Department of the Interior Protest Over Plan to Kill Tule Elk

For Immediate Release:
May 5, 2021

Contact:
Nicole Meyer 202-483-7382

Tomorrow, PETA supporters will unfurl a banner reading, “Save the California Tule Elk! The Buck Stops Here!” to demand that the Department of the Interior halt a National Park Service (NPS) plan that would promote livestock ranching on Point Reyes National Seashore—even though that would deplete water resources and sentence a herd of beloved tule elk to death.

When:    Thursday, May 6, 7:45–9:15 a.m.

Where:    Around the corner from 1849 C St. N.W., at the intersection of 19^th and C streets N.W., Washington, D.C.

The NPS plan will allow cattle ranchers to keep over 5,500 cows on some 26,000 fenced-off acres of the seashore for 20 more years—yet animal agriculture is one of the main causes of the climate crisis, and it wastes water. Hundreds of elk at Point Reyes died in 2020 because ranchers’ fences confined the herd to a peninsula, preventing them from reaching water elsewhere. Only two other herds of tule elk remain at Point Reyes, and the NPS plan would allow some of them to be killed as well, as the ranchers see fit.

“The Department of the Interior has an obligation to the American people and the wild animals who call this country home—not to cattle ranching interests,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA insists that the agency take its responsibilities seriously and stop capitulating to meat-industry demands.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.