For 25 years, the National Park Service has tried unsuccessfully to create a plan to manage agriculture in the Point Reyes National Seashore, offering multiple opportunities for public comment on alternative scenarios. Finally, on Sept. 13, 2021, the park service issued a record of decision for a General Management Plan Amendment, which includes policies to govern agriculture in the park.
Before the ink was dry, on Jan. 10, 2022, a lawsuit was filed by anti-ranching activists, including the Resource Renewal Institute, who over the years have sought to force the closure of the ranches. The Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association intervened, and the grossly overdue amendment has yet to be implemented.
In a separate legal action, in June 2022, animal rights activists sued the park in a challenge to its management of the fenced tule elk herd on Tomales Point. The federal district court dismissed the suit, a decision the activists appealed. In the meantime, the park began a process to update its 1998 Tule Elk Management Plan and recently announced that the preferred option is to remove the elk fence to provide more habitat for the herd.
Although these two lawsuits are separate actions, clearly the same anti-ranching forces are at work. They seek the same result: the end of ranching in the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Taking down the Tomales Point elk fence is equivalent to implementing Alternative B in the 1998 elk plan’s environmental assessment. That option, which the park rejected at the time, is described as “a process whereby the National Park Service would pursue its tule elk management mission and goals through elimination or reduction of ranching permits…”
Taking down the elk fence, and effectively forcing the closure of the ranches after all these years, is contrary to the Secretary of the Interior’s directive in November 2012 that the park service extend ranching permits to 20 years to support the presence of sustainable ranching and dairy operations on Point Reyes. Forcing the ranches to shut down by eliminating the fence would be a truly Kafkaesque end to the commitments made over the years to the ranchers in this historic ranching landscape.
Nor is there a need to take the fence down to provide adequate and appropriate habitat for the elk, since the park can release more elk into the Phillip Burton Wilderness. According to the 1998 management plan, “[t]he desired condition of the herd would be free ranging over some 18,000 acres as a long-term goal.” There is abundant seasonal freshwater in the wilderness area, as evidenced by the bridges along the Coast Trail and year-round bodies of water in the area from Glen Camp south. If the land is managed, there would also be abundant vegetation.
The 1998 plan contemplated using fire as a land management tool, one that would contribute to restoring “the pre-settlement fire regime to the Seashore’s habitats…” In announcing its plan for Tomales Point, the park said it would collaborate with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to incorporate tribal views and traditional ecological knowledge in land management. Expanding that collaboration to include restoring the 18,000-acre wilderness south of the pastoral zone would be an exceptional opportunity to restore a historic Native American working landscape and recreate ideal habitat for tule elk. A herd that developed in the Wildcat and Glen Camp areas following the 2020 Woodward fire demonstrates that elk will migrate into areas when vegetation is made accessible by a burn.
Supervisor Dennis Rodoni should ask the Marin County Board of Supervisors to speak out in the Resource Renewal lawsuit in support of the county’s interests in having ranching continue. There are many interests not clearly represented by either the park or the ranchers association. These include maintaining grasslands, which reduce the risk of dangerous wildfire and provide habitat for many bird species; the aesthetics and environmental values of coastal prairie, which requires active land management; the opportunity to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by implementing a variety of carbon farming practices on a large scale; preserving approximately 17 percent of Marin’s overall agricultural production and land base, part of the critical mass of agriculture necessary for ranches and dairies in Marin to survive; preserving an existing historic and cultural landscape recognized in the National Register of Historic Places; and maintaining housing on ranches for family members who work in West Marin, where we have a dire shortage of affordable housing.
If ranching in the seashore ceases, the rural character of the Tomales Bay watershed will be lost. Our historic towns will be just another service port for visitors to a national park. On the other hand, the park service could create an ideal habitat for tule elk by collaborating with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to restore and manage a Native American working landscape in an established wilderness area.
If the ranches and dairies had 20-year leases and both permission and funds to implement carbon farming practices in the pastoral zone, the Point Reyes National Seashore could become the first carbon-neutral national park in the country and demonstrate how preserving family farms contributes to social, economic and ecological sustainability at a local, regional and even national level. These results would be of broad import.
Judy Teichman is a farmer’s daughter and a retired public law attorney. She lives in Point Reyes Station.