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Tule elk in Marin are dying off, as the park service and activists feud over the reason why.
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Tule elks in a meadow in Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin County, California.NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Tule elk have had a long, hard history of survival in California.
The subspecies of the elk, native to California, once roamed the state in the hundreds of thousands, but uncontrolled hunting and human settlement in the 19th century nearly wiped them out, with numbers dwindling to less that 30 in the 1870s.
That last small herd in Bakersfield was saved by an elk-loving rancher named Henry Miller, and each of the 5,700 tule elk in California today are derived from that herd.
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By 01/06/2021
A process for monitoring water quality should be better fleshed out in the National Park Service’s plan for managing ranchlands in the Point Reyes National Seashore, the California Coastal Commission states.
The commission is one of a handful of regulatory agencies tasked with reviewing the seashore’s general management plan amendment, which will govern the historic ranching operations and tule elk herds across 28,000 acres. Although the coastal commission does not have jurisdiction over federal lands, it considered the 20-year plan for the spillover effects on coastal resources, looking for consistency with the California Coastal Act. On Jan. 14, the commission will hold a public hearing to present its findings, and the park service will respond.