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NPS Ecological Mismanagement at Point Reyes: By Design? Posted on May 8, 2015 Written by farmtoconsumer.org

The National Park Ser­vice (NPS) was able to shut down Drakes Bay Oys­ter Com­pany at Point Reyes National Seashore by fal­si­fy­ing data about envi­ron­men­tal dam­age it claimed the oys­ter com­pany caused. Now NPS is tar­get­ing ranch­ers for removal from Point Reyes. Here is the lat­est update on the NPS campaign.

The op-ed below by Sarah Rolph was first pub­lished in the West Marin Cit­i­zen on April 23, 2015. This edited ver­sion with pho­tos and links is pub­lished here with permission. 

The Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diversity’s (CBD) media cam­paign fea­tur­ing 250 dead elk at Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) stands as the lat­est exam­ple of the ongo­ing assault on agri­cul­ture within the PRNS. While the PRNS’s fail­ure to fol­low its own elk man­age­ment plan led directly to the death of these ani­mals, CBD has cho­sen to blame this unfor­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion on the PRNS ranch­ers. Fol­low­ing on the heels of the suc­cess­ful NPS destruc­tion of California’s most impor­tant shell­fish oper­a­tion in Drakes Estero, and com­ing as it does in the midst of a dubi­ous NPS Ranch Man­age­ment Plan­ning process, CBD’s men­da­cious press releases on the elk ques­tion must be under­stood within the larger con­text of the decades-long effort by envi­ron­men­tal zealots to elim­i­nate agri­cul­ture from the Point.

Most of the elk cited by CBD (186 of the 250) died over two years ago, between 2012 and 2013, and this is not the first time the pop­u­la­tion of the Tule Elk Reserve at Pierce Point has exceeded car­ry­ing capac­ity. A 1986 study esti­mated its opti­mum car­ry­ing capac­ity at 140 ani­mals, and pre­dicted the pop­u­la­tion would sta­bi­lize at that level (it didn’t). A study in the early 1990s esti­mated the car­ry­ing capac­ity of the Reserve at 350 elk. No known sci­ence has ever sug­gested the Reserve could carry more than that–certainly not the 540 ani­mals cited by the CBD.

Yet NPS rou­tinely lets the pop­u­la­tion spike to over 500 ani­mals. Each time this hap­pens there is a die-off. This pas­sive approach is what wildlife man­age­ment looks like at PRNS.

A Plan Abandoned

In 1998 the agency con­ducted an Elk Man­age­ment Plan and Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment and selected Alter­na­tive A, “Man­age Elk Using Relo­ca­tions and Sci­en­tific Tech­niques.” The plan calls for the con­tin­u­a­tion of con­tra­cep­tion tests on elk, and for research that would “explore meth­ods to alter elk pop­u­la­tion size where nec­es­sary, look­ing at food and water resources, pre­da­tion, dis­ease, and pop­u­la­tion con­trol techniques.”

So PRNS approved a pro­gram for con­trol­ling the elk pop­u­la­tion 17 years ago. Such a pro­gram is a nec­es­sary part of man­ag­ing re-introduced ani­mals in a resource-limited envi­ron­ment. The con­tra­cep­tion pro­gram PRNS was test­ing was work­ing; those con­duct­ing that pro­gram were not told why it was ended. Con­trolled hunt­ing, an option used often in other NPS units, was ruled out despite spe­cific per­mis­sion in the PRNS autho­riz­ing legislation.

Since PRNS has been unwill­ing to use hunt­ing or con­tra­cep­tion to man­age the herd in its reserve, the only other option is nat­ural selec­tion. Given this, the result­ing peri­odic die-offs of elk are entirely pre­dictable and should be entirely unsurprising.

The Fence Did It!

The Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diversity’s dead-elk cam­paign tar­gets the fence at the Reserve, the head­line on its press release blar­ing “250 Native Elk Die Inside Fenced-in Area.” Oddly, the National Park Ser­vice appears to be sup­port­ing this nar­ra­tive. NPS offi­cial Dave Press is quoted in the online mag­a­zine National Parks Trav­eler as say­ing, after cit­ing the drought, “I think the pres­ence of the fence con­tributed to the sever­ity of those impacts.” Is the PRNS’s chief biol­o­gist seri­ous, blam­ing the log­i­cal result of this man­age­ment fail­ure on a fence?

In an appar­ent attempt to link the elk deaths to the PRNS ranches, the CBD’s press release con­trasts the sit­u­a­tion in the Reserve with the free-roaming herd: “While nearly half the elk inside the fenced area died, free-roaming Point Reyes elk herds with access to water increased by nearly a third dur­ing the same period.” This access to water is described by Dave Press in the National Parks Trav­eler inter­view as “Creeks that flow year-round, ponds.” The expe­ri­ence of the ranch­ers is that the elk drink the water in their stock tanks.

Let’s be clear: Incom­pe­tent NPS man­age­ment of its elk herd at Pierce Point is not the fault of ranch­ers or ranch­ing at Point Reyes. Point Reyes National Seashore is not large enough, nor does it con­tain enough nat­ural preda­tors, to sus­tain a pop­u­la­tion of elk at lev­els sup­port­able by the avail­able for­age resources with­out either peri­odic mas­sive die offs or man­age­ment intervention.

Who Is Try­ing to Change What?

The CBD’s press release is full of highly mis­lead­ing state­ments such as this:

“’The rein­tro­duc­tion of elk to the Point Reyes penin­sula is a suc­cess story for con­ser­va­tion of native species, but the elk are in jeop­ardy of evic­tion to ben­e­fit a few lease hold­ers,’ said Miller. ‘The Park Ser­vice already pri­or­i­tizes com­mer­cial cat­tle graz­ing in Point Reyes. Now these sub­si­dized ranch­ers want to dic­tate park poli­cies that could elim­i­nate native elk and harm preda­tors and other wildlife.’”

This com­pletely ignores the Pas­toral Zone, the his­tory and pur­pose of the PRNS, and the exis­tence of the NPS 1998 Elk Man­age­ment Plan. The CBD’s cam­paign is appar­ently designed to pres­sure the PRNS into aban­don­ing its respon­si­bil­i­ties under the PRNS autho­riza­tion and pre­vi­ous National Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­icy Act (NEPA) review processes. And the CBD has the temer­ity to claim that it’s the ranch­ers who want to dic­tate park policies?

One of the alter­na­tives con­sid­ered dur­ing the 1998 Tule Elk Envi­ron­men­tal Assess­ment was to allow the elk onto the ranch­lands, as the CBD now wishes. That alter­na­tive, “Elim­i­nate Restricted Range through Man­age­ment Deci­sions,” was rejected. The deci­sion was that the exist­ing con­di­tions would con­tinue within the seashore—the elk would be man­aged in a way that would not change other per­mit­ted uses.

At first, PRNS fol­lowed its man­age­ment plan. The 2001 annual report for the PRNS says of the new free-roaming herd, “Since their release, the new herd was care­fully mon­i­tored to ensure ani­mals remain within seashore bound­aries, do not inter­fere with cat­tle ranches within the park, and are not shed­ding the organ­ism that causes Johne’s disease.”

The PRNS’s sub­se­quent deci­sion (with­out pub­lic dis­clo­sure and at odds with stated pol­icy) to allow the elk to estab­lish in the pas­toral zone puts PRNS in direct vio­la­tion of its own elk man­age­ment plan.

“Play By Our Rules”

The Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­sity is a pres­sure group, known for its under­handed tac­tics. The CBD’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, Keiran Suck­ling, makes no apol­ogy for these prac­tices. In a 2009 inter­view with High Coun­try News, he said, “The core tal­ent of a suc­cess­ful envi­ron­men­tal activist is not sci­ence and law. It’s cam­paign­ing instinct.”

Here is Suck­ling, from the same inter­view, explain­ing how he works, “New injunc­tions, new species list­ings and new bad press take a ter­ri­ble toll on agency morale. When we stop the same tim­ber sale three or four times run­ning, the tim­ber plan­ners want to tear their hair out. They feel like their careers are being mocked and destroyed—and they are. So they become much more will­ing to play by our rules and at least get some­thing done. Psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare is a very under­ap­pre­ci­ated aspect of envi­ron­men­tal campaigning.”

The cur­rent dead elk psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare cam­paign is part of an ongo­ing anti-ranch cam­paign being con­ducted by the CBD in con­cert with PRNS on the occa­sion of the Ranch Com­pre­hen­sive Man­age­ment Plan (CMP).

Last Sep­tem­ber, when PRNS announced that the pub­lic scop­ing com­ments on the Ranch CMP were avail­able, the CBD issued a press release the very same day: “Pub­lic Over­whelm­ingly Sup­ports Free-ranging Tule Elk Herd at Point Reyes National Seashore.” The CBD claimed, “The vast major­ity of 3,000 pub­lic com­ments on a ranch-management plan for Point Reyes National Seashore sup­port allow­ing a free-roaming tule elk herd to stay at Outer Point Reyes rather than being fenced in or removed.” If you won­der how they read that many com­ments in time to write a press release the very same day, the answer is that they didn’t have to. They orches­trated those com­ments, as I reported at the time.

This is the same play­book used to shut down the oys­ter farm. Activists use their direct-mail exper­tise and their large email lists to gen­er­ate lots of com­ments on the same theme from a mis­in­formed pub­lic, cre­at­ing the illu­sion of pub­lic sup­port. PRNS coor­di­nates with the activists behind the scenes, say­ing one thing while doing another.

Work­ing together, pro­fes­sional activists and a cor­rupt gov­ern­ment agency are tak­ing con­trol of West Marin. They have already destroyed one impor­tant cul­tural and eco­nomic resource. How much more dam­age will they be allowed to do?

Read Sarah Rolph’s last story on the sub­ject, “Point Reyes Ranch­ers in the Crosshairs.”

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund admin­is­tered a lit­i­ga­tion fund and a law­suit that sought to help Drakes Bay Oys­ter Com­pany remain in busi­ness at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Related Posts

• Sad news on the North­ern Yel­low­stone elk herd.
• The Gov­ern­ment Owns Over 623 Mil­lion Acres. Why Does It Need More?
  Filed Under: Agriculture, Natural Resources, Property Rights, Wildlands Network
   
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