An experimental attempt this spring to relocate three young tule elk in the Point Reyes National Seashore from ranch lands to herds in wilderness areas met with mixed results. Two males quickly found their way back home, while one female remains in the wilderness.
The test was meant to help seashore staff evaluate a potential elk management option as they work on the draft of their first-ever ranch management plan, which is scheduled for release in early 2016. (The park originally intended to release the plan this fall, but delayed it because of staffing changes.)
Ranchers have been calling for the park to move elk off the historic ranches because they eat forage on lands leased for cattle grazing, drink from stock ponds and trample fences; opponents of relocation argue that the native ungulates should be allowed to go where they please on federal lands meant for the preservation of native species.
“We’re still analyzing the results of [the experiment] to see whether relocation to Limantour in a limited fashion could be a component of an action alternative,” said Dave Press, the park’s wildlife ecologist.
During the first week of March, staff from the seashore and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife tranquilized, collared and relocated the three elk from herds that largely roam pastoral lands around Drakes Beach and C and D Ranches. The park released the trio into the Limantour wilderness area from an access road to Coast Camp. “The hope was that the younger animals would be less imprinted on their home range,” Mr. Press explained.
The seashore also hoped that, since the elk had never made the journey from Limantour to the grazing lands from whence they came, they might have no sense of how to return. By March 6, all three animals had been moved to Limantour; by March 16, radio collars on the two males showed the ungulates back at D Ranch and Drakes Beach. The female, however, is still somewhere in the
wilderness.
Mr. Press could not explain the gender difference, but he proposed a couple hypotheses: males tend to wander more than females, and males have more difficulty incorporating into a herd. “Even during the rut—[when] they all get back together for mating—females are picky about which males are allowed around, for the most part,” he said.
And, he added, the fact is that the two sites really aren’t that far apart; on a clear day, it’s not that hard to see D Ranch from Limantour. Park staff may move another female, to see if the gender difference holds.
The elk were introduced to the park in the 1970s, in a fenced enclosure at Tomales Point, as part of a state effort to revive the species. The park released a few free-ranging animals into the wilderness in 1999. Within a few years they began to stray onto ranches, and, coupled with their expanding numbers—there are now roughly 90 that roam around the pastoral zone—have frustrated some ranchers.
The elk in the fenced area have struggled during the drought because of a lack of year-round water, with numbers dropping from 540 to about 286 in a two-year period. The Limantour herd has grown steadily, now numbering about 120.