This story was originally published by Biographic
and is republished here by permission.
Point Reyes sits at the western edge of Marin County, California, a pick-axe shaped peninsula that juts between the pounding waves of the Pacific. It’s a landscape of stark beauty; a patchwork of windswept headlands, broad leeward bays, wildflower-strewn meadows, and dripping evergreen forest. State and federal agencies list more than a hundred plant and animal species within the park as threatened or endangered, among them the California red-legged frog (
Rana draytonii), western snowy plover (
Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus), and coho salmon (
Oncorhynchus kisutch). This natural richness draws around 2 million visitors a year.