This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

Big, good news for the Tule elk fenced inside the drought-stricken Tule Elk Reserve at Tomales Point at Point Reyes National Seashore! For the first time since the elk were re-introduced to Point Reyes 45 years ago, the National Park Service has proposed dismantling the deadly, 8-foot-tall fence responsible for the death of hundreds of elk in recent years. This is the first real step toward freedom for the Tule elk that we've been fighting for, with your support, for years. Urge the agency to take it down!

The National Park Service (NPS) is seeking public comment on its “proposed action” as part of a federally required process to remove the fence and free the elk inside the Reserve. So we need as many elk fans as possible, and national park fans too, to take just a few minutes to thank the NPS for this dramatic policy shift and support the agency's “proposed action” to remove the elk fence of the Tomales Point Tule Elk Reserve. This is “Alternative B” of three alternatives the NPS is required to consider and free the Tule elk to access the much larger, entire park.

We want to flood the NPS with thousands of supportive comments so its proposal becomes its “final decision” by the spring of 2024, and then implemented in the autumn of 2024.

Ranchers may challenge the NPS proposal because they won't like it. They want to keep their sweetheart deals, leasing cheap public land at half its market value. They hope to continue to profit from exploiting cattle for meat and milk while being subsidized by the public. This is while their exploitative cattle operations are the park's greatest polluter of land, streams, the Pacific Ocean, and (with methane gas) the atmosphere. Cattle ranches don't belong in this or any national park.

Why this historic change?

What's the reason for the policy reversal for the Tule elk in Point Reyes? Among the several reasons, you are! Because so many concerned citizens have been speaking out and sharing about the plight of the Tule elk, exposing the corrupt system that has allowed private ranchers to determine park policies, including confining, harming, and killing elk. Because of years of activist pressure campaigns, including demonstrations and actions hosted by In Defense of Animals, along with other animal rights and environmental groups. Because of the legal headaches of two lawsuits brought against the NPS for mismanagement of Point Reyes National Seashore. All these factors have coalesced to spur this dramatic, proposed change in federal policy, a change so many have worked long and hard for. In addition, most importantly, a policy change, if implemented next year, will save elk lives, save other wild animals lives too, and put additional pressure on the subsidized ranches to cut their losses, leave the park, and leave this national park to achieve its founder's vision of a wild park free of private, polluting businesses of any kind, including those that brutally exploit animals for profit.

This alert is no longer active, but here for reference. Animals still need your help.

Officials in Vermont are considering restrictions on trapping and hunting coyotes with dogs, but these new proposed rules will still leave animals to suffer in the most inhumane ways.