After confining a herd of tule elk behind a fence at Tomales Point in Point Reyes National Seashore for 46 years, the park began removing the enclosure on Dec. 3 to allow the animals to roam free.
A restraining order forced the park to cease its efforts three days later.
The whiplash chronology of last week’s events started Monday with Point Reyes National Seashore, part of the National Park Service (NPS), announcing the release of a new management plan for the Tomales Point area, which includes removing the eight-foot-high tule elk fencing that spans two miles. On Tuesday, while workers started taking down the enclosure, the Cattlemen’s Association filed a lawsuit against the NPS and the U.S. Department of Interior, seeking a temporary restraining order and injunction to restore the removed portions and prevent further fence demolition.
A hearing in federal court on Friday resulted in Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley issuing an order for the park not to dismantle additional fencing or take actions to move tule elk out of Tomales Point. In February, the court will hear a motion for a preliminary injunction to continue the order through the lawsuit proceedings.
Yet, the opening in the fence remains, and the mammals may move out of the enclosure on their own.
The Point Reyes National Seashore leases land to a number of beef cattle ranches and dairies, which keep about 5,000 cattle. The Cattlemen’s Association lawsuit alleges that tule elk from the Tomales Point enclosure will migrate to the “Pastoral Zone” and cause harm. The claims include that tule elk will compete with cattle for forage, force cattle away from feed provided by the ranchers and spread disease.
“Once outside the elk preserve fence, there is no stopping the elk migration across the entire Pastoral Zone,” the lawsuit states. “They can simply walk in.”
Tule elk, Cervus canadensis nannodes, is a special subspecies, only found in California. Historically inhabiting areas of Marin County, including Point Reyes, the animals were extirpated in the 1850s by market, tallow and hide hunters, as well as habitat loss when people settled in the area.
However, in 1978, the NPS reintroduced 10 tule elk to a 2,600-acre fenced area in Tomales Point. Later, the park another 300 acres to the reserve. The herd eventually grew to as many as 585 in 2007, but changing environmental conditions, such as drought, cause fluctuations in the population.
Two free-ranging herds also inhabit the Point Reyes National Seashore, with almost 400 tule elk in the Drakes Beach and Limantour areas.
Animal advocates battled the park service for years to free the Tomales Point tule elk. The fight reached a crescendo during the drought that began in 2020. Behind the fence, food and water were scarce, and the animals were starving and dying. More than 150 in the herd died that year.
In June 2021, the Animal Legal Defense Fund—represented by the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic—sued the NPS to require it to update the 1980 General Management Plan for the Tomales Point area and immediately provide the tule elk with food and water.
The park installed water troughs in the enclosure days before the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed its lawsuit. The following year, it provided mineral licks containing key nutrients for the tule elk. Fortunately, the drought ended in 2023, and the tule elk population increased from 222 in 2021 to 315 in 2024, according to annual census data from the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Although the court ruled in favor of the NPS in 2023, the Animal Legal Defense Fund has filed an appeal. Still, the park conducted an environmental assessment and revised the management plan for Tomales Point. Concern for the tule elk and public comment prompted the decision to remove the fence.
“We analyzed three alternatives and incorporated feedback from over 35,000 public comment letters gathered during three comment periods,” Point Reyes National Seashore superintendent Anne Altman said in a press release issued last week. “The benefit of removing this enclosure is to allow elk to access additional habitat, increase the species’ population resilience during drought, and promote a more natural population cycle.”
The Cattlemen’s Association lawsuit says it finds the new plan astonishing. Indeed, it departs from the 2021 general management plan amendment for Point Reyes National Seashore that determined the park would “not change the status of the elk fence at Tomales Point.” The 2021 plan also allows ranch leases to extend for up to 20 years.
It’s somewhat ironic that the lawsuit’s basis is what the Cattlemen’s Association calls a “flawed environmental review process” that ignored the ranching zone outside Tomales Point. Environmentalists maintain that cattle waste has contaminated the park’s water.
A 2021 study by a geoenvironmental engineer monitored several creeks, a lagoon and tributary within the dairy and beef cattle drainage areas at Point Reyes National Seashore and found “imminent human health risks exist” from bacterial contamination in the water.
“Reductions in the localized abundance of cattle waste will likely be necessary to adequately protect surface water quality,” according to the engineer’s report prepared for the Western Watersheds Project.
Three environmental groups sued the NPS in 2022 for its decision to expand beef and dairy ranching on public lands in the Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area. They assert that the park prioritized ranchers’ needs at the expense of the environment. The ongoing case also names the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association as a defendant.
Many moving parts may affect the cattle and dairy ranchers and the beloved tule elk. Nevertheless, the Animal Legal Defense Fund feels cautiously optimistic.
“As a result of our taking legal action, it drew a lot of national attention to the issue,” said Chris Green, executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. “All that attention helped the park service realize just how important the elk were to folks and that what was happening to them was just a travesty. It’s heartening to see the federal government actually updated the plan and took public sentiment into account. They did the right thing.”
According to Green, now that the park has updated its management plan, the animal rights organization is evaluating whether to dismiss its lawsuit.
It remains to be seen whether the decision to allow the Tomales Point tule elk to roam the park will stand. The next hearing in the case of the Cattlemen’s Association lawsuit to reverse that policy is on Feb. 13.
