Tule Elk Kill Plan Brings Mobile Billboard to Point Reyes

For Immediate Release:
April 30, 2021

Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382

Since the National Park Service (NPS) plans to promote livestock ranching on Point Reyes National Seashore—even though that means massive depletion of water resources and a death sentence for the tule elk who call the area their home—a mobile PETA billboard will be positioned all day tomorrow at a parking lot to call out the NPS for sucking up to the meat industry at the expense of wildlife and citizens’ water needs.

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—which will exacerbate drought conditions. It takes an average of 1,799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of cow flesh and 4.5 gallons of water to produce a gallon of cow’s milk, and livestock operations pollute water supplies with manure, hormones, and antibiotics. Water contamination from the existing ranches at Point Reyes is evidently a problem, as bacteria levels recently tested at up to 300 times higher than the state health standard.

“Killing wildlife to suck up to cattle ranching interests is disgraceful, insupportable, and unforgivable,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on the National Park Service to protect Point Reyes, water resources, and its citizens’ interests, not those of the meat industry.”

One herd of tule elk is confined by a rancher’s fence to a peninsula, and drought conditions have resulted in a drastic drop in the water and natural food supply. Hundreds of elk reportedly died in 2020 because the fences stopped them from seeking food and 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 “consistent with desired conditions for the planning area”—in other words, as ranchers see fit.

The billboard will be parked at the Tule Elk Preserve parking lot at the end of Pierce Point Ranch Road all day tomorrow (May 1).

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