This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
Guanacos at Sunrise
I was looking at some old photos taken in Torres del Paine National Park when this caught my eye. There were a lot of good landscape photo opportunities, but we were there for pumas. I liked this dawn view of a mother guanaco and her chulengo though.
A red fox mom returns to her den with a snowshoe hare to feed her kits.
This red fox mother attracted quite a crowd by choosing a den just a few feet off the road in Yellowstone National Park.
Lionesses on the Hunt
On my safari in Tanzania last fall this lioness is the only animal I saw that was collared.
A bald eagle perches on a limb.
I was looking through some of my bald eagle photos from 2007 and decided to run this one through Photoshop again.
Cows in Pond, Point Reyes
I appeared on Marin TV a week ago with Laura Cunningham of Western Watersheds Project and Skyler Thomas of White Shark Videos. We were on a program called the People’s Environmental News with hosts Charlie Siler and Barbara McVeigh. The hour-long program was about Point Reyes National Seashore and the current planning process. If you’d like to watch it, it’s on YouTube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qPEZtl1CDM&feature=youtu.be
Here is a picture of a pond in Point Reyes National Seashore which is one of the many things we talked about on the program. The pond is entirely covered in weed growth. Why? Because cows stand in it and urinate and defecate. It also receives manure from lands above it as well as another pond above it whose waters percolate into it. Cow manure is basically fertilizer which causes any vegetation in the water to grow out of control. Of course, there is also the e coli problem, but that’s a story for another day.
This pond is part of the upper reaches of the South Fork of Kehoe Creek which is one of the most polluted creeks in California. Yes, a creek whose entire watercourse is in a national park is one of the most polluted watersheds in California. Way to go National Park Service! It’s responsible animal husbandry to fence a stock pond and to place a stock tank downgrade from the pond and then to run a pipe between them. But that’s not the way the ranchers at Point Reyes operate and the Park Service Superintendent is afraid to tell the ranchers to do anything for fear they will call Senator Feinstein and/or Rep. Huffman and that Superintendent will be out the door, like the last one. But I digress. Back to that pond.
The pond’s water percolates through its earthen dam and joins other Souith Fork waters until the South Fork joins the two North Forks of Kehoe Creek at a pool near the Kehoe Beach parking lot. From there, the manure-laden water flows to Kehoe Beach where the water sits in a pool until a large enough storm occurs that can breach the beach and deliver the manure to the Pacific Ocean.
Cattle trails on hillsides in the Seashore cause severe erosion and manure pollution of the adjacent bays and ocean.
CONGRESS NEVER INTENDED THAT RANCHING WOULD GO ON FOREVER
Contrary to the claims of some, there is no basis for asserting that when Congress passed the Point Reyes legislation in 1962 it intended that ranching would go on forever after the ranch lands were acquired by the National Park Service (NPS). The legislation didn’t address the issue at all. Furthermore, there is no point in debating the issue now because Congress addressed the issue in 1978 by adding language to the legislation stating that ranching was discretionary, not mandatory. That language provides as follows:
“Where appropriate in the discretion of the Secretary, he or she may lease federally owned land . . . which has been acquired . . . and which was agricultural land prior to its acquisition. Such lease shall be subject to such restrictive covenants as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of sections 459c to 459c–7 of this title.”
92 Stat. 3487 (Nov. 10, 1978); 16 U.S.C. § 459c-5. (Emphasis added.)
Clearly, Congress addressed the issue in 1978 and made ranching permissible in the Secretary’s discretionary, but not required.
Furthermore, the Secretary’s discretion is limited by other language requiring that Point Reyes be managed without impairment of its natural values.
“[T]he property . . . shall be administered . . . without impairment of its natural values, in a manner which provides for such recreational, educational, historic preservation, interpretation, and scientific research opportunities as are consistent with, based upon, and supportive of the maximum protection, restoration, and preservation of the natural environment . . . .”
16 U.S.C. § 459c-6. (Emphasis added.)
Ranching is impairing the natural resources of Point Reyes as is obvious to anyone who goes out there and looks at the ranching area. Consequently, NPS is violating its statutory duty under the Seashore statute. It is also violating the 1916 NPS Organic Act which has similar non-impairment language and applies to all national parks, including Point Reyes. The only way to stop impairing nature at Point Reyes is to stop ranching and manage Point Reyes like national parks are supposed to be managed with the overarching duty being the protection of natural resources, not the destruction of them. It’s time for the Park Service to perform its statutory duty by removing the ranchers, not the elk the ranchers want removed because the elk, like their 6,000 cattle, eat grass. The Seashore is a national park, not a private ranch.
A male elephant walks near a wetland in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania.
Tarangire National Park is known for elephants and baobab trees. When I was there on a photography safari last September, we saw a good number of each. The safari, which included Serengeti, was sponsored by Nature’s Best Photography and the African Wildlife Foundation and it was hosted by Thomson Safaris. They are running another with Thomson this September. If you’ve been thinking of doing a safari in Tanzania, this would be an excellent choice. Thomson is based in the Boston area. https://thomsonsafaris.com/
