All posts by Laura Cunningham

Coastal Prairie blog and Grasses of the Great Basin blog are a projects of author, artist and conservationist Laura Cunningham. She wrote and illustrated the historical ecology book, A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California (Heyday: 2010).
Point Reyes, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands

The Impacts of Livestock Grazing on Biological Soil Crusts (and Climate Change)

4 Comments
BSC-prairie-grazing-page
Degradation of the original coastal prairies in California. Pen and ink illustration of the impacts of cattle grazing and trampling on Biological Soil Crust. Copyright Laura Cunningham 2020.

The former lush bunchgrass prairies along the Pacific coastal mountains in central California, once home to herds of tule elk, wide-roaming grizzlies, and salmon-filled streams, carefully managed for thousands of years by Miwok and many other tribes, are now mostly grazed instead by herds of cattle. Mediterranean weeds cover the grazed pastures where coastal prairies once grew. Most of the central Coast Range mountains are in private hands and inaccessible to the public. Point Reyes National Seashore is a rare public park established to restore and protect these California plant and animal species and habitats. Continue reading The Impacts of Livestock Grazing on Biological Soil Crusts (and Climate Change) →

Grazing permit buyouts, Point Reyes, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, Yellowstone everywhere

Public Participation Problems With Point Reyes National Seashore Ranching Plan

3 Comments
Polvorosa_Kline_TuleElk5
Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo by Matthew Polvorosa Kline, used with permission.

POINT REYES, California— The National Park Service closed its public comment period on a proposed planto shoot native tule elk in Point Reyes National Seashore to make room not only for beef and dairy cattle, but for new expanded uses that will include sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens, and row crops in the Seashore.  This is a very bad precedent for all of our national parks and monuments.

Numerous conservation groups, including Western Watersheds Project, Resource Renewal Institute, For Elk, Conservation Congress, Wilderness Watch, Sequoia ForestKeeper, White Shark Video/Shame of Point Reyes, John Muir Project, and Ban Single Use Plastics, as well as many concerned former National Park Service employees and individuals, are opposing the Park’s current preferred alternative, which would extend Ranchers’ lease-permits for decades. Extensive comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) were sent in by the groups asking for Alternative F—the No Ranching alternative that would restore native tule elk to more of the Seashore.

Yet questions of how many members of the public are actually being heard has arisen.

Continue reading Public Participation Problems With Point Reyes National Seashore Ranching Plan →

Point Reyes, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands, Yellowstone everywhere

Point Reyes National Seashore Proposes to Kill Native Elk and Keep Cows

3 Comments
Polvorosa_Kline_TuleElk5
Tule elk at Point Reyes National Seashore. Photo by wildlife photographer Matthew Polvorosa Kline. Used with permission.

Point Reyes, CA – Today, the National Park Service released its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to amend the General Management Plan for the popular Bay Area parks Point Reyes National Seashore and the northern portion of Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Despite public opposition to the ongoing agricultural impacts to wildlife and waterways, the draft EIS indicates the agency will manage beef and dairy cows as “integral” to the parks. This includes lethally removing any of the native tule elk that interfere with ranching operations. Continue reading Point Reyes National Seashore Proposes to Kill Native Elk and Keep Cows →

Point Reyes, Private Livestock Grazing, Public lands

Acts of Congress, Ecological History, and Point Reyes National Seashore

4 Comments

The No Bull Sheet is delighted to welcome wildlife biologist and author Laura Cunningham as editor and contributor. Thank you for this piece on Point Reyes, Laura.

piece-pt-elk-area
The view at Tomales Point Elk Reserve in Point Reyes National Seashore, with coastal prairie recovering from decades of livestock grazing. The vacated historic dairy buildings are now used for visitor interpretation.

Special interest lobbies have been hard at work convincing Congress to loosen environmental protections and advance extractive industry profits, and in return, the legislature has increasingly been using its review and amendment powers to attack bedrock environmental laws ranging from public participation requirements to the protection of imperiled plants and animals. I’ve been working to try to stop this from happening on Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area in Marin County, California, where efforts are underway to amend the enabling legislation that founded those parks. Continue reading Acts of Congress, Ecological History, and Point Reyes National Seashore →