POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE — Twice each day, 80-year-old Betty Nunes ventures into the wet winds and murky fog that regularly blow across her coastal Marin ranch to feed her calves and check the land her family has worked for generations.

Usually, her 230 dairy cows aren’t the only creatures she finds eating the grass in her farm’s meadows.

The last several years, about 20 tule elk have taken up residence on Nunes’ historic A Ranch, one of a handful of private dairy farms and cattle ranches that sit inside the federally owned Point Reyes National Seashore.

The elk have become as popular with tourists as the aquatic mammals, but they are a drain on Nunes’ bottom line because there isn’t enough grass for both elk and cows to thrive, she said.