Officials at the Point Reyes National Seashore remain tight-lipped about the confidential mediation talks that will determine the future of the ranches and dairies in the park. For members of the public trying to divine where those conversations might be heading, a new nugget of information emerged this week for them to puzzle over. 

The morsel came courtesy of Greg Sarris, tribal chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe that signed a government-to-government partnership with park officials nearly three years ago. 

“The dairies are slowly going to move out,” he said during an interview last Thursday on KPFA, Berkeley’s progressive community radio station.

Mr. Sarris did not say when they would move or how he knew. He did not respond to a request for comment the Light emailed to the tribe this week. 

Park officials would not disclose whether Mr. Sarris has a seat at the mediation talks, nor would the mediator who is overseeing those discussions, citing a confidentiality agreement between the parties.

During his KPFA interview, Mr. Sarris also said that the park planned to bring tule elk from outside Point Reyes to breed with the Tomales Point herd.

“We need to bring in some new elk so that they aren’t so inbred,” he told Caroline Casey, host of The Visionary Activist Show, a program dedicated to “Democratic Animism, Pragmatic Mysticism, Applied Divination, Renaissance of Reverent Ingenuity,” according to the KPFA website.

Mr. Sarris said the tribe was working with some of the dairies located near Tomales Point to “move out some of the cattle,” cut down some of the fencing and “give the elk more room to roam.”

“Managing the elk is necessary,” he said. “The tribe is really going to take that on and work with the federal government, with the park, to expand that elk herd as we work to maintain and enhance its health.”

The park has announced that it plans to recommend removing the fence after it completes an environmental assessment as part of its proposed management plan for Tomales Point. But Melanie Gunn, a park spokeswoman, told the Light this week that the park service is not planning to bring elk into the seashore from outside the park.

The mediation talks are an effort to resolve a lawsuit brought against the park by three environmental nonprofits that want to end commercial agriculture in the park—the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project.

They are challenging an update to the National Park Service’s management plan for the seashore, which would offer 20-year lease extensions to the 21 ranches and dairies operating in the park. The plan would also permit the park service to cull free-ranging elk herds at Limantour and Drakes Beaches that compete with cows for forage.

Ranches and dairies on Point Reyes, which were first established the 1800s, are currently operating under short-term lease agreements with the park. Ranchers say long-term leases are necessary for them to obtain loans and make investments in their operations.

Although participants in the mediation have not said that the park’s five dairies will be required to leave, Rep. Jared Huffman recently won a $1 million appropriation for “transition assistance” for West Marin dairies. 

Albert Straus, C.E.O. of Straus Family Creamery, which sources 15 percent of its milk from two of the dairies in the park, believes the appropriation is designed to move dairies off Point Reyes. But Rep. Huffman dismissed that speculation as fear mongering in an interview with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and said that two of the dairies themselves expressed interest in leaving.

Although the mediator leading the settlement talks declined to tell the Light whether Mr. Sarris was participating, earlier this month he acknowledged that the Nature Conservancy, a leading land conservation organization, was participating in the discussions.

Mr. Straus has said that the Nature Conservancy is planning to buy out the dairies to facilitate their departure from the park.

In his KPFA interview, Mr. Sarris touted the partnership agreement between the park service and the tribe. “All decisions will be 50-50 between us and the federal government,” he said. 

The text of the agreement signed by Mr. Sarris and Craig Kenkel, the park superintendent, does not describe a partnership encompassing all aspects of park management but outlines specific areas of shared stewardship.