WITH A NEW $2.7 MILLION STATE GRANT, environmental groups will soon begin charting the course for the ecological restoration of Point Reyes National Seashore and the eventual free range of native tule elk.
The grant was awarded in August to The Nature Conservancy, an international nonprofit that supports conservation efforts, in collaboration with the National Park Service. It came from the California Wildlife Conservation Board, a grant-making agency dedicated to biological diversity.
The money will fund the design of a comprehensive plan for restoration, sustainable grazing and monitoring of thousands of acres of public land that has been used for beef and dairy ranching for over a hundred years.
The transition is part of a new federal land management plan that stemmed from a lawsuit settled in January between the National Park Service and a suite of environmental groups, including the Resource Renewal Institute, Center for Biological Diversity, and Western Watersheds Project.
The dispute was about ranch fences that prevented elk from grazing in the southern portion of their habitat. The fence was made to prevent competition for food between the elk and cattle, but opponents said it prevented elk from surviving by accessing food and water. Many dead elk showed emaciation and dehydration during drought years.
“You could see half the elk herds during droughts completely die off at the northern end of the park,” said Chance Cutrano, director of programs at the Resource Renewal Institute.
He said the herd can get up to between 350 and 500 elk at the northern end where most ranches are located, but that was their limit.
“You’d see well over 200 elk lost in a drought year,” he said. “We have photographers that documented elk standing in what was a former stock pond that’s completely dried up and cracking. These elk are either emaciated or in some cases stuck in this mud and starving to death, looking for water at the bottom of an empty stock pond.”
Legacy ranching eliminated
As part of the January agreement, 11 family ranchers will retire their 12 ranching operations, and the ranchers are being compensated by The Nature Conservancy. The workers who are displaced are getting housing financial assistance, severance and other support services.
In March, the Marin County Board of Supervisors declared a shelter crisis, which allowed it to secure land and streamline permitting for temporary worker housing in Point Reyes Station.
“A lot of this is not going to be rushed because there are ranching operations that are still winding down between now and April of next year,” said Cutrano, adding that farmworkers and tenants have until the end of February to continue to reside within the national park.
Cutrano said there will be a community-informed and science-informed restoration plan for roughly 17,000 acres. That process will include multiple public forums for people to engage with subject matter experts. A draft plan will be created and then there will be a solicitation for comments on the draft plan before it is finalized, he said.
The plan will also include a system for monitoring and maintenance, so managers can measure the impact of the transition.
“The settlement agreement that we brokered included deciding what a cap for targeted grazing would look like,” he said. “How many cows could you actually bring back into the national park and protect endangered grasses and plants.”
Grass plays a major part in this story. Non-native species like cows and goats eat non-native grasses, making space for native plants to return, according to Lily Verdone, executive director of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving agricultural land in Marin County.
“A lot of this is not going to be rushed because there are ranching operations that are still winding down between now and April of next year.”
Chance Cutrano, Resource Renewal Institute
Cutrano said the native bunchgrasses that tule elk and other native grazers are attuned to have very deep root systems, which means as they age, they are increasing the root structure underground, drawing down carbon and turning that into biomass, or healthy soil that retains water and replenishes groundwater.
“Ninety percent of our coastal grasslands and coastal prairies across the state have been lost, and this peninsula is like a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring back some of these plant systems,” he said. “We’ve already had conversations about starting to build up the native seed inventory.
“I think one of the silver linings of the moment we’re in is that organizations and government agencies will be able to move in lockstep,” said Cutrano. “They won’t be having conflicting interests anymore.”
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