YOUR DUES DOLLARS AT WORK CCA FILES LAWSUIT OVER TOMALES BAY TULE ELK MANAGEMENT PLAN by CCA Vice President of Government Affairs Kirk Wilbur In mid-November, the Point Reyes National Seashore released its final management plan for Tomales Point, an area of land at the northwestern tip of the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County. Tomales Point has been home to a herd of Tule elk since 1978, when the National Park Service (which administers the Seashore) partnered with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to reintroduce the animals to the region in hopes of reversing their severe statewide population decline. At the time Tule elk were reintroduced to the Seashore, the State of California required the National Park Service to build an elk fence containing the herd to the Tomales Point area – and, importantly, to exclude the elk from the “Pastoral Zone” of the Point Reyes National Seashore, where ranching and dairying had been practiced for well over a century by that time. Management plans developed by the Point Reyes National Seashore in 1980, 1998 and 2021 all called for the preservation of the elk exclusion fence to prevent Tule elk from straying into the Pastoral Zone of the Park. When the National Park Service released its Tomales Point Area Plan on Nov. 21, 2024, however, it suddenly elected to reverse nearly five decades of sound management, announcing that “the existing tule elk enclosure fence will be removed from the Point Reyes peninsula.” The Park Service announced their decision in a press release on Dec. 2, 2024, and within 24 hours Park staff had begun removing the fence. Ranchers and dairies at the Seashore were rightly concerned by the Park Service’s swift action to remove the exclusionary fence, as significant harm caused by elk straying
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upon Seashore ranches has been well-documented over the years (two uncontained elk herds at Drakes Beach and the Limantour area along Drakes Bay to the south of the Point Reyes National Seashore have occasionally strayed upon ranches in the Pastoral Zone). Tule elk compete with cattle for grass and supplemental feed, and have been known to gore cattle with their antlers to access water and forage. Elk have damaged cattle fences, allowing livestock to stray onto roadways and intermingle among neighboring beef and dairy herds. Tule elk carry Johne’s Disease and other transmissible illnesses which can be spread to cattle herds when elk stray onto ranches. Situated in Marin County, some of the producers at Point Reyes have organic operations and other certifications that allow them to tap into niche Bay Area markets. The Tule elk incursions on Seashore ranches jeopardize these certifications. And those are merely the dire impacts to the ranches themselves. Anti-grazing advocates for decades have sought the removal of ranch and dairy operations at Point Reyes National Seashore; allowing Tule elk to roam freely within the Pastoral Zone is merely the latest in a long line of threats to the viability of Seashore ranching. If ranchers are forced out of the Seashore, Marin County would lose roughly 20