The National Park Service doesn’t want you to see this one male Tule elk suffering — because then you’ll know how hundreds of these magnificent animals suffer, and die, in confinement at Point Reyes National Seashore because of corrupted park policies.

Hundreds more Tule elk have died, just like this, inside the park’s so-called “Tule Elk Reserve” from which the elk cannot escape.

The “Reserve” is a large, fenced enclosure that lacks adequate year-round water and food. But the rare, vulnerable, Tule elk remain trapped inside at the request of private cattle ranches which lease this public land from the federal government. (The public bought the ranchlands for millions of dollars decades ago, but the powerful ranching industry lobbied politicians to let them stay anyway.)

As a result, the Tule elk remain imprisoned inside this national park unit just 20 miles from San Francisco.

The Park Service doesn’t want you to know the ugly truth, care about the Tule elk, or feel sad or angry about the hundreds of unnecessary Tule elk deaths over the last decade. Better to hide all this awful, slow, painful elk suffering with bloodless, bureaucratic language like, “natural population declines.”

Even the name of its prison, a “Reserve” is a cruel, ironic distortion of the deadly truth.  The reckless policy of fencing in these wild animals must end.

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