Deadly Decision for Tule Elk Finalized by National Park Service
A Meat and Dairy Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM IDA In Defense of Animals
September 2021

Another validation of just how brutal and abusive the beef and dairy industries really are to cattle and cows, any wild animals who get in the way of their profits, the planet, and thus to humans too... Got  milk?

Activists' water brigade... Photo by Jack Gescheidt/TreeSpiritProject.com

Despite growing public opposition to a deadly and destructive plan proposed for the future of Point Reyes National Seashore and the wild animals who call it home, the National Park Service has officially finalized it — and it’s worse than the old plan. Mass animal cruelty, toxic pollution, and shooting Tule elk to death is now official policy.

Over 320 demonstrators gathered at our joint demonstration at Point Reyes National Seashore on Sunday, September 12. We celebrated the 59th anniversary of the creation of this unique San Francisco Bay Area national park and spoke out against the National Park Service’s (NPS’) highly controversial new General Management Plan for the Seashore.

Hundreds of wild Tule elk have died slow, grisly deaths from thirst and hunger over the years, trapped inside a fenced enclosure. This so-called “Tule Elk Reserve” is actually a prison that exists only at the request of private, for-profit cattle operations leasing land in this public park.

The ponds are running dry at this very moment, mobilizing citizens to continue to take actions into their own hands through multiple unauthorized water drops.

Ignoring all this and the will of many thousands of citizens, the NPS has just announced its new plan, its “Record of Decision.” It’s a modified version of the dreaded Alternative B with some minor adjustments, which will:

• Give meat and dairy ranchers, not an extra five years, but up to 20-year new leases. This move quadruples its corrupt commitment to private, for-profit businesses over the lives of wild animals and the will of the American people who own the park and want the cows removed and Tule elk protected.
• Keep the park’s rare Tule elk trapped inside the deadly, drought-stricken “Reserve,” condemning more of these living, feeling ungulates to grisly, withering deaths.
• Rub salt in the wounds of any animal advocate pained by a national park already killing the wild animals it was created to preserve and legislatively required to protect, by now authorizing shooting to death some of the elk fortunate enough to live outside the fenced Reserve.

This mind-blowing, heartbreaking lethal elk-shooting policy is sickeningly referred to by the NPS in its public email announcement as one of its “improvements to the management of free-ranging elk.”

The only possible good thing about this new management plan for Point Reyes is that it is so offensive and so immoral, it should provoke any ordinary citizen who learns of it to be outraged. And then they can learn just how brutal and abusive the beef and dairy industries really are to cattle and cows, any wild animals who get in the way of their profits, the planet, and thus to humans too.

The brutal, bloody truth will be on display at Point Reyes National Seashore and a shocked general public will join our efforts, and yours, to unravel and finally end the animal slaughtering industry that’s also killing the planet, and all of us, too.

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