Cattle-Free by '93, Alive and Extended

A new development in California deserves national attention and significant debate. It’s a harbinger; it’ll spread. But if it’s a preview, it’s also a replay — a reminder of, for example, the Nevada cattle ranchers who saw “Cattle Free by ‘93” signs at Bureau of Land Management field offices when they went to discuss their grazing permits. A long contest over the use of public land and the meaning of wilderness is about to produce a radical change on the landscape.

In northern Marin County, Point Reyes National Seashore is run by the National Park Service, and it operates like the national park that it really is: focused on conservation, with carefully managed recreational access and a lot of rules about what you can’t do. But Point Reyes has also been ranching country since the 1850s, and visitors to the national seashore still drive through a landscape of working cattle ranches with federal leases — an even mix of beef and dairy operations, providing about a fifth of the milk and meat that feeds the regional population. After 160 years or so, that’s about to change.

As an important op-ed essay in the local newspaper points out, this is the second time the idea of the purity of wilderness and public land has led to the end of a food-producing operation. The first, in 2014, was the decision from the Department of the Interior to force the closure of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, which farmed oysters in the waters of the national seashore under the terms of a federal permit.

The end of most cattle ranching on Point Reyes follows a lawsuit filed by the Nature Conservancy, which discusses the result here. On the current landscape of the national seashore, tule elk roam Tomales Point, a designated elk reserve with a popular hiking trail.

In the new era, with most ranching at Point Reyes ended, the fences at the southern end of Tomales Point will come down, and “tule elk will be allowed to generally roam freely within the National Seashore and expand their numbers without a population cap.”

I’ve hiked the extraordinarily beautiful Tomales Point trail many times.

It’s a kind of Disneyland wilderness, where you can walk through herds of elk who won’t mind your presence. They have no natural predators on Point Reyes, and hunting isn’t allowed in the national seashore. The last time I hiked on Tomales Point (with my teenage daughter, who is similarly a grizzled veteran of the trail), we found that the NPS had placed cisterns at several places along the peninsula, to assure water to the elk. I was reminded of a ranger talk at Badlands National Park, with a ranger who described the extensive federal management of the bison population by teams of biologists. Some rando in the audience raised his hand to ask a question: “Are there any wild bison anywhere?” (The ranger said, slowly, that it was an interesting question.)

So yes, the elk will roam the whole park. Without natural predators, in a place where hunting isn’t allowed, and the federal government will truck in water in dry years. So we’re restoring wilderness for wild animals.

I’ve linked to two competing descriptions of the future, here. The op-ed in the local newspaper:

At other ranches that were forced to close in recent years—D Ranch near Drakes Beach and Rancho Baulines at the southern end of Olema Valley—the park’s non-management has allowed the landscape to be overtaken by thistles and tall weeds. Buildings not occupied by park employees have fallen into decay and collapsed…

As for the elk, the park has passively allowed their populations at Limantour and Tomales Point to suffer through unhealthy and artificial boom-and-bust cycles. The populations initially boomed, as the park has neither brought back natural predators nor allowed limited hunting, as is allowed with almost all the other tule elk herds in California. Then, particularly in drought years, dramatic die-offs ensue. This cycle will only be magnified once the elk spread over the rest of the park.

And the Nature Conservancy:

“This settlement is a major win for tule elk and Point Reyes’ environment, wildlife and native plants,” said Jeff Miller, a senior conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I’m proud of what this collective agreement has accomplished and I'm looking forward to the improved management approach it can usher in. This is a historic opportunity to expand elk herds, restore coastal prairie habitats, and protect endangered species.”

Who’s right? TBD, though the absence of predators offers some suggestions. The cultural future will also be interesting, as an agricultural place with carefully managed wilderness tourism becomes only a place of carefully managed wilderness tourism. I find myself thinking about Isaac Simpson’s description of cultural change in the twee Montana of well-to-do outside lifestyle settlers: “On the one lane road to Big Sky, next to the idyllic River Runs Through It location Gallatin River, there’s a stretch of three straight miles of home decor stores.” Point Reyes isn’t like that, now, but we’ll see. Here’s a Point Reyes rancher talking about the decision, which is well worth listening to:

However it turns out, a consequential decision has been made about the future of northern Marin County, a place with serious change in its very near future. Watch closely. Important ideological premises about our future are going to be tested in a very public way.

Two pictures from the same trip, back in 2017: