Point Reyes National Seashore rethinks strategy on elk
Drought giving officials something new to consider
The Point Reyes National Seashore is considering new ways to manage its largest tule elk herd following significant die-offs during droughts.
The options could include allowing the Tomales Point elk to roam throughout the park or having park staff shoot some animals to control the population.
The National Park Service has kicked off what is expected to be a multi-year planning effort to weigh the various management options, starting with an initial public comment period through May 2.
Along with being the largest herd in the park, the tule elk at Tomales Point represent an environmental success story. They were the first herd to be reestablished in the park in 1978 after the elk were thought to have gone extinct from hunting and habitat loss before the end of the 19th century.
Point Reyes is the only national park where tule elk can be found.
Unlike the park's two free-roaming tule elk herds established in later decades, the Tomales Point herd resides in a fenced-in 2,600acre reserve that separates it from the rest of the park, including private cattle ranches.
The Tomales Point herd has received more attention in recent years and is now the subject of a federal lawsuit against the park service after hundreds of elk died during recent droughts.
The population declined from about 445 elk to 293 between the winters of 2019-20 and 2020-21, some of the driest on record in Marin County. Park staff attributed the deaths to overpopulation and a lack of forage. Before that, about 250 elk died during the 20132015 drought under similar conditions, according to park staff.
In response, the park took the unprecedented action of setting up water troughs and mineral licks in the preserve in early 2021.
The herd tally was 221 as of the latest count this past winter, a reduction of 72 elk since the previous winter. In an update in December, park Superintendent Craig Kenkel said the population appears to have stabilized since the summer.
“Park staff spent extensive time in the reserve between May and December 2021 but found only three carcasses of elk that died during this period,” he wrote.
The park last updated its approach to the Tomales Point herd in its 1998 Tule Elk Management Plan. The park says the plan did not anticipate the severity of the recent droughts or other climate change impacts and should be replaced.
The new planning effort will consider a variety of options for how the park could manage the herd. These include whether to remove the 3-mile, 8-foot-tall fence to allow the elk to roam into the rest of the park where more resources would be available.
Another option includes managing the herd size by allowing park staff to shoot some of the elk — fence or no fence.
The elk no longer have natural predators in the park. The seashore recently approved a separate management plan that allows the park to shoot some of the elk in the free-roaming herd to control its population, largely to prevent conflicts with cattle ranchers who rent park land.
U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, whose district includes Marin County, said that it is appropriate for the park to begin reassessing how it manages the Tomales Point herd given the changing climate and recent die-offs.
“We really have to try to listen to the science and experts on this. I don't know what the answer is,” said Huffman, a Democrat. “But I do know that if people believe that if you just take down a fence and do some other single thing that you don't have to worry about herd management. They may not appreciate the fact that we no longer have predators for elk.”
The state and most of the U.S. use hunting to control elk populations. While the Point Reyes National Seashore is not proposing hunting in the park, it had considered allowing park staff to shoot some of the elk when it was creating its 1998 plan. Instead, the park decided to allow the elk population to be selfregulated based on the resources in the preserve.
Nona Dennis, a member of the Marin Conservation League board, said the difference between the Tomales Point elk and the two free-roaming herds is that 85% of the reserve is in a federally designated wilderness area, protected under the Wilderness Act of 1964.
“The Wilderness Act limits them in what they can do,” Dennis said. “It's a complicated issue since they are in a wilderness.”
Point Reyes staff declined to comment further about the planning effort because of a federal lawsuit filed against the park last year. The lawsuit, filed by Harvard Law School on behalf of North Bay environmental groups and local residents, alleges the park was negligent in the die-offs. The lawsuit says the park created an unnatural barrier that cuts off the herd's access to other foraging areas.
“They're locked into a drought-ravaged land by a fence,” said one of the plaintiffs, Jack Gescheidt, an activist with In Defense of Animals and the TreeSpirits Project.
More information about the planning effort and how to submit a comment can be found at parkplanning.nps. gov/tpap.