THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
August 28, 2023, 10:39AM
Updated 6 hours ago
How to comment on proposed management of Tomales Point
The public comment period is open until 10:59 p.m. Monday, Sept. 25.
To provide input online, the preferred method, send comments through
the National Park Service Planning, Environment and Public Comment at parkplanning.nps.gov/tpap.
Hard copy comments may also be submitted by mail or
hand delivery to: Tomales Point Area Plan, c/o Superintendent, Point Reyes National Seashore, 1 Bear Valley Road, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.
Comments submitted any other way will not be permitted.
A virtual public meeting on the three proposed alternatives will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sept. 7.
Register at bit.ly/3P5PtDl
The Point Reyes National Seashore has formalized its proposal to remove the 2-mile fence enclosing tule elk at Tomales Point as part of a larger plan for the 2,900-acre promontory that would shift the balance away from long-held ranching interests in favor of native herds.
The multifaceted proposal is among three drastically differing alternatives offered up for public review over the next month as the National Park Service updates its overall management plan for Tomales Point — a rugged, wind-swept landscape adjoining historic range lands for dairy and beef cattle.
At the other extreme, there remains potential for use of lethal force to control elk populations — a hot-button topic that has caused substantial criticism of the National Park Service and the Point Reyes National Seashore in recent years.
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Point Reyes National Seashore to propose removal of Tomales Point elk fence
“It’s very clearly sort of one future or another, so to speak,” said Chance Cutrano, program director with the Fairfax-based Resource Renewal Institute, adding that he suspected pressure from activists was influencing the park’s direction.
Cutrano’s organization is one of three conservation groups that sued the Seashore over provisions in a recent General Management Plan Amendment that include culling a separate elk herd in the park to cap the population. The Institute and the other plaintiffs are currently engaged in confidential mediation with the Seashore, along with numerous ranchers from the area who intervened on the park’s behalf.
There also is a pending suit in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal directly involving activists’ demands that the Tomales Point fence come down — part of an outcry that escalated during the last, extended drought, which is believed to have contributed to die-offs in the enclosed herd that reduced its size from 445 in 2019 to 220 in 2021.
“That is 100% attributable to the fact they were fenced in,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, which was among the groups that sued the Seashore. Even with drought, two other, free-roaming herds “were actually expanding.”
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“That’s just a bad look for a national park to be keeping native wildlife in a zoo-like condition,” he said.
The Tomales Point herd this year numbered 262. It is one of three tule elk populations in the park. Two of them — in the Drakes Beach and Limantour wilderness areas — are free-roaming and managed separately from the Tomales Point herd, which is currently under the purview of a 1998 operational plan that would be replaced by the new one.
All of the Seashore’s tule elk — once the region’s dominant grazer — are descendant from 10 individual animals relocated to the park in 1978 from a small isolated herd that was preserved after hunting and ranching diminished the state population to very few. Tule elk only exist in California.
When reintroduced, the elk were kept behind a tall fence meant to sequester them from cattle. Twenty years later, in 1998, the herd had surpassed 300 individuals, and some were moved to the area near Limantour Beach to relieve population pressure.
Established by Congress in 1962, the 71,000-acre Seashore has long wrestled with competing demands from ranchers rooted on the landscape for generations and environmentalists who believe the commitment made to agriculture conflicts with the park’s mission to protect natural resources.
There has been friction over competition for land and forage, as well as concern prompted by Johne’s disease, a usually fatal, bacterial infection related to tuberculosis that can be transmitted among cattle, elk, deer and other cud-chewing, hoofed animals.
The new proposal is the result of more than a year of public engagement over how to improve management of the Tomales Point herd.
The public may comment on the three alternatives until Sept. 25.
The first option is to maintain current operations on Tomales Point, confining the herd and providing supplemental water when natural water sources are limited, as occurred during the drought.
Management of invasive plants would be limited, and Pierce Ranch, a historic, mid-19th and early 20th-century dairy farm listed on the Natural Register of Historic Places, would exist as a passive exhibit with self-guided tours.
The Seashore’s proposed alternative would bring considerable change, including removal of the high fence that runs across it, as well as removal of 12 other barriers designed to keep elk out of vegetation monitoring areas.
The park also would consider adding a fence to keep cattle off the point.
This approach would feature greater coordination with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which entered into a partnership with the U.S. Department of the Interior two years ago, incorporating traditional ecological and ethnobotanical knowledge. The potential use of prescribed fire to promote native plant species would be included.
The latest proposal also calls for development of Pierce Ranch as a “core location for visitor use,” improving access, increasing capacity for parking and extending trails while improving them to better protect natural resources. It also would refine the park camping program and beach access to protect natural and cultural resources.
A third alternative would not only retain the fence but allow for lethal removal of elk to control population size. It would also call for removal of supplementary water systems.
The National Seashore is hosting a virtual public meeting Sept. 7 so the public can learn more about the alternatives in advance of the Sept. 25 comment deadline.
Park spokeswoman Melanie Gunn said the next step would be for the Seashore to develop an environmental assessment of the options, which would be subject to public comment likely next summer, with a final decision expected in late 2024.
Under federal law, the park is required to offer a “no change” alternative, as well as a range of options, even if it’s only three.
But the proposed option, which includes the fence removal, “is at this point the proposed action the National Park Service believes will best address the purpose and need,” Gunn said.
But Miller, with the Center for Biological Diversity, was cautious.
“This is a proposal right now,” he said. “The park service has not agreed to this or implemented it. They’ve implemented planning processes before and abandoned them.“
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Thank goodness.