I have watched the National Park Service’s management of ranching on the park lands of Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for the past 39 years.
I came to Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1980 as that park’s first Park Ranger GS-025 (Natural Resources Specialist) and wrote the park’s first Natural Resources Management Plan, which was completed and approved in 1982.
During my 20-year tenure, I became GGNRA’s ecologist then research scientist. In the mid-to-late 1990s, my team and I conducted elk population, habitat and food habit studies of elk at Pierce Point. This work became part of the 1998 tule elk management plan for Point Reyes which resulted in a decision to relocate some of the Pierce Point elk to the Limantour area.
Some of those elk traveled to the Drakes Beach area and their descendants have become what is now known as the Drakes Beach elk herd. That herd is comprised of 124 elk.
John Sansing was the superintendent of Point Reyes National Seashore from 1970 to 1994. He showed little interest in natural resource conservation, and his decisions at the time seemed to me, to favor the ranching community.
The ranching and dairying influence have persisted over the fundamental precepts of the National Park Service to protect and conserve the natural resources for public use and enjoyment for future generations. These precepts have been the backbone of National Park management.
I grew up on a small ranch in Montana. My stepdad raised cattle and had been a brand inspector for the state. We understood the marginal nature of beef production. Therefore, it was clear to me, even back in the mid-1980s and 1990s, that ultimately dairy and beef production would not be economically viable at Point Reyes and Golden Gate.
Today we see that this reduced economic viability has come to pass. The proposal to broaden the traditional agricultural practices of beef and dairy ranching to a proposed diversification in Alternative B is really a response to the economic pressures that face the few ranches and dairies in that part of West Marin. Some of the dairies in the Seashore have significantly cut their dairy cow numbers, likely as a result.
Hence, the ranchers want to expand permitted livestock beyond cattle in the area of the ranch cores to include sheep, goats and chickens in the pastures (500 chickens per ranch, no less) and pigs and row crops. All of which would likely increase erosion in the park. The park service has a statutory mandate to manage park lands in an “unimpaired” condition and with “maximum protection, restoration, and preservation of the natural environment.”
Given the legal mandate and the damage that has occurred, ranching should end. Unfortunately, that statutory mandate has not been embraced by upper National Park Service leadership or the current superintendent, who I suspect faces intense pressure from the ranching industry and their political supporters like Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Congressman Jared Huffman. That is a tough spot for anyone.
National parks were created for natural resource conservation and to be learning centers. Perhaps, maintaining a small demonstration dairy operation at Point Reyes would be of value for the public as interpretive sites about historic preservation and land use practices.
Tule elk occupied the Point Reyes area in the thousands, yet the current 124 elk in the Drakes Beach herd are causing the local ranching community “serious” problems. Currently, there are 5,715 cattle (beef and dairy) units per year, yet 124 elk cannot be tolerated. The notion that elk are a problem is obviously misguided, since elk coexist with cattle on Bureau of Land Management and forest service grazing lands throughout the western U.S.
My recommendation is Alternative F:
1. Dairying and ranching, except for a small dairy interpretive site perhaps more detail at Pierce Point, should be ended within the next five years.
2. The 8-foot fence at Pierce Point should be removed.
Judd Howell, PhD, of Napa, is a Research Wildlife Ecologist who studied tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore.