It once was beautiful, the S.S. Point Reyes, even as it slowly rotted on the banks of Tomales Bay. But now, its hull is shattered; its innards, rusty and charred. Moss clings to its damp wooden planks, and graffiti mars its chipped paint. It lists precariously toward its starboard side.
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By 06/16/2021
For the first time ever, the Point Reyes National Seashore is providing supplemental water to the fenced tule elk herd on Tomales Point. The park announced last week that it had installed three 250-gallon troughs at the south end of the reserve that will remain there at least until the winter rains. Dave Press, the park’s wildlife ecologist, said there are still natural water sources for the herd, and that the move was made out of “an abundance of caution.”
A tule elk requires five to eight gallons of water a day, moisture it finds in natural seeps, springs and ponds. Depending on how foggy the seashore gets, elk also get a significant amount of water from forage. But drought conditions on the peninsula are already much worse than in recent summers. “There are reliable seeps and springs that have completely dried up, which is nothing we’ve ever observed before,” Mr. Press said.
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.
Rally to save Tule elk Details 08 April 2021
Rally at Point Reyes National Seashore After National Park Service Announces Death Toll of 152 Rare Tule Elk
In Defense of Animals,
TreeSpirit Project and
ForELK are hosting a rally on Saturday, April 10 to highlight the deadly mismanagement of Point Reyes National Seashore. The
National Park Service (NPS) announced that 152 Tule elk died in 2020, one in three elk inside a “Preserve.” Activists raised the alarm about the huge number of elk dying during the drought, but the
NPS repeatedly failed to acknowledge the problem or enact its emergency plan. When activists delivered water to the elk, the