Early last month, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) announced a new version of its proposed Dog Management Plan. The original plan, released in 2011, would have cut by 90% places where dogs can be walked off-leash, including Fort Funston, Ocean Beach, Crissy Field, Muir and Rodeo Beaches in Marin, and various sites in San Mateo County. Public comment on the original plan was overwhelmingly (3:1) against it.
As a result, the GGNRA said it would rethink the plan and release a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on the revised plan. We expected significant changes. We did not get any. Here are some highlights.
The new SEIS plan still cuts where dogs can be in the GGNRA by nearly 90%, compared to where you can walk today. People with dogs have always been banned from walking on 99% of the GGNRA’s 80,000 acres. The new restrictions would mean people with dogs couldn’t walk in 99.9% of the GGNRA.
The SEIS plan allows NO off-leash recreation anywhere on GGNRA lands in San Mateo County, including Rancho Corral de Tierra, where a Park Ranger tasered a man walking a dog off-leash last year.
The only GGNRA area in all of Marin County with off-leash access would be Rodeo Beach. Dogs would have to be leashed at Muir Beach.
On- and off-leash access would be significantly cut at Fort Funston, with dogs banned entirely from most of the area. Dogs also would be banned entirely (even on-leash) from the East Beach at Crissy Field, as well as all of Ocean Beach south of the Beach Chalet (two-thirds of the beach).
The GGNRA is not listening to the people. It completely ignored overwhelming public opposition to the original plan by refusing to make significant changes.
The GGNRA is a National Recreation Area, not a National Park. It was created in 1972 for the “maintenance of needed recreational open space” and to “expand to the maximum extent possible the outdoor recreation opportunities available to the region.” San Francisco gave its beaches to the GGNRA only after GGNRA officials repeatedly promised that they would allow existing recreational uses to continue, including dog walking. With the SEIS plan, the GGNRA is reneging on its promises to the people of the Bay Area.
In 2011, the GGNRA released a Draft General Management Plan (GMP, separate from the dog plan also released that year) that called for 90% of the GGNRA to be managed for a “backcountry visitor experience,” defined as one of low use levels, controls on access, and minimal amenities. That may be appropriate in a place like Yosemite, but it is completely wrong for an urban park like the GGNRA. The agency is attempting to impose a management policy that conflicts with the needs and wants of Bay Area residents, the intended beneficiaries when it was created.
Furthermore, the SEIS plan offers little credible scientific evidence to support its claims of environmental impacts from dogs. It is full of impacts that “may,” “might,” or “could” happen, but offers little proof that such impacts have ever occurred in the GGNRA or are occurring now.
The SEIS estimates it would cost $2.5 million each year to implement the new plan, mostly due to the hiring of new Park Rangers. Because of Congressional sequestration, the GGNRA claims to not have enough money to empty garbage cans regularly or do routine maintenance, yet they want to waste money on this?
The GGNRA will take public comment on the SEIS through December 4 of this year. As we analyze the SEIS in more detail, dog groups will post suggested comments that you can use. Keep checking the following sites for more information:
sfdog.org
saveoffleash.com
facebook.com/saveoffleash
eco-dog.org
oceanbeachdog.home.mindspring.com
In the meantime, please let your local, state, and federal elected officials know how concerned and disappointed you are that the GGNRA ignored public opinion and is still trying to impose its radical, recreation-unfriendly management style on open spaces long enjoyed by local people and dogs alike.
Here we go again.
The SEIS is 1900+ pages long. You can read it yourself here.
Sally Stephens is the Chair of the San Francisco Dog Owners Group and has been fighting with the GGNRA over its dog policies for over a decade.
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Main article photo by: M Rocket
