, charged to protect.”
As the recent drought sucked nutrients out of grasses and other forage on the peninsula, some elk in the reserve grew ill and died. Activists staged protests and demanded the removal of the fence, and the park began delivering water and mineral licks.
Around the same time, the Harvard law program filed its lawsuit alleging that the elk were dying due to mismanagement. The case stated that in 2020, the fenced elk population fell by about 150. But the park’s most recent count, completed in February, showed the herd had grown from 221 to 262, an increase of 20 percent.
Park officials say the population ebbs and flows, dropping as competition for available forage increases and recovering when the supply of food becomes sufficient for the reduced herd.
Rebecca Graverman, a Harvard attorney, said the plaintiffs are pleased that the park service has recommended the removal of the three-mile fence, which they say prevents the elk from accessing adequate forage and water. But she said the plaintiffs—three Marin County residents and a Sonoma County environmental nonprofit—will continue pressing their case.
“The park service must take additional remedial measures to provide supplemental food and water to the elk, as finalization of this proposed plan could take multiple years during which the elk could continue to suffer and die,” she said.