The Point Reyes National Seashore is putting off several of the key policy changes it outlined in last year’s general management plan amendment, frustrating activists, ranchers and state regulators alike. One policy, a new water quality strategy, was delayed by an ongoing lawsuit, park officials told the California Coastal Commission last week. Seashore superintendent Craig Kenkel asked for an extension from the commission, and said that, in the meantime, the park will not grant long-term leases to ranchers and won’t cull the growing Drakes Beach elk herd as planned.
Yet coastal commissioners balked at the park’s request, keeping an April hearing date and setting up a potential battle with the park service. If the seashore doesn’t present its progress on the water quality strategy next month, the commissioners said, they could move to withdraw their conditional approval of the park’s amended general management plan.
“I don’t understand why litigation would preclude the development of a water quality monitoring plan,” Commissioner Sara Aminzadeh said. “I think we need to draw a hard line because otherwise we’ll just continue to get delays.”
The park’s management decisions must face review by the coastal commission to determine “federal consistency” with the California Coastal Act. Last spring, the commission approved the general management plan amendment, which generated controversy by allowing the park to issue 20-year leases to the ranching families that operate on its land. But its approval came with a condition: The park service had to return in a year with a water quality monitoring plan to avert the negative impacts of runoff from cattle ranching on streams and beaches.
The park was set to finalize the amendment last July but delayed the record of decision until September. A few months later, the same coalition of environmental groups whose 2016 lawsuit sparked the G.M.P.A. sued again, alleging the park was violating federal law by allowing continued ranching. In a letter to the coastal commission, Superintendent Kenkel blamed the delayed record of decision and the lawsuit for the lack of progress on the water quality plan.
But public commenters at a coastal commission hearing on the matter last Friday were skeptical of this argument. The lawsuit is not an injunction, they argued, and they pressured the park service to hasten the process. Neal Desai, the director of field operations for the National Parks Conservation Association, called the seashore’s request “completely inappropriate.”
“The letter is an example of a pattern that we and others warned the commission about when we said there would be attempts to backslide and delay and dilute these protective measures,” Mr. Desai said.
Morgan Patton, the executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, said her nonprofit still has concerns about the effects of ranching on environmentally sensitive areas in the seashore. “While we empathize with the legal constraints that the seashore outlines in their letter, the water quality strategy is something that is within their current authority,” she said. “There really is no reason for delay.”
The commission agreed. Commissioner Caryl Hart called Mr. Desai’s organization, the N.P.C.A., the “conscience of the N.P.S.” Commissioner Mark Gold said his water quality expertise and that of his fellow commissioners would only strengthen the strategy, and he urged the park to report on its progress in April.
Others pointed out the prominence of the park’s elk management and ranching policies in the public eye. To ensure public trust in the commission, they said, they needed to demonstrate that they are holding the park accountable for its policies on this scrutinized section of coast.
“The public’s perception of what’s happening there is really important,” Belinda Faustinos, an alternate commissioner, said last week. “Obviously the water quality conditions, the animal die-off, [are] all deeply concerning.”
Though the park’s request for an extension was denied and commissioners expect a presentation on its water quality strategy next month, several other aspects of the G.M.P.A. remain in limbo. The park will not issue any long-term leases for now, instead opting to extend ranchers’ agreements by one- or two-year increments. In these short-term lease extensions, the park will enforce new restrictions on agriculture outlined in the record of decision, including bans on growing silage and keeping chickens, to the chagrin of ranchers.
“They want to implement the new restrictions, but not issue the new leases,” lamented rancher Kevin Lunny, who said the silage growing ban would hurt his beef operation on the G Ranch without any guarantee of a long-term lease. “We know that things will be restricted, but to be restricted and not have security is really a double whammy.”
The park’s plan to cull the Drakes Beach elk herd is also on hold. The G.M.P.A. first established a threshold of 120 animals for the growing herd, beyond which the park would begin shooting elk to keep the population in check. Last year’s record of decision bumped that threshold up to 140, but according to Superintendent Kenkel’s letter, the herd has already surpassed that. The 2021 elk census counted 151 elk near Drakes Beach. Still, Superintendent Kenkel wrote that “at this time, the N.P.S. does not intend to initiate reduction of the Drakes Beach herd to a population threshold of 140 individuals.”
The park made the decision in consultation with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the federally recognized tribe that represents Coast Miwok, the ancestral inhabitants of Point Reyes. The tribe and park signed a government-to-government agreement last summer to guarantee the tribe a say in management issues, especially related to the tule elk. Superintendent Kenkel described their consultations as confidential in his letter.
Holding off on new elk policies and extended ranching leases, he argued, would buy the park time to return to the commission with its water quality strategy.
“An extension [on the strategy] is appropriate because the issuance of long-term leases under the G.M.P.A. has been delayed for at least one year,” he wrote. “Moreover, the N.P.S. is not in a position to answer questions from the commission on matters that are now the subject of federal court litigation.”
As the commission leaned toward rejecting Superintendent Kenkel’s request, its executive director, Jack Ainsworth, expressed concerns about whether the park would cooperate. “My guess is that the park service is not going to agree to this and will not show up for this hearing,” Mr. Ainsworth said. “That is one scenario that we’ll have to game out, and we’ll have to schedule a hearing to withdraw [the conditional concurrence].”
This move could set up a series of difficult choices. If the coastal commission rescinds its approval, the park service could re-apply for a federal consistency determination, as the United States Fish and Wildlife Service did for its Farallon Islands mouse poisoning plan last year. But the park could also forge ahead at odds with the state, leaving the commission to either sue the federal agency or seek a rare mediation by the Secretary of Commerce under the Coastal Act.
Melanie Gunn, a spokeswoman for the seashore, declined to say whether park representatives would return to the commission next month as requested, but said they are “working with the California Coastal Commission staff on requests for the April hearing.” She did not address the Light’s questions about the park’s choice not to proceed with culling elk or granting longer leases, or about its water quality strategy.
The park has mainly taken a piecemeal approach to monitoring water quality, a central issue for critics of its ranching policies. The new water quality strategy will include a monitoring plan and a set of requirements on new ranching leases meant to improve the health of the watershed, the park says.
The San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board regularly samples water flowing into Tomales Bay from various sites in the seashore, but there is no regular monitoring program for fecal coliform bacteria and other contaminants on the park’s ocean side. Superintendent Kenkel said the park is using a pilot program to expand its monitoring to include ocean sites. Marin County already monitors several spots, including Drakes Beach and Drakes Estero, from April to October, and Superintendent Kenkel said the park has taken over monitoring at these two sites in the off-season.
Yet according to coastal commissioners, this program should be further along, nearly a year after they requested it. And water quality is a key element of the lawsuit brought by the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Alliance, who argue that the seashore’s monitoring of runoff has been inadequate and selective, particularly on the ocean side of the peninsula.
Last year, the plaintiffs hired private engineers to conduct their own testing during the rainy season. The tests found excessive levels of E. coli and Enterococcus at Kehoe and Abbotts Lagoons. County environmental health officials said the sample sizes were too small to draw broad conclusions, but the issue remains crucial for the coastal commission.