This plan is a giveaway to the cattle industry. It perpetuates decades of negligence by the very agency charged with protecting this national treasure.
Dairy and beef cattle are grazed at Point Reyes National
Seashore sixty years after the properties were purchased by American
citizens. Photo George Wuerthner.
Three conservation groups today filed a federal lawsuit challenging
the National Park Service’s controversial management plan for
expanding private agriculture at California’s Point Reyes National
Seashore, one of a handful of national parks that permits cattle
grazing.
The Park Service plan paves the way for 20-year leases for beef and
dairy ranchers in the park, enshrining and expanding commercial
ranching on public lands at the expense of native wildlife and
natural habitats. The plan would also allow harmful water pollution
to continue, and permit the agency to kill native tule elk — a
unique subspecies found in no other national park — that ranchers
say interfere with cattle operations.
Tule Elk...
"This plan is a giveaway to the cattle industry,” said Deborah
Moskowitz, president of the Resource Renewal Institute. “It
perpetuates decades of negligence by the very agency charged with
protecting this national treasure. The Trump administration
fast-tracked the plan without regard for the climate crisis or the
hundred rare, threatened and endangered species that depend on this
national park. One-third of the national seashore is fenced off from
public use.”
“The Park Service has long mismanaged Point Reyes by allowing
ranchers to use and abuse the park for private profit,” said Jeff
Miller with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Now the agency
wants to treat our beloved tule elk as expendable problem animals to
be shot or removed. Point Reyes belongs to the public, not a handful
of ranchers. It’s time to manage the park the way Congress intended
when it passed the Point Reyes Act — for public benefit and
protection of the natural environment.”
“The Park Service needs to stop authorizing chronic water
contamination, harassment and suppression of Tule elk, degradation
of public recreation and destruction of native coastal prairies for
the sake of a handful of unsustainable ranching operations,” said
Laura Cunningham, California director at Western Watersheds Project.
“Having studied California’s native grasslands for decades, I’m
shocked at the destruction of native ecosystems and the epidemic of
invasive weeds at the Point Reyes Seashore, and the agency’s callous
disregard of its mandate to protect and preserve the park’s
ecosystems and wildlife for the use and enjoyment of the people.”
“The Park Service is unlawfully prioritizing the commercial needs of
ranchers over the natural environment and the public’s use and
enjoyment of these majestic public lands,” said Lizzy Potter, a
staff attorney at Advocates for the West, which represents the
plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “The Park Service decided that ranching
should continue in perpetuity without fully disclosing its plans or
the environmental consequences.”
The plan violates several federal environmental laws, including the
Point Reyes Act, which established the Point Reyes National Seashore
in 1962 for the purposes of “public recreation, benefit and
inspiration;” the Organic Act, which requires the agency to leave
natural resources “unimpaired” for the benefit of future
generations; and the Clean Water Act by allowing ranches to
circumvent water quality standards. The Park Service’s inadequate
environmental review for the plan violates the National
Environmental Policy Act.
The plaintiffs — the Resource Renewal Institute, Center for
Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project — first sued the
Park Service in 2016 for failing to update its antiquated General
Management Plan and perpetuating commercial ranching in the park
without adequate environmental review and public comment.
A settlement agreement required the Park Service to produce the
first-ever Environmental Impact Statement for Point Reyes ranching.
More than 90% of public comments opposed ranching and killing native
tule elk. The Park Service adopted the plan in September 2021,
ignoring tens of thousands of public comments and coalition letters
from more than 100 environmental and social justice organizations
representing millions of members calling on the agency to phase out
ranching.
Background
For decades the National Park Service has leased about 28,000 acres
of public lands within the Point Reyes National Seashore and the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area for beef and dairy ranching,
despite significant conflicts with natural resources, wildlife and
public recreation. Ranching has led to overgrazing, soil erosion,
degraded water quality, damaged vegetation and endangered species
habitats, increased levels of invasive weeds and suppressed wildlife
populations at these parks.
The plan expands the public lands zoned for ranching; quadruples the
potential terms of existing grazing leases from five years to a
maximum of 20 years; allows ranchers to pursue new commercial
activities such as mobile slaughterhouses and row crop production;
and provides for ranching to continue in perpetuity. The plan
perpetuates overgrazing and does little to restore public lands and
resources harmed by ongoing commercial cattle operations in the
national park.
It also allows the Park Service to shoot native tule elk to appease
ranchers and to harass elk away from leased ranch lands. It sets an
arbitrary population cap of 140 elk for the Drakes Beach herd,
currently estimated at 138 elk. The Park Service can also kill any
free-roaming elk to prevent new herds from forming in the park.
Some 91.4% of public comments submitted on the plan opposed ranching
on the Point Reyes National Seashore, while only 2.3 percent
approved of allowing cattle ranching to continue.
The Park Service improperly rejected a “no ranching” alternative
that would provide maximum protection for the environment — as
required under the Point Reyes Act — along with reduced-ranching
alternatives that would provide greater protection than the adopted
plan.
The Park Service also refused to consider whether private ranching
operations in the park damage Coast Miwok archeological sites. The
Park Service discarded a proposal to protect those sites in 2015 and
instead adopted a plan that protects “historic” ranches. The Coast
Miwok Tribal Council, lineal descendants of the original inhabitants
of Point Reyes, formally objected to the Point Reyes ranching and
elk-killing plan.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court of the Northern
District of California. The attorneys for the plaintiffs are Lizzy
Potter, Laird Lucas and Andrew Missel with the nonprofit,
public-interest, environmental law firm Advocates for the West, and
Michael Lozeau, of Lozeau Drury LLP.