The National Park Service has agreed to delay further work to dismantle a tule elk enclosure fence in the Point Reyes National Seashore following a lawsuit by the California Cattlemen’s Association.
The association filed the suit on Dec. 3, the day after the National Park Service announced that it had completed a new management plan that involves the removal of the fence. Advocates for the elk hailed the news, but members of Marin’s agricultural community reacted with dismay, fearing the elk will compete with cattle for forage and water.
The park moved quickly to start taking down the 2-mile fence and had removed about 850 feet by Friday, when a federal judge held a hearing on the association’s lawsuit.
“Plaintiff’s members need immediate relief from the harms that the migration of the tule elk from the Tomales Point area into the pastoral zone will cause,” the suit said.
During the court hearing, a lawyer for the National Park Service said it would refrain from removing any more fencing until a motion for a preliminary injunction is decided. A hearing on the motion is scheduled for Feb. 13.
The National Park Service decided to update its management plan for the Tomales Point area in 2022 after Harvard Law School’s Animal Law and Policy Clinic sued the agency, alleging it was negligent in its management of the elk.
According to an environmental assessment conducted for the revised management plan, the elk population decreased from 540 to 286 between 2012 and 2014 and from 445 to 221 between 2019 and 2021. In both cases, the steep declines occurred during severe drought conditions.
“It is believed the existing population surpassing the carrying capacity and poor forage quality, in combination with an existing chronic lack of copper and selenium at Tomales Point, were the underlying causes,” the assessment said.
Announcing the decision to take down the fence, Point Reyes National Seashore Superintendent Anne Altman said the barrier’s removal would “allow elk to access additional habitat, increase the species’ population resilience during drought and promote a more natural population cycle.”
The California Cattlemen’s Association lawsuit asserts that giving the elk in the Tomales Point area freedom to roam will devastate the “ongoing ranching operations of the families who sold the land to create the National Seashore, and whose operations are a statutorily protected purpose of the National Seashore.”
“Time has passed, and memories have lapsed,” the suit states, “and many now forget that the Point Reyes National Seashore exists because of the cooperation of the original landowners, who only wanted to see their ranches and way of life preserved from development.”
When the federal government created the park in 1962, some 27 dairy and cattle ranch operators sold their land to the government. The deal gave the sellers and their descendants the right to continue living and working on their former properties, generally for a period of 25 years, as long as they continued their traditional agricultural operations. An 18,000-acre pastoral zone within the park is reserved for this purpose.
“The National Seashore Act specifies that ranching is an essential part of the Seashore, to be protected from conflicting resource uses and available for public enjoyment consistent with the operations of the ranches,” the California Cattlemen’s Association lawsuit says.
The suit states that in addition to competing directly with cattle for forage and water, the elk knock down cattle fences, allowing livestock to enter roads; force cattle away from feed that ranchers have purchased for livestock; and expose cattle to maladies such as Johnes chronic wasting disease.
The environmental assessment that cleared the way for the elk fence removal said: “Because the elk fence has been in place since the reintroduction of the tule elk to Tomales Point in 1978, it is unknown precisely how and when the presence of elk could impact the adjacent ranches.”
The assessment stated that “elk within the southern portion of the planning area are expected to readily occupy habitat outside of the planning area, including pasturelands that are commonly grazed during ranching operations.” However, it added that most of the Tomales Point tule elk herd were expected to remain where they are.
As of late 2023, there were at least 315 elk in the Tomales Point herd. The park also has two other herds that roam free: one near Limantour Beach that had 199 elk at last count, and another in the Drakes Beach area with 188 elk.
“Neither the Limantour nor the Drakes Beach herds have been found to significantly impact historic ranching operations,” the environmental assessment said.
The ranchers’ lawsuit says the assessment was “so inadequate as to preclude meaningful analysis.”
It states that the assessment “limited the planning area to the Tomales Point Area, despite knowing that release of tule elk from the area would have immediate and significant impacts on the pastoral zone.”
The suit also asserts that the decision to remove the fence was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.
Jim Coda, a wildlife photographer and former assistant U.S. attorney who worked for the Department of the Interior, said he does not think the ranchers “have much of a case.”
“The Seashore legislation does not specify that ranching is an essential part of the Seashore, as alleged in the complaint,” Coda said.
Coda says detailed environmental analysis of the impact on agricultural operators was not required because “the proposed action does not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment.”
“The very existence of the fence violates the Organic Act and similar language in the Seashore Act making protection of natural resources the highest priority for Park Service management,” he said.