A pastoral zone was created decades ago to allow cattle to graze within Point Reyes National Seashore/Photo via Sarah Rolph

Ranching in Point Reyes National Seashore is a valuable heritage that is being falsely maligned.

Anti-ranch activists contend agriculture was never meant to stay in the Seashore, citing one clause or another from enabling legislation or House hearings. But the first thing you learn when you try to go to the source is that there is no one source. Ranching was a purpose of the park from the beginning; as then-Secretary Ken Salazar said in his 2012 memo directing the Seashore to provide 20-year agreements, “Long-term preservation of ranching was a central concern of local interests and members of Congress as they considered legislation to establish the Point Reyes National Seashore in the 1950s and early 1960s.”

The enabling legislation was signed in 1962, and has been amended several times; none of those changes altered the original intent of retaining ranching as part of the Seashore. This history has been carefully detailed by environmental historian Laura Watt in her book, The Paradox of Preservation: Wilderness and Working Landscapes at Point Reyes National Seashore, a history of the Seashore that sheds light on every aspect of its foundation, evolution, and management, including lots of detail about the re-introduction of the Tule elk.

The importance of these ranchlands was recognized last year with national historic certifications. The new Point Reyes Peninsula Dairy Ranches Historic District and Olema Valley Diary Ranches Historic District are now on the National Register of Historic Places. Speaking of this designation, Seashore Superintendent Cicely Muldoon told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, “National parks are so much more than sweeping landscapes. They are keepers of our national heritage, both natural and cultural.”

The facts show that ranching on Point Reyes is a net positive. Grasslands benefit from grazing. The iconic landscapes we love at the Seashore are the result of hundreds of years of grassland management, first by the Coast Miwok peoples, then by the Spanish and Mexican rancheros, then by the Anglo-American settlers and new immigrants, who called the place “cow heaven” for its incredibly lush grasses fed by the foggy climate. Today’s well-managed grazing practices provide not only aesthetic benefits—those gorgeous green hills and fields, emerald vistas extending to the sea—but also environmental benefits.

These benefits are buried in the Seashore’s current Draft Environmental Impact Statemen, but you can find them if you look. While Alternative F, the elimination of ranching, is described largely in glowing terms, the truth is that, as the DEIS says on page 139: “Over the long-term, however, the cessation of ranching may not result in overall beneficial impacts, especially in grasslands, which constitute 48 percent of the planning area. Rates of shrub encroachment into grasslands, invasive perennial grasses, vegetative fuels (both herbaceous and woody), and the consequent risk of large, intense wildfires are all likely to increase...”

I find it astonishing that the Park Service would underplay the risk of large, intense wildfires. But, sadly, officials at Point Reyes National Seashore do not have a good track record of telling the truth.

Nor do they have a good track record of following their own planning processes. In 1998, when the Seashore decided to create a free-ranging elk herd, a formal planning process was required. The 1998 Elk Management Plan and Environmental Assessment promised that the elk would be kept off the ranches, that the carrying capacity of the new herd would be studied and optimized, and that the population of the new herd would be kept in check. None of these promises has been kept.

A final environmental assessment or environmental impact statement has the status of law. If the Seashore can ignore the elk-management EA, why should we expect them to abide by this new EIS, or any other?

The DEIS uses the current range of the roaming elk as its baseline. But the elk were never supposed to be allowed into the pastoral zone. The baseline should be the conditions described under the 1998 elk management plan and environmental assessment.

Bull elk at Point Reyes National Seashore/NPS, Tim Bernot

The DEIS also plays into the hands of anti-ranch activists by discussing lethal control of the elk. Every news headline I have seen about the DEIS has used this angle. And yet, the DEIS makes it clear that when it comes to protecting livestock and property from elk depredations, lethal control is off the table; the plan is to continue to use hazing, which does not work and is cruel to the animals.

Lethal control is being proposed only for controlling the population of the Drakes Beach herd, and the Seashore says it might kill around 10 elk. The Seashore tells us that hundreds of its re-introduced Tule elk have died, from thirst, starvation, mineral deficiencies, and illness. Why isn’t population control being taken seriously for all of the elk on Point Reyes? Is this DEIS really focused on responsible natural resource management, or is it meant to increase pressure on the ranchers?

Another important benefit of ranching is its potential for helping to solve the climate crisis. Rangeland managers around the world are excited about the positive climate impacts of carbon farming. The Marin Carbon Project and the Carbon Cycle Institute are doing cutting-edge research and working closely with Marin ranchers to create carbon farming plans that are improving soils by increasing soil organic matter, and reducing atmospheric carbon in the process. Forward-thinking Point Reyes ranchers are interested in joining this project, but so far the Seashore has not allowed it.

The DEIS mentions carbon farming only in the appendices, and doesn’t include this important issue in its analysis, even though it was raised during scoping; this should be corrected in the final draft.

The DEIS claims that ranching has adverse impacts on native plants, but the documents they cite for these claims don’t say any such thing. The Natural Resource Condition Assessment cited in the DEIS says, “Information was insufficient to determine the trend for invasive plant and rare plant populations,” “the PORE range data set provides information about only one small part of the overall Point Reyes landscape,” and, further, that “none of the indicator rankings were considered to have a high degree of certainty.”

In fact, grazing is so important to the ecological health of these grasslands that if ranching were eliminated, the Seashore’s plan is to bring in its own livestock, under contract, and/or do lots of mechanical mowing. (Page 125: “The use of limited prescribed grazing is considered under alternatives with no or reduced livestock grazing because this would mitigate some undesirable impacts of grazing reduction or removal.”)

The DEIS is filled with deceptions like this. The preferred alternative is presented in a way that sounds like it gives ranchers everything they want; the appendices make it clear that, in practice, it won’t. Row crops are supposedly allowed—but they can’t be irrigated, must be sown by hand, can’t be more than two-and-a-half acres, and no control of, say, gophers, is allowed. So much for row crops. The same with goats and sheep—supposedly they are allowed, but the new zoning requirements would keep them out of the places they are needed to control brush.

Perhaps the most shocking deception in the DEIS is in the description of its purpose and need for action. The DEIS says on page 4: “In 2013, at the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, the NPS Director issued a Delegation of Authority authorizing lease/permit terms for up to 20 years and directing NPS to initiate a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process to evaluate the issuance of long-term leases.” That is not true. There is no mention of NEPA in either then-Secretary Salazar’s Nov. 29, 2012, decision memo or then-National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis’s Jan. 13, 2013, delegation of authority. Instead of following these directives, the Seashore is using them as an excuse to validate the proliferation of elk on ranchlands and to further restrict ranching.

The Seashore is rewriting history to suit its current preferences, and using NEPA as a weapon to try to get what it wants—the elimination of ranching or its micro-management to the death. There are no apparent legal restraints on the power of the park service, but, morally, it is wrong to deceive the public in this way.

Ranching on Point Reyes is a valuable cultural heritage that is beneficial to the land. The multi-generation ranching families of Point Reyes are an asset to the Seashore, aesthetically, economically, culturally, and environmentally. Secretary Salazar had it right when he said, “These working ranches are a vibrant and compatible part of Point Reyes National Seashore, and both now and in the future represent an important contribution to the Point Reyes' superlative natural and cultural resources."

Sarah Rolph is a longtime business writer and research analyst who now writes narrative non-fiction. She grew up in California and is based in Carlisle, Massachusetts. In 2006 she published a history of a venerable Maine diner. Her work-in-progress documents the shutdown of Drakes Bay Oyster Farm.