Ranchers and environmentalists have locked horns over the coexistence of cattle and native species like tule elk in the national park.
C attle have roamed across the pastoral lands of the Point Reyes peninsula for almost two centuries. Close to the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by nature, they create an idyllic picture—though one that’s illusory in modern times. Behind the scenes, ranchers, environmentalists and the National Parks Service have been involved in an increasingly contentious relationship for more than a decade, with each holding different beliefs about the appropriate use of the Point Reyes National Seashore’s ranchlands. Now, a resolution is at hand as the result of a negotiated settlement, and the majority of the seashore’s ranch families are preparing to vacate their properties in a move that’s left a close-knit community devastated. The roots of the conflict go back to the 1960s and an era of rapid development, when plans for housing, a major highway and urbanization threatened the lifestyle of rural west Marin County. Ranchers, environmentalists and local residents banded together to fight a common enemy and proposed creating a national seashore as a strategy to protect the land. Congress passed legislation in favor of the creation of the Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) in 1962, and President John F. Kennedy signed it into law later that year. To make the new seashore a reality, however, the National Park Service first needed to purchase the land that the ranches occupied, which took 10 years. PRNS was officially established in 1972, and it included a pastoral zone, allowing the ranches to stay and continue operations with 20-year leases and special grazing permits. Those leases are at the heart of the dispute, because they came with different expectations. While the ranchers assumed the NPS would renew the leases for as long as their families wanted to continue ranching, the environmentalists thought that once the initial 20-year leases
expired, the land would return to nature, relegating the ranches to history. Instead, when the leases began to expire in the 1990s, the NPS converted them into ongoing five-year leases. In 2014, then- Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar ordered longer leases, and the NPS began seeking ways to comply. Meanwhile, environmentalists believed long-term leases went against the original vision, setting the stage for litigation. In 2016, the Resource Renewal Institute, based locally in Fairfax, the Center for Biological Diversity, which is based in Tucson, Arizona, and the Western Watersheds Project in Hailey, Idaho, filed suit in federal court to challenge the NPS’s decision to issue 20-year leases to commercial beef and dairy ranches without first gathering public input and conducting an environmental review, which the National Environmental Policy Act requires. “Through the park’s entire history, there had never been an Environmental Impact Report,” says Chance Cutrano, RRI’s director of programs. In an attempt to address the complaints, PRNS asked for public input and completed an updated management plan, which it released in 2021. Cutrano points out that the management plan went beyond ranching, however, and allowed expanded commercial activities—including diversified agriculture, short-term vacation rentals, a mobile slaughterhouse, as well as a cap on the number of tule elk that could live within the boundaries of PRNS. Meanwhile, sustainability and fragile ecosystems had become a concern in a new era facing climate and diversity crises—and environmentalists believed the plan failed to adequately consider the effects of drought on water, managing wildlife and climate change. “With all of those things, we felt that the park’s proposed course of action violated both the national parks’ enabling legislation and legislation that created the national seashore,” Cutrano explains. In 2022, the plaintiffs sued again to stop implementation of the updated management plan, charging that it was still in conflict
38 NorthBaybiz
March 2025
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