Point Reyes National Seashore Followup Case

January 8, 2025 — Advocates for the West and our partners finalized a landmark agreement to prioritize ecological protection, wildlife conservation, and recreational access at northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore.

Reached between our client-partners at the Center for Biological Diversity, Resource Renewal Institute, and Western Watersheds Project, and the National Park Service, ranchers, and The Nature Conservancy, the agreement resolves a decade of litigation brought by Advocates for the West challenging Park Service decisions to perpetuate commercial ranching and dairying on public lands at Point Reyes at the expense of the area’s extraordinary ecosystem.

Under the revised management plan adopted by the Park Service as part of the agreement, commercial dairying and ranching will be retired on 16,756 acres of federal public lands. The Park Service will prioritize resource conservation on those lands and allow native tule elk to roam freely across—and expand their numbers within—the National Seashore.

Twelve organic dairies or cattle ranches within Point Reyes agreed to retire their leases and operations on the National Seashore in exchange for compensation from The Nature Conservancy. The ranches will have about 15 months to move off the land.

January 10, 2022 —Advocates for the West filed a lawsuit challenging the controversial National Park Service management plan for California’s Point Reyes National Seashore, one of a handful of national parks that permits cattle grazing.

For decades, the Park Service has leased about 28,000 acres of public lands at Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for beef and dairy ranching despite significant conflicts with natural resources, wildlife, and public recreation.

Advocates for the West — on behalf of the Resource Renewal Institute, Center for Biological Diversity and Western Watersheds Project — first sued the Park Service in 2016 for failing to update its antiquated General Management Plan and perpetuating commercial ranching in the park without adequate environmental review and public comment. The groups succeeded in requiring the Park Service to produce the first-ever Environmental Impact Statement for Point Reyes ranching.

The Park Service’s plan, developed under the Trump administration and adopted in September 2021, expands public lands zoned for ranching; quadruples the potential terms of existing grazing leases from five years to a maximum of 20 years; allows ranchers to pursue new commercial activities such as mobile slaughterhouses and row crop production; and provides for ranching to continue in perpetuity. The plan also allows the Park Service to shoot native tule elk to appease ranchers and to harass elk away from leased ranch lands.

The Park Service improperly rejected a “no ranching” alternative that would provide maximum protection for the environment — as required under the Point Reyes Act — along with reduced-ranching alternatives that would provide greater protection than the adopted plan.