Thanks to your support for our ongoing activism, advocacy, and educational campaign, the Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore are freer and healthier now than they have been in 46 years!
On December 2, 2024, the National Park Service (NPS) finally announced a long-awaited “Final Decision” in a long, involved National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) bureaucratic process initiated as a result of our activism—numerous demonstrations, rallies, media attention and educational outreach—which was supported by you, plus a consortium of other environmental and animal advocacy groups, and two still ongoing lawsuits. That NPS decision was to remove the 8-foot-tall, 2-mile-long southern boundary fence of the Tule Elk Reserve at Tomales Point (northernmost Point Reyes National Seashore) and free the largest herd trapped inside so they can access the rest of this Pacific Ocean-side national park.
¼-mile of the 2-mile-long fence was dismantled in the following two days, on Dec. 3 and 4 of 2024… but then the restoration work stopped abruptly when a cattle industry trade group, the California Cattlemen’s Association, sued in federal court to stop the fence from being fully dismantled. The case will wind its way through the court system in 2025, but in the meantime, the Reserve’s elk can come and go through the “doorway” cut into their prison fence.
Even stalled as it is, this is a dramatic shift in federal policy at Point Reyes and a dramatic improvement in conditions for all the Tule elk at this national park unit. The Reserve fence was built in 1978, when just ten Tule elk were re-introduced to the park from central California. The fence has been standing there ever since, only to benefit cattle ranch operators, but to the detriment of the elk, the park, and the millions of human visitors who come to Point Reyes to see wild animals, the beloved Tule elk—not poor cows who are victimized by the thousands throughout the San Francisco Bay Area (and beyond).
In 2025, we continue to advocate, demonstrate, and educate for the Tule elk of Point Reyes National Seashore, which includes removing all fences—which exist only for private beef and dairy ranches—and to remove all the ranches too. They are the park’s leading source of land, air, fresh water, and ocean pollution, and the only reason Tule elk are behind fences inside a national park unit at all.
Tule elk are native to California and are a unique subspecies; there are only about 6,000 left on Earth, all in California. They used to number in the hundreds of thousands.. The largest number of these rare, beautiful animals in one place is at Point Reyes National Seashore, a 71,000-acre national park unit just 20 miles north of San Francisco.
Three separate herds in the park total about 700 elk (as of 2024), and the largest herd is inside the fenced “Tule Elk Reserve” at the park’s northernmost Tomales Point.
Over 475 of the elk in the Reserve have died slow, gruesome deaths from thirst and hunger over the last 12 years due to California’s drought — while trapped inside the Tomales Point reserve by an 8-foot-tall, 2-mile-long border fence.
National Park Service (NPS) policies have kept the Reserve’s elk confined, favoring private beef and dairy ranch operators requests—for their profits—over the freedom and health and the very lives of Tule elk.
Ranchers lease 28,000 acres of Point Reyes — a full 1/3rd of this publicly-owned 71,000-acre park. Their approximately 4,000 beef and dairy cows, exploited and slaughtered for their milk and flesh, outnumber wild elk about 6-to-1. For every one Tule elk whose movements are constrained by a nearby cattle ranch, about six much larger cows are exploited and killed in their adolescence to make “beef” and dairy products, despite being touted as “small,” “local,” “family-owned,” and “organic-certified” farms.
As a result, Point Reyes is more of a manure-polluted National Feedlot than a National Park.
The many cattle operations, despite being organic, are the Seashore’s greatest source of land degradation from excessive grazing. Its greatest source of water contamination from excessive manure and urine. Ranches even emit more greenhouse gas air pollution — in the form of heat-trapping methane emissions from the poor, victimized cows — than the park’s over 1.5 million annual visitor vehicles tailpipe emissions.
Fences harm elk and all wild animals at Point Reyes
In addition to the Reserve’s infamous, deadly 8-foot-tall southern boundary fence, 300 additional miles of wire cattle fences (both straight and barbed) restrict the natural movements and behavior of Tule elk, and all wild animals in the park. Fences also prevent human visitors from accessing 28,000 acres of the park—fenced off for ranches—which their taxes subsidize by giving ranchers sweetheart, undermarket leasing rates for. Additional millions of dollars of public subsidies silently prop up these filthy, cruel, businesses which are remnants of the past. These modernized ranches are holdovers from another era, polluting the environment and abusing and exploiting, for profit, the bodies of thousands of gentle, defenseless cows.
The cattle industry is the only reason Tule elk remain confined inside the Reserve. Tule elk and all the park’s wild animals like coyotes, bobcats, badgers, mountain lions and even the occasional black bear spotted here, will never be safe and free and healthy at Point Reyes until the commercial cattle operations are removed.
With your support, activism is working: the Reserve’s elk fence may come down.
Dedicated activism by In Defense of Animals over the last four years , along with other environmental and animal rights organizations—and thousands of concerned citizens, including you—have finally resulted in the deadly Tule Elk Reserve’s fence being partially dismantled, which means the elk inside can enjoy more freedom of movement than ever before—and reach more food and water during drought, and mingle with the park’s other two herds. Freeing the Tule elk is the 1st step to make Point Reyes wild and healthy for all animals.
The NPS mission to preserve and protect the Tule elk, all the park’s other wild animals, and their wild habitat. This mission has been corrupted by the cattle industry, which wants all wild animals “managed” and kept off “their” ranches which they don’t even own (the public owns their land). But we won’t rest until all Point Reyes wild animals can roam free of all fences and human threats.
In Defense of Animals is proudly leading the charge to champion the Tule elk, remove cattle ranches from the park, and realize the National Park Service’s founding vision for a wild Point Reyes National Seashore.
The history. In 1994, In Defense of Animals blocked a plan that would allow bowhunting of Tule elk at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore; replacing the killing with a contraceptive program.
The drought of 2020. In the summer of 2020, gruesome photographs emerged of Tule elk dead from thirst in the Tule Elk Preserve at Point Reyes National Seashore. In Defense of Animals sprang into action alongside other activists advocating water be provided for the Preserve’s fenced-in Tule elk — but the NPS repeatedly refused. We supported activists who risked their own freedom and safety, entering Point Reyes under the cover of darkness to provide the protected species this basic resource. However, rangers sabotaged efforts to save the Tule elk, dumping out troughs of water on two separate occasions.
The 2020 drought is only one in many years of California droughts. From 2012-to-2014, over half of the Seashore’s largest of three herds died — 254 of 540 elk in the fenced Tule Elk Preserve. This preventable tragedy occurred while dairies continued their usual, massive infusion of water and food to their enslaved cows-for-profit. Another drought is anticipated this summer-autumn of 2021. In Defense of Animals will continue lobbying the Park Service for remedies both immediate and long-term.
The NPS is planning even worse. Unbelievably, the Park Service supports a plan to shoot some Tule elk at the request of ranchers. Point Reyes, a rare, safe haven for this magnificent, protected species, would become a hunting ground. This is wild animal brutality, in a national park system, despite overwhelming public disapproval. A survey of 7,627 people, conducted by the Park Service itself, found 91% wanted elk left alone, and cows out of the park. Tule elk are a national attraction, not factory farms.
Pollution is no solution. Point Reyes has now degraded from a national park unit into a national cesspool. Water testing initiated and funded by In Defense of Animals and Western Watersheds Project has exposed how Point Reyes’ factory farms have contaminated its waterway with E.coli, enterococci, and other harmful coliform bacteria from massive amounts of cow manure. Precious coastal wildlife habitat is polluted and trampled, all so cows can be confined, abused, and killed for the meat and dairy industry.
The fate of the iconic California Tule elk is now in the hands of animal, wildlife, and wildland advocates like In Defense of Animals.
What We’re Doing To Save The Tule Elk
In Defense of Animals is leading a pioneering campaign to save the Tule elk.
Working with other animal and environmentalist groups, we have:
- Supported activists providing water for at-risk Tule elk who are starved by rancher-first policies
- Put the Tule elk on the national agenda by securing coverage in high profile media like Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ABC7 News, KPIX 5 (CBS), The Independent and many more
- Drawn attention to the Tule elk's plight by teaming up with actors Peter Coyote and Alexandra Paul, NBA sports personality Bonnie-Jill Laflin, and The Cove director Louie Psihoyos
- Organized protests against NPS negligence in Point Reyes
- Partnered with local organizations, experts and activists
- Urged politicians to take a stand for the survival of the Tule elk population
- Organized and funded scientific testing documenting negligence and desecration of our national park unit
- Supported our Tule elk campaigner in a lawsuit to hold the NPS accountable for killing Tule elk
- Spoken out for the Tule elk at stakeholder meetings
What You Can Do To Save The Tule elk
In Defense of Animals is leading a pioneering campaign to save the Tule elk.
- Save the Tule elk by signing up for an In Defense of Animals membership
- If you are in the Point Reyes area, consider joining one of our safe, non-violent, effective protests
- Watch our videos about the disgraceful abuse of Tule elk and share them with family & friends
- Sign one of our active alerts for the Tule elk
- Read our latest Tule elk news to stay up-to-date
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Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore, in three herds, are confined to varying degrees at the behest of the cattle industry.
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Cows, exploited for their milk and their flesh, are (by no fault of their own) the park’s #1 source of land, water and air pollution in this national park.
