The Cattle Empire Strikes Back in Point Reyes.  Again.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Point Reyes National Seashore, finally with thousands fewer cows forced to compact and desiccate the land, damaging vegetation, and polluting the water,  dairy and beef ranchers are back at it. Again, they’re inundating the media with misinformation to fool the public while lobbying the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy to bring thousands more new cows into a publicly-owned park.

An Overview & Update:

The Ugly - Dairy and beef ranchers, more brazen and desperate than ever, are insisting that thousands more cows are needed back in this National Park, to benefit the environment. But the exact opposite is true.

For-profit, domesticated beef and dairy cows are not wild bison, no matter how many times ranchers insist they are. Domesticated cow herds damage soil (compaction, desiccation), trample vegetation, pollute waterways, and heat the atmosphere with GHG emissions.

In fact, cattle businesses are a primary driver of global heating and the climate crisis, as science has shown for decades.  That’s why small family farms and factory farms both omit the science when promoting cows as necessary lawnmowers to “reduce fire danger.” Instead, they eat Point Reyes down to bare, trampled dirt. Their goal? Muddy the manure-polluted waters and confuse the public to keep them supporting “local food” and “local jobs.”

The Bad - Not All Private Cattle Ranchers Are Gone

Two beef ranchers will remain in Point Reyes, likely with long-term leases. They will have approximately 300 beef cows between them.

But in addition, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) plans to bring in 400 to 1,200 more private beef cows to use as lawnmowers, claiming they are needed to eat down proliferating non-native plants and grasses, which cattle operations brought into the park in the first place! The non-native plants and grasses have been in cow feed trucked into Point Reyes for over 100 years.

Both ranchers and TNC insist on using cows to remedy vegetation and land damaged by cows. But this ignores the massive methane emissions from cows, and the water pollution caused by the millions of pounds of cow manure dumped, untreated, onto the land.  

The Ridiculous 

The TNC website even has a white paper of sorts with an oxymoronic title: “Sustainable Grazing,” which may as well say, “The Tooth Fairy.”  Because the commercial grazing of livestock is, by its very nature, anti-wildlife. Cattle grazing, including organic, local, small, rotational, targeted, and regenerative ranching, all compact soil, damage stream banks, and introduce cow manure into any nearby waterways downhill of the herds of bovine grazer-poopers. 

So-called “regenerative” cow farms and “sustainable” grazing boosters boast of minimal soil carbon sequestration gains while ignoring the cows' burping and farting massive amounts of invisible methane gas into the atmosphere, which traps 90 times more heat over its 20-year lifecycle than CO2 does.

The Good - Fewer Cows, Much Freer Elk Today

But there is good news right now; in the past year, we’ve made huge positive gains for the park’s incredible tule elk, and tens of thousands of other wild animals who live at Point Reyes but who don’t get the attention elk and cows do.

All six so-called “historic” dairies have left Point Reyes, having accepted generous multi-million dollar golden parachutes, compliments of The Nature Conservancy, surrendering their federal leases. (Ranchers haven’t owned land in Point Reyes for decades, having already sold their ranchlands to the feds in the 1960s in exchange for their first generous, multi-million dollar payout.)

By mid-April of this year (2026), over 4,000 privately owned, exploited, and killed-for-profit beef and dairy cows will have left Point Reyes.

As for our beloved rare, native Tule elk, the park’s three separate herds are now freer to wander, mix, and intermingle than ever before. They also face less harassment from ranchers than ever (since their 1978 reintroduction to the Point Reyes peninsula, where they had lived for tens of thousands of years before ranching killed them off).

Fewer cows and happier, healthier tule elk in this national park are the result of literally years of activism and citizen involvement. And your involvement, caring, and support.  These issues won media attention and public support for removing private, commercial cattle operations from a public park and freeing the elk from fenced confinement.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Attend OUR NEXT PUBLIC ELK ACTION 4:30 pm, Thursday, April 16, 2026, in the town of Point Reyes Station.

This next action — peaceful, organized, and safe — for the Tule elk, and all wildlife in the park, is next Thursday from 4:30-8 pm at the West Marin School, in the town of Point Reyes Station, in Marin County.  All elk, wild animal, and national park advocates are urged to attend a public meeting organized by the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy. They want to hear our voices and vision for Point Reyes, not just from those with financial interests — cows — feigning ecological concern for our beloved national park while advocating for undoing all our incredible recent progress.

Whether or not you can attend, please email these two officials and politely tell them you want all cows removed from Point Reyes National Park, where they don’t belong. And that cows do not “restore” land or waterways; they only do additional damage:

1. Anne Altman, Superintendent, Point Reyes National Seashore, National Park Service: anne_altman@nps.gov
2. Greg Richardson, Point Reyes Project Director, The Nature Conservancy:  g.richardson@tnc.org

The Nature Conservancy’s April 16, 2026 “Open House” webpage: https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/ca-pointreyes-openhouse/