MILL VALLEY, Calif. (March 4, 2025) — Emmy Award-winning narrator, actor, author, and longtime activist Peter Coyote joined over 100 environmentalists and citizen-activists on Saturday, March 1, at the Mill Valley Community Center to celebrate a historic victory for the Tule elk and a major reduction in cattle industry pollution at Point Reyes National Seashore. 

Coyote, serving as the event’s keynote speaker, addressed a passionate crowd that worked tirelessly, for years, to free the Tule elk and re-wild the park, marking the biggest environmental improvements at Point Reyes since its establishment in 1962.

“In a lifetime of political engagement… you don't get to celebrate successes very often,” said Coyote, who has decades of activism under his belt. “I'm extremely humbled to be here today. I'm actually overwhelmed by the joyousness, the inventiveness, the artistic freedom, the humility, and the anonymous labors that brought this thing to fruition.”

The Tule Elk Freedom Party, was hosted by In Defense of Animals, founded in Mill Valley and Turtle Island Restoration Network, based in Olema as a celebration and call to action. It commemorated a landmark legal settlement of a long-running lawsuit, announced by the National Park Service in January, which will pay ranchers to remove thousands of privately owned beef and dairy cattle from the park, significantly reducing land degradation, water contamination, and methane emissions from the private dairy and beef operations in the park. 

The agreement follows years of advocacy, demonstrations, and actions at Point Reyes, and several lawsuits.

Jack Gescheidt, plaintiff in one suit, Tule elk consultant for In Defense of Animals, and founder of TreeSpirit Project, described the outcome as a rare environmental victory “This marks a rare win for the environment, dramatically reducing the land degradation, water contamination, and greenhouse gas emissions of private dairy and beef businesses in a public park. They call themselves ‘small’ and ‘organic,’ but they actually pollute more than giant, crowded feedlots. They have no business being inside a national park.”

Thousands of cows will be moved out of the park, the so-called “Pastoral Zone” relabeled as “Scenic Landscape Zone” with public access restored to about 18,000-acres.. A massive amount of environmental damage will cease as millions of pounds of untreated manure and urine, which washes into the waterways, will no longer be dumped each year by private beef and dairy businesses. Tons of methane gas emissions, which heat the planet 20-30 times faster than carbon dioxide, will also be spared.

This event celebrated another hard-won, long-awaited victory — the freeing of hundreds of rare, native Tule elk from a deadly 2,600-acre fenced enclosure which prevented them from accessing food and water set aside for ranching.

Fleur Dawes, Communication Director for In Defense of Animals, who also spoke to the crowd, notes, “For the first time since being reintroduced to the Point Reyes peninsula in 1978, which is their native habit, the Tule elk will be freed from fenced confinement. Over 500 elk died in the last decade, and this brutal treatment of wild animals in a national park is finally ending. We’re excited to gather here with so many of the individuals and groups who made this historic achievement possible.”

Eleven ranchers who elected to accept the generous settlement deal will be paid a reported, collective, $30-$40 million by the Nature Conservancy to cease lobbying the National Park Service (and the public) for lease extensions, which have allowed them to operate in the park despite numerous lease violations, including water pollution, illegal subletting, and habitat destruction including riparian and stream damage, illegal dump sites, and more. The deal follows a $350 million taxpayer buyout (in today’s dollars) paid in the 1960s and 1970s in exchange for ranch property and an agreement to vacate after 25 years, by 1987.

The event ended on an uplifting and celebratory note, as scores of national park supporters, environmentalists, and wild animal advocates looked toward continued nature advocacy and a cleaner, wilder future for Point Reyes — where the park’s natural beauty and wildlife are restored and accessible for generations to come, especially precious in these uncertain times.

For people interested in learning much more about the past, present and future of Point Reyes National Seashore, the Marin Coalition is hosting a 5-person panel talk and presentation Thursday, Mar 6, 2025 at 1pm at Dominican University in San Rafael. For more information and tickets: https://marincoalition.org/next-event/

### NOTES ###

Contact: Jack Gescheidt, jackg@idausa.org, (415) 488-4200 (no texts)

In Defense of Animals is an international animal protection organization based in California with over 250,000 supporters and a history of fighting for animals, people, and the environment through education and campaigns, as well as hands-on rescue facilities in California, India, South Korea, and rural Mississippi since 1983. www.idausa.org/elk

### ENDS ###