Tag: coyote

Coyote

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a coyote facing the setting sun at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Here is a photo I took in 2011 that I came across recently.  I don’t know why I never put it on my website, but I just corrected that.  It was taken at sunset in the ranching area of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Ranching?  Yes, there is ranching in this unit of the national park system.  The ranchers were all bought out by the Park Service between 1962 and 1978 and, to ease the move out of the Seashore, the Park Service gave them reservations of use and occupancy for 20 years.   The last ones should have been out by 1998, but thanks to politics, they are still there and paying a rent for grazing and living there of often less than 10% of fair market value.  The Park Service is required by law to collect fair market for any lands or buildings it leases.

Coyote

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a coyote at Point Reyes National Seashore at sunset.

I photographed this coyote yesterday just before the sun set  I spotted it about fifteen or twenty minutes before sunset and stayed with it until the sun actually set.  It’s my favorite time to photograph wildlife, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.  I assume the light is just ad good at sunrise, but it’s a heck of a lot harder spotting anything to photograph in the dark.

Bobcat

Male Bobcat, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a male bobcat at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Me?  Gopher Tartare, of course.

I was out at Point Reyes yesterday.  Saw three bobcats. This is the only one I got some decent shots of.  Saw a couple of coyotes as well and they also were not in a cooperative mood.   Some smaller, less competitive bull elephant seals are again hanging out at Drakes Beach as they started doing a few years back.  Didn’t see many fenced-in elk at Tomales Point which is consistent with NPS’s policy of letting them die during drought years rather than providing them with food.   244 elk died at Tomales Point in the past two years under NPS’s “let nature take its course” policy animal enclosure policy.  Thank God the rest of the zoos in the world give food and water to the animals they have locked up.

Coyote

Coyote in a Field of Silage; Point Reyes National Seashore

Photo of a coyote in a silage field.

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

I saw this coyote walking through this silage field a few weeks ago.  Silage consists of any of a number of plants that are mowed in the spring when still green for feeding cattle.  I have written about it in the past.  One problem with it is that when it is mowed in the spring it results in the deaths of any number of ground or near-ground nesting birds and their offspring.  It also kills small mammals that live in the tall, protective vegetation and larger mammals like deer fawns, who are wired to stay still even when a noisy mower is approaching.  They stay still because they aren’t very fast on their “feet” during that first week.  Same applies to the rest of the deer family (elk and moose) and to pronghorns.  Not bison calves though.  Those bison calves, aka “red dogs,” can run with their moms from birth.

Coyote

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a coyote in new green grass.

Coyote Standing in New, Green Grass

I was out at Point Reyes yesterday.  It was a fairly good day wildlife photography-wise.  I was able to photograph this coyote, a badger, a bobcat, some elk and some hawks.  The coyotes look good right now with their new winter fur.

I prefer the winter and spring for photography at Point Reyes because the grass is green.  Unfortunately, cattle ranching has converted the grasses from the native, perennial grasses that stayed green throughout the year to non-native, annual grasses that die each year when the winter/spring rains end and we go into our dry Mediterranean summer and fall when the place looks like a waste land.

Coyote

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

This is a photo of a coyote in the ranching area of Point Reyes National Seashore.

Coyote in the Ranching Area of Point Reyes National Seashore.

This coyote is standing in a ranch pasture at Point Reyes National Seashore.  Between now and July 14, the Park Service is going to decide which of six alternatives to adopt for management of 28,000 acres of land owned by the Park Service/United States at Point Reyes National Seashore and the adjacent Golden Gate NRA and dedicated for decades to private ranching.  The preferred alternative is to expand the ranching, especially for 18 of the 24 ranching families who live on park land with their families and employees – at subsidized rents no less.  Life is going to get a lot more complicated then for the coyotes, bobcats, and the other mammalian and avian predators that live there.

The preferred alternative will provide, among other things, that each of the 18 occupied cattle ranches can also have up to 50 sheep with their lambs or 70 goats with their kids, plus 500 free-roaming chickens which will be in the pastures during the day and in mobile coops at night.  Now, the ranchers can only have beef and dairy cows, which are way too big for any Point Reyes predator to bother.  These small domestic animals will be protected by livestock guardian dogs which are capable of killing coyotes and the other predators.

The leases will provide that ranchers can’t kill or harm predators.  However, the leases also provide that where predation occurs, the rancher can report it to the Park Service and the Park Service will decide what action to take.  If NPS says “no” to killing, what’s a rancher to do?  Well, there’s the old “3S’s” maxim – shoot, shovel and shut up.

And you thought national park units were established for the protection and preservation of nature, including wildlife.   Guess again.  What predominates in the National Park Service thinking is maximizing tourism (especially for concessioners) and emphasizing viewsheds for those tourists.   What is living in those viewsheds has never been on the Park Service’s radar.  Most former Park Service employees will tell you this or, if you don’t know one, read this book by a retired NPS employee, “Preserving Nature in the National Parks” by Richard Sellars.