The Case of the Thirsty Elk: Saving Point Reyes’ Tule Elk with Chris Green and Rebecca Garverman

Well, I thought it was complicated. Chris tells me it's simple, but it does really involve a lot of extended legal work. It's been going on for a long time. And of course it involves the elk, the Tule elk, which probably a lot of people listening may have heard of because they've gotten a lot of press, these elk. And, somehow, even though it didn't look good for a long time and there was a lot of litigation, there has recently been a somewhat remarkable success in this case.

And so we really wanted to talk about it and Chris, we're going to try to cover everything to let people know what happened without getting lost in the weeds. So we'll all do our best, but perhaps you can start off by telling us how you first became aware of the Tule elk, whether I am pronouncing that correctly, where they live and what was happening to them that was so troubling.

Chris Green: Yeah. I'll try it and talk extra fast.

Mariann Sullivan: No, please don't.

Chris Green: So, when I was at Harvard, I got a call from Kay Wood. She was the former sort of office manager at ALDF when I had worked there. She was running a sanctuary in Sonoma and was just up in arms over the treatment of these elk that were starving and dying in a national park at Point Reyes National Seashore. She was just so frustrated by this and so she reached out to me and Carter to see if there was any legal help that we could give. It turned out ALDF didn't really have the capacity at the time, so I kind of took it to Katherine Meyer, who was running our Animal Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, and, you know, we just started looking into it. So it turns out that the Tule Elk are native to California. There were once like half a million of them in the state, but by the late 1800s, uh, based on, you know, impacts from cattle ranching and hunting, the numbers have dwindled to just like 28. And so from that one surviving herd, the elk were reintroduced throughout the state, and now there's estimated between like 5-6 thousand of them in about 25 herds. And so the park was, Point Reyes National Seashore, was created in 1962, and there were about 40 dairy ranches at the start of the last century, but those numbers had dropped to around 20, 25, 27 or so. As my understanding, as part of this deal to create the park, I'm still not entirely sure about this, maybe Rebecca knows more, but my understanding is that the ranches at the time were paid quite a bit of money by the federal government to, to vacate over a certain period of time. But rather than that happening, the park service just kept extending their leases.

Mariann Sullivan: Did they always have leases or did they formerly own the property?

Chris Green: They owned it and then when the park was created in 62 as part of that the federal government purchased the land from the ranches again with the idea that they would vacate.

Mariann Sullivan: With a lease back.

Chris Green: So the Tule Elk were then returned, so the park was created in 62. The Tule Elk were returned to Tomales Point and Point Reyes in 1978 and a free ranging herd was established further south in the park in 1998. And so at the end of 2018 there's an estimated maybe like just over 700 elk in the seashore. And about 400, uh, a little over 400 of those were in this Tomale's Point herd, at the north part, but they were sort of fenced in by this three mile wide, eight foot high fence, and that was erected at the time, I think, as part of the deal to get the ranchers to agree to this reintroduction.

They put this big fence to keep a big portion of the elk, to keep them from competing for forage and water with the...

Mariann Sullivan: because the dairy farms were still there.

Chris Green: And there's like this 18, 000 acres just south of the fence.

Mariann Sullivan: Can I interrupt you and ask you a question? Because, like, these these animals aren't endangered or threatened, right? Like, it's so odd to be talking about this much controversy over a species that seems to have been endangered, but we're not talking about the Endangered Species Act at all here, are we?

Chris Green: No, and, you know, there's a difference between sort of, and this is a really good point to bring, like a lot of times environmental folks will think in those terms of like, you know, if whether or not a species is at risk of disappearing, but when you've got hundreds and hundreds of elk that are like starving and dying in these really horrible fashion, I mean. Even if these animals aren't in danger of, like, becoming extinct, there's still an incredible amount of suffering that was going on, which is what precipitated all of this. So, in August of 2020, our clinic at Harvard and the Center for Biological Diversity sent a demand letter to the Park Service asking them to remove the fence, Because in 2012 and 14, there was a drought and more than 250 elk, nearly half of the population, died from a lack of water. So, we were seeing that things were getting worse again with the California droughts, and basically, we just sent a demand letter telling the Park Service, you need to do something

Mariann Sullivan: You were the executive director of the program, the Harvard program at the time.

So you basically went to the clinic folks and said, I think we should take this one on. Is that what happened?

Chris Green: Yeah, and Kathy looked into it, and the team, and the students, and they all decided that it

Mariann Sullivan: I thought there was a good legal argument

Chris Green: Yeah, Rebecca, do you have anything to add?

Rebecca Garverman: Oh, I just wanted to add, I know our activist clients are actually of the opinion that elk should be listed as an endangered species.

Um, so, you know,

Mariann Sullivan: That is an issue, it just hasn't happened?

Rebecca Garverman: Exactly,

Mariann Sullivan: It seems like if they were down to 25 or something, is that what you said? Like, that sounds pretty endangered to

Rebecca Garverman: At one point, some people think they may have been down to less than 10. There's a lot of debate about it, but they went down to like incredibly low numbers in the 1870s.

Mariann Sullivan: A miracle that they still exist. And, they are incredibly beautiful if you see them, but you know, at the same time, it's interesting, they became such a cause celebre, and there are many, many incredibly beautiful, wonderful animals out there who don't. So, there's something very special about these elk, that's for sure.

But let's get back to the story and we can ruminate about that for a bit. Cause I want to, Rebecca, I want to hear how you became involved. You were a student at the time?

Rebecca Garverman: So I was a student when the elk case first kind of came onto our radar. I believe when it was first being litigated, I had just graduated and I wasn't working at the clinic. So Kate Hendricks litigated the case with Kathy Meyer in its infancy stage. She's the one who helped draft the complaint and argued for initially a TRO or preliminary injunction. I came on to be the fellow after her and kind of, acted as the appellate attorney for this case. So by the time I had come on as a fellow and then later as a staff attorney, we were in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. So I drafted and kind of shepherded and then argued that case in front of the Ninth Circuit.

Mariann Sullivan: All right, so, let's get a little, well, I want, I just want to hear a little bit more background about these dairy and cattle farms, because you talked about them, Chris, but I want people to understand, like, they did have leases, they were leased back, but those leases ran out, right?

And, they still were there. And how did that all happen? How did they end up having so much power to just be in what is a, you know, it's supposed to be a national park. Like you do kind of think of national parks as being sacrosanct and not full of dairy farms. Like it's kind of crazy.

Rebecca Garverman: It's crazy.

Chris Green: Something going on in the background here too is that, as we all know, dairy and cattle operations create a lot of waste.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, for sure.

Chris Green: So that initial demand letter was sent by the clinic and the Center for Biological Diversity. The center had been involved for many years in a separate lawsuit with several other environmental groups. Sueing over the environmental degradation that was happening to the park as a result of these ranches and dairies. And I think I remember Seth saying that, like, the water quality of that park was the worst of any national park in the entire system. And so the elk were sort of tangential to what was going on with that.

They were suffering, but. there's a couple, there's a National Park Service Act, and there's this California Tulio Preservation Act that required the Park Service to conserve, protect, and maintain the elk in the park. And, you know, the Park Service was supposedly working on an amendment to the management plan at that time that actually would have allowed them to regularly kill a portion of the free roaming elk to limit their population growth. But, you know, the dairy were there first. There was a deal cut where, okay, they'll be given a bunch of money and we'll eventually pack up and leave, but we know how politics works and we know the power that, agriculture has, and they just, rather than forcing them to leave, the Park Service just kept renewing their leases for years and years and years at a time.

And I think it's amendment. We're considering extending their leases by another like 20 years each. So during

Mariann Sullivan: So it was, it was just local politics. Well, maybe not just local, but it was just, it was mostly politic, just political clout that kept these leases being renewed.

Chris Green: But what's different here, I think than most traditional, like the power of animal ag is that a lot of these ranches and dairies were sort of smaller scale, family owned, organic, and we're sort of like, considered even in Marin, which is, you know, very progressive, were still considered kind of part of the culture there.

And in fact, Jared Huffman, who's pretty good on certain things, he actually at one point during all this process, got something I think inserted into the Farm Bill that recognized these dairies and ranches as like cultural heritage sites, just kind of further protect them.

Mariann Sullivan: As we all know, progressive in general does not mean progressive about farming.

Chris Green: Yeah, so after filing that demand letter and the Park Service not doing anything about it, they said, well, we're monitoring it. We're on top of it, you know, we won't let that happen again. We learned that during this next year, 152 elk, more than a third of the population died, after we sent this demand letter.

And many more were expected to die with the droughts happening and their inability to get food and water. And we actually, there were some necropsies done, which we got under FOIA. And it showed in fact, that the elk did die of starvation and dehydration. Even worse, not only not doing anything to help, the Park Service has actually been physically removing water troughs that were brought in by concerned local residents and activists, giving some the impression that the Park Service actually wanted the elk to die.

So, they finally agreed to start bringing in some water, but no forage, and they still refused to remove the fence. Then it was verified that three of the four herds were receiving no water at all. And that's what led us to file the lawsuit, which Rebecca can talk more to the specifics of.

Mariann Sullivan: Wow.

Rebecca Garverman: You know, Mariann, I'm not sure if we painted this picture, but you talked about the ranches and the dairies and their history, and that's really the origin of this issue, right, is, you know, it's 1978, 10 tule elk are being transferred to the park. And they are worried about them interacting with the ranches. So to isolate them from the ranches that are, you know, they had a variety of reservations and permits and leases that were allowing them to continue. That's when they erected this fence that's 8 feet tall and stretches across the entire peninsula. So essentially, the park itself, the unit of the park service, is enormous, but there's a little peninsula at the very top called Tomale's Point, and that's where these elk were transferred to, and that's where the fence was erected.

So it really does cut them off entirely from the rest of the seashore.

Mariann Sullivan: insane, just insane.

And I, I just want to mention too, that if anybody wants a little background from the point of view of an activist in this area, we did have Sue Fisher, one of our loyal flock members who we just love, on Episode 682 of Our Hen House. With a lot of background of what it was like.

She lives in the area. She was there every weekend, that sort of thing. So I just wanted to throw that in when we were talking about this. But that is truly, that the picture you just painted of it is truly insane. But all right, so we've got the picture, we've got the players. Let's talk a little bit about the law.

And a really important statute, from your point of view, the way you approach this litigation was the National Parks and Recreation Act, which I don't know anything about. So can you tell us what it is and what provisions are relevant here?

Rebecca Garverman: Sure, absolutely. So essentially, the Park Service was established under their Organic Act. And then, to ensure the, according to the statute, the preservation and use of each unit of the National Park System, the National Parks and Recreation Act was enacted in 1978. Part of that says that the Park Service shall prepare general management plans, we call them GMPs, that govern the resource preservation and ensure public enjoyment of the parks, and that the agency shall revise all such GMPs in a timely manner. And so, you know, as I'm sure listeners are familiar, often in environmental and animal law cases, you can't just walk into court and say, you know, these animals are suffering, something is wrong, we need to vindicate their rights.

Mariann Sullivan: different place if we could do

Rebecca Garverman: It would be a wonderful place if we could do that, but instead we have to kind of jump through hoops and find some kind of legal hook, and this act was where we found the legal hook.

Mariann Sullivan: Can you just go a little bit more into what a general management plan is, like what it is meant to do?

Rebecca Garverman: Absolutely. So it kind of includes the broad plans for how the area's resources will be preserved and for how visitors will enjoy the park. So there are, there are four requirements that have to go into a general management plan. I can list them out. One is measures for preservation of the resources. Two is indications of types and general intensities of development. So that's like visitor circulation, that sort of thing. Three is identification and implementation of commitments for visitor carrying capacities. So, you know, ensuring that you don't have too many people coming and destroying the park. And the last is indications of potential modifications to the external boundaries of the unit and any reasons for those modifications. So, this is a pretty high level plan, but it's supposed to get at, you know, what are the conditions on the ground? And how can we ensure that they're being met such that the area is being preserved, the natural resources are being preserved, and the visitors who are going to see those natural resources are able to enjoy them. And so, just from a logical point of view, something is wrong if there's supposed to be a plan that protects natural resources, and instead you have elk who are trapped behind this fence in a peninsula, aren't able to get food and water because there's a drought, and there's no food and water for them to eat where they are, they can't migrate, and they start dying by the hundreds, right?

That seems like it's inevitably in conflict with these principles. But more than that is the fact that, as I mentioned before, the act specifically says GMPs shall be revised in a timely manner. And when the clinic looked into it, they found out that the general management plan for this particular unit of the National Park System hadn't been touched since 1980. So I would argue that over 40 years is, uh, not in a timely manner for a revision.

Mariann Sullivan: Especially when there's like a disaster going on in the place.

Oh, and before we leave the technical requirements of the law, I just want to add this is a law that is enforced through the Administrative Procedure Act, correct?

Which is how so many federal statutes are implemented.

Rebecca Garverman: Exactly. So the suit we brought, we brought an unreasonable delay claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. So that's under section 706. 1 of the Administrative Procedure Act that basically says that you can compel agency action that is unreasonably delayed.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, we've got a statute saying timely and it's been 40 years. Seems like a good argument.

Rebecca Garverman: That's what we thought too.

Mariann Sullivan: Is there anything else about the specific general management plan that was in effect that we should know going forward?

Rebecca Garverman: That's mostly it. We should say the General Management Plan does contemplate preservation of the Tule elk, so it was in there. It wasn't in there in a lot of detail, um, and that's, that's something that did come up in the litigation, but as we, you know, often said, there is no reason why a new General Management Plan couldn't go into more detail, particularly given the drastically changed conditions that were leading to the, the dying and suffering elk.

Chris Green: Can I add something, Mariann? So, that lawsuit was filed in June of 2021. The clinic filed the lawsuit representing ALDF and several of these local residents, which Rebecca can speak to more. She got to know them quite well during this process. But, the Center for Biological Diversity, they had been part of the initial demand letter, but they chose not to be part of the litigation over the fence specifically in the management plan because they were already embroiled in this other litigation with the park service over the environmental impact. So they decided to just keep pursuing that. They didn't want to get things muddled.

So that's why you'll see CBD

Mariann Sullivan: We'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to the denouement.

Chris Green: But yeah, so, two days later, after we filed the lawsuit, we filed for a temporary restraining order to get the park service to actually step in immediately.

Mariann Sullivan: Before we get into, like, what happened, can you just, this may be irrelevant, but I saw it in the papers and it sounded like something I should talk about, there was a 1998 elk management plan. Was that relevant?

Rebecca Garverman: That's right. So the 1998 ELK Management Plan, I think, is helpful background.

Unfortunately, it wasn't super helpful from a legal standpoint because it wasn't something that we could find a legal requirement for them to update, but from a background, it had two really important points. One of them was this idea about genetic diversity. So, you know, we talked about in the beginning that these elk have all come from a really tiny population that was saved back in the 1800s, and as a result that means that they're somewhat inbred already, so there's already concerns about genetic diversity of the tule elk in all of California. And then you go and you stick a group of them in a peninsula where they're then forced to further interbreed and can't mingle with other elk in the area. You're going to have what they call a genetic bottleneck, and that just means that you're going to be increasingly inbred, and that makes it harder for the species to adapt, and it just makes the herd less healthy. In 1998, The Park Service already had recognized that that was a major issue, and yet they weren't really doing anything about it.

And the other thing that they talk about in this 1998 plan is they talk about the fence, and they say, well, should we take it down? Should we keep it up? They go through a couple of different possibilities, as you know, as they're required to do by NEPA, and they eventually decide we're going to keep the fence up, but we should also kind of continue to monitor existing conditions and kind of acknowledge some of the issues that might arise in the future, including contemplating the possibility that ranches will no longer be existing in the seashore. So this really laid the foundation for them to what they should have done is in the early 2000s gone and update that plan. But instead that along with the general management plan just languished and nothing was done, leading to, you know, big surprise, a huge drought that then led to the deaths and suffering of

Mariann Sullivan: As usual, you can just see like inside an agency that there are some people who are trying to do the right thing and other people who are stopping them. I mean, I'm sure there's so many internal politics about these kind of issues, but there's always good people in the agencies who are trying to get good stuff done.

And before we get to the TRO, I know you're dying to talk about it, Chris, but can we just go back to the plaintiffs a little bit? And, um, I didn't see anything about standing in here. Was it an issue at all? Did everybody clearly have standing?

Rebecca Garverman: We did pretty much, I mean, we discussed it in the early stages of the lawsuit at the trial stage, but it really wasn't an issue. Under footnote 7 of Lujan, this is pretty much very plainly stated, you know, we had plaintiffs with an aesthetic interest, you know,

Mariann Sullivan: So you found, you found, good plaintiffs.

Rebecca Garverman: We had great plaintiffs.

Our named plaintiff, Jack Gescheit, visits the park all the time. He's a photographer. He's really invested in these elk. He has a deep connection to them. And then he was going to see them and instead saw them suffering and dying of thirst and starvation. That's horrible. And so, you know, we really had a really strong standing claim.

And, you know, it was litigated at the motion to dismiss stage.

Mariann Sullivan: And you were able to establish what is known ridiculously, I think, as aesthetic injury.

Rebecca Garverman: Yes, exactly. I could talk for that forever...

Mariann Sullivan: yeah, Aesthetic injury. It could, it can break your heart open, but it's, it's aesthetic.

Uh, Chris, did you want to add something to that?

Chris Green: I just want to point out that Rebecca did a really fantastic job in the briefing on that standing. We actually probably, you know, given the way that standing jurisprudence has been heading lately, you know, it's not inconceivable that we could have lost on standing, but Rebecca did just, just a fantastic

Rebecca Garverman: Oh, I can't take credit for that. That was all Kathy and Kate.

Chris Green: Okay.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, it is never inconceivable for us to lose on standing. That's why I always bring it up, even when it ends up not being a huge issue in a case, because it's always a huge issue somewhere.

Chris Green: Yeah, but the district court standing decision was really good for us and it easily could not have been. So yeah, kudos to the folks who worked on that at the clinic.

Mariann Sullivan: All right, Chris, now you get to talk about the TRO, which I know you wanted to do because you actually sought a TRO, which, you know, for people who don't know, it's an ex parte hearing. It's a real emergency application. You obviously thought this had to stop right away. So what happened?

Chris Green: Because as we've seen, like you file a lawsuit, but it can take years to work its way through the court system. Meanwhile, you had all of these elk that we just lost 152 elk in the past year before, you know, a third of the herd had died. So, we're like, okay, well, while we're filing this lawsuit, we need to make sure. So we file a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction asking a federal court in San Francisco to require the Park Service to take immediate steps to ensure that the Tule elk did not continue to die of starvation and dehydration while the court kind of worked its way and decided the lawsuit. But, to your point just about the plaintiffs and the good people with the agencies, we had several experts kind of opine on the TRO, and one of them, Judd Howell was the wildlife biologist who actually was hired by the Park Service to conduct the Tule Elk Population Study earlier on, and, another veterinarian who, worked on that.

Who did the necropsies of the elk and determined that they did, in fact, die of starvation. So, in response to the TRO, this was like two days after we filed the lawsuit, so the TRO was filed in June of 2021. July, in the response, the National Park Service ludicrously tried to claim that because no elk had ever been observed moving towards the fence, they didn't really believe the elk would even move south, even if they totally Why, why should we even remove it?

Because we've never even seen any

Mariann Sullivan: That's insane.

Chris Green: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Uh, so,

Mariann Sullivan: Maybe they, maybe the elk have eyes, so they actually can see, there's a fence over there.

Chris Green: just shows you

Mariann Sullivan: And since they're starving to death, they don't want to waste their energy, like, going over.

Chris Green: It just

Rebecca Garverman: This is the same park service that says, oh, we need to bring supplemental water to the elk, but then in the same breath says, but not because they're dying of thirst. There's, there's no connection.

Mariann Sullivan: They want to take a bath or something.

Chris Green: What was good, so there was a hearing then, on July 30th that Kate Hendricks argued, and this was, you know, in 2021, so it was all still remote. argued via zoom and, the judge, Heywood Gilliam, for the district court in Northern California, Northern district, California. He was an Obama appointee, which you think, okay, would help. But, actually now because of the change in administration, now we're arguing this against the Biden administration. But we included a lot of photos and exhibits and you could tell during the hearing that the judge really felt awful about, I mean, these photos are horrific. I mean, you have these like emaciated and like rotting corpses of starved elk lying everywhere. And you could tell that he was really impacted about the plight of the elk, but he really didn't want to kind of side against the park service. So he was essentially sort of begging them just to give him any sort of assurance that would assuage his conscience. And, they kind of refuse to make any concessions other than just saying that they stand by ready to act if needed to safeguard the viability of the elk and that, you know, providing water to the elk will be something they consider as they continue to monitor the elk and available water resources over the next months.

And, that was enough. The judge cited those assurances in his denial of the TRO, stressing that the Park Service had said they would do more if necessary, but like, this is the same Park Service that had been quote unquote monitoring the elk and 152 of them had died in just the past year.

So, yeah, it was really, really frustrating,

Mariann Sullivan: Not to get totally meta on this, but it just reminds me of so many situations in animal law, where you can tell that the judge, or the judges, if it's an appellate case, are very troubled. And then they do nothing. Or else they figure out a way to help this particular plaintiff without creating any precedent, like, because they feel so bad about it.

It just happens over and over again. All right, so no TRO. Let's get to the lawsuit itself, because that doesn't mean everything's over. And a crucial issue appears to have been whether the requirements of the statute, which we were just talking about a moment ago, were mandatory. And as you I think you quoted the statute and it uses the word shall.

And I recall from law school that that usually means mandatory. So what's the story? What was their argument?

Rebecca Garverman: It sure does. So they had a great argument that the words in a timely manner negated the mandatory duty. So what essentially they were arguing is that if the statute just said that the Park Service shall revise the General Management Plan, Maybe that's a mandatory duty, but because it said they shall revise it in a timely manner that confers discretion upon the agency and therefore completely negates the mandatory duty entirely,

Mariann Sullivan: It's like the craziest argument. It's seriously the craziest argument.

Rebecca Garverman: it is, it is.

I gave a, I think it was a radio interview when I was talking about it and the host said, Oh, this is why people hate attorneys. Yes.

Chris Green: Right? It's like if they just said shall, they're like, okay, we shall, but we shall take 100 years to do it. So adding in a timely matter was like an addition is like most as an

Mariann Sullivan: Of course. It was an additional

Chris Green: And there's something that negates, it's absolutely

Mariann Sullivan: And how could it, in a statute, how can they put an actual timeline? I mean, they don't know exactly when it will be needed. That's the whole point of statutes and administrative agencies that, administer those statutes. I, like, I guess there are some statutes that have very specific timelines in them, but that's got to be rare,

Rebecca Garverman: I think in the administrative world, there are a number of things where they say something has to be done within, you know, x period of years or months

from something else being done. Um, and, and the Park Service did argue at one point that that was a requirement for a mandatory duty, that there has to be an explicit timeline, but that's just absolutely not true under Ninth Circuit precedent.

There's, there's no requirement for them to be an explicit timeline. All that there has to be is a mandatory duty, and that comes from, you know, as I said, this is an unreasonable delay case, and so the standard for an unreasonable delay case is that there must be a discrete duty that they're required to take, and that that required to take, that mandatory nature is, The entire thing that the case ended up hinging on, it was the grounds under which the judge ultimately denied the motion for a summary judgment and ruled in favor of the Park Service, and then that was the case and the core of the argument that went up in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mariann Sullivan: Correct me if I'm misunderstanding to you, but in addition to establishing the timeliness is mandatory, which, you know, sounds like it from the statute, you actually had to establish that because there was no specific time in there, that the delay was unreasonable.

Rebecca Garverman: So that would have been the next part. So it's kind of a two pronged argument. So first you have to say, we're saying there's an unreasonable delay and you didn't do something that you were required to do. So that's part one is we're going to prove that the thing we're saying you didn't do is a requirement.

So we said you were required to revise the general management plan. You didn't do it. Then part two is, well, you didn't do it, but is that delay unreasonable? And that's where what we call the track factors comes in and the court balances how long it's taken for the agency to act. And so we kind of put that in our briefing, but we really didn't, especially in the Ninth Circuit, didn't even get to that issue because we ended up getting so hung up on the judge in the district court saying, but there isn't even a mandatory duty, so it doesn't matter how long it's been, they weren't required to make the revision in the

Mariann Sullivan: now, and am I wrong or did they basically concede that on appeal or didn't fail to argue it?

Rebecca Garverman: No, so, that's the hinge of the appeal is whether or not a mandatory duty existed. So that was, that was, that was my core argument.

Chris Green: wasn't it the case, Rebecca, that you had some precedent where other courts, like something like eight or nine years was considered,

Rebecca Garverman: Oh, oh, absolutely. If we had gotten to the unreasonable delay, I have no question that we could have won that. I mean, there was precedent where a number of months could be considered unreasonable, but absolutely years would definitely be considered unreasonable. So 40 years? And of course, it's always in the context of the statute, right?

So there's always an argument that the Park Service could make that, well, in this context, it's reasonable. But that's a stretch.

Mariann Sullivan: And I noticed the expression track factors in making these decisions about unreasonable delay. Since this is an animal law podcast, can you just like explain, because I've never heard that term before. Can you explain what the track factors are, or at least what was relevant here?

Rebecca Garverman: Yeah, absolutely. So, they're named after kind of the seminal D. C. Circuit case, Telecommunications Research and Action Center versus FCC. So, Telecommunications Research and Action Center becomes TRAC. Those are the factors under which a court analyzes whether or not a delay is actually unreasonable. There are six factors that are enumerated. The time the agency takes to make decisions must be governed by a rule of reason. If Congress has provided a timetable or some other indication of speed, then that supplies content for this rule. Which, I'll pause there and say, the fact that it says where Congress has provided a timetable or other indication of speed, to me, that ends the debate on whether or not an explicit timeline is required. Because it's obviously contemplating cases where there wouldn't be an explicit timeline. Plus, Congress here has said, in a timely manner, so that's an indication of speed. Putting that aside. Three is that delays that might be reasonable in the economic regulation sphere are less reasonable in the human health and welfare context. Four is that the court should consider the effect of expediting delayed action on agency activities of higher or competing priorities. Five is they should take into account the nature and extent of the interest prejudiced by the delay. And the last is that the court doesn't have to find impropriety lurking in order to find that agency action is unreasonably delayed.

And so, you know, we have argued that all of these factors would have weighed in our favor. But, you know, most specifically, I think what what I was frustrated with is that the Park Service kept bringing up this in a timely manner language that to me says nothing about whether a mandatory duty exists.

That is, for the second part of the analysis, that goes to the question of whether or not the delay was unreasonable under the track factors. So they were kind of confusing those two legal strands, and yet they got the district court judge to agree with them.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, so you lost to the district

Rebecca Garverman: We did, and, something I, you know, Chris has mentioned this before, but I want to kind of illustrate this for you.

So we have 2013 to 2015, the drought kills 257 elk. So their population was 540. It goes down to 2 83. That's a huge number. Then they bounce back in 2019. They're in the four hundreds in 2020, a hundred and fifty two more elk die. So that's 445 to 293. Now 2021, the lawsuit is going on. We find out at the end of 2021, another 72 elk died, bringing the population down to 221. So during this time, the Park Service is fighting us on this, the elk are still dying. And we're in the district court and the district court denies the TRO, but says we're going to have expedited briefing, ends up arguing, having the case hearing in February 2022, and yet doesn't come out with a decision until February of 2023.

Over a year after the hearing. So

Mariann Sullivan: something's going on

Rebecca Garverman: saying, you know, we're so concerned about the elk and this is an issue, it took so long to get an opinion on this case. And that, I think, is so frustrating, especially given that, you know, we tried to bring this emergency relief and were denied it, and then the court took so long.

Mariann Sullivan: Now that's very hinky. I mean,

I feel like something was going on there behind the scenes, I do.

Chris Green: like expedited, like I was

Mariann Sullivan: I know you people can't say that because you actually have to go into courts, but I worked in a court for a long time.

Chris Green: But it's crazy to, I think lay people just don't understand how like long these things take. And like, you know, even this quote unquote expedited review was 18 months after we filed the lawsuit before the decision gets made. It's insane.

Mariann Sullivan: One of the things that's going on here, and Chris, I wanted to ask you about this, is that, and this is a really crucial part of the case, so we'll take a moment out from what's going on in court and talk about what's going on in the media, because this case, I mean, one of the reasons that things kept happening here is the media really caught on to this case.

Can you talk a little bit about why you think you're It got so much, I mean, animals are being tortured and killed everywhere. Why did this case catch the public attention and the media's attention? And, and, do you think that had an impact on the case?

Chris Green: Yeah, I do. Definitely. Without jumping to the punchline too much about what happened, For one thing, these things don't happen by accident. When Kathy Meyer was launching our clinic, She sat down and she was asking what our media capabilities are, because she said that media is such an important part of her litigation strategy.

And so, based on that, we ended up hiring Sarah Pickering to become our first communications director for our, Animal Law and Policy Program and Clinic at Harvard. And she in conjunction with, Mike Ainsfield at ALDF really hit the bricks. And when we filed a lawsuit, they reached out to hundreds of different journalists and sent them the press release and the briefings, and the complaint. I think this, it just has so many elements in it that will, and hooks that, that people are interested in. One, you've got this absurdity of reintroduced elk that were endangered, are now dying in a national park because they're fenced in so that ranchers and their dairy cattle can have access to all this forage. Like again, in a national park, which is owned by the public. I mean, this is, these are public lands and so the idea of that you've got wildlife that are suffering and dying because of human ends, in a national park just incensed a lot of people. And again, the way that they were dying, you know, these photographs and videos are just horrific.

It just looks like, I mean, just seeing these bodies just melting away, just absolutely horrific. But also, you know, it's in California. California populous is very attenuated to these issues, and you know, it's near an urban center, it's in Marin, so it's really close to San Francisco, so the San Francisco papers were willing to write about it all the time, L. A. Times as well, and it even got some national press, so, yeah, and it's one of those things, too, where at first it sounds like a wildlife issue, But as with many of these things, it ultimately circles back to animal agriculture and the problems with that. And also too, just like there was a, uh, a video that was put up on YouTube called the Shame of Point Reyes. And as I mentioned before, this is in Marin. And, there's like darling little organic dairies, family owned, and they have all this sort of, um, perception, by local residents as being sort of better than industrialized factory farming, but as the Shame of Point Reyes video showed, even small scale family organic dairy and ranching, It's still pretty horrific for the animals involved.

And, this one point in that film where, which you can find on YouTube, the shame of point Reyes where they show all these baby calves that are being separated from the mothers because the only way to get dairy cows to produce milk is to keep them kind of perpetually pregnant and giving birth. Almost immediately the babies are separated from the mothers so that they don't drink the milk. And you've got these just as far as the eye can see these rows of pens where these baby calves are being put and they're just crying for their mothers and you hear the commentator talk about you can tell which ones and how long they've been there because you know these ones over here have already given up and quit crying for their mothers.

I mean it's just absolutely heartbreaking.

Mariann Sullivan: I mean, all of those things are really true and I think they're all factors, but you know, we see that kind of footage all the time. And it doesn't make the same, there's something special going on here. I think one of the impacts, and I'd be interested in your opinion on this, Rebecca, is Harvard. Like the fact that Harvard got involved. That's a name that, you know, the press thinks, oh, that must be special. Do you think that had an impact?

And what are your other thoughts on why this case was able to catch the attention of the public?

Rebecca Garverman: Yeah, you know, I think Harvard had something to do with it, and I will say I echo Chris in that, you know, Sarah Pickering was just our fantastic communications

Mariann Sullivan: Having a

Rebecca Garverman: and that is just invaluable. But I also think, so Jack and Laura were our two activist clients in the Ninth Circuit, and they are incredible advocates. And I think there was something special about having people who were connected to the local community, who were amazing advocates for this issue, who were very savvy and talking with the media. We had some great clips with Jack being interviewed. and were able to really do kind of a on the ground grassroots mobilization of the local community. And so, you know, I think, you know, I'm in animal law. We see all the time organizations bringing suits because those are the ones that are are able to do this work, but there's something extra appealing about saying it's not just an organization that's bringing the suit, it's also members of the community who have deep connections to these animals, and it's really a very special place.

I mean, I'm very lucky because after I argued the case, I was able to go up to the seashore. And meet the elk and see the seashore for myself, which was Just fantastically beautiful, breathtakingly incredible. And when I was there and, you know, posting on my social media that I was there, so many friends reached out just saying, Oh my goodness, this place is so special.

I love Point Reyes. And I think there really is something incredibly special about this seashore. It really touches people and people have a connection to it. And so seeing the way it's being threatened and the way the animals who live there are being threatened really just resonated.

Mariann Sullivan: I would love to see a case study done on everything that caught the press's attention here, because, I mean, we have, we have a lot of suffering animals, but these animals really did pull people's heartstrings. All right, so you lost pull people heartstrings, but not the courts. and then you appealed your appeal actually never really got resolved.

But can you tell us What you argued and what the result was, how the court responded to the appeal?

Rebecca Garverman: Absolutely. So, so kind of there are two things going on at the same time. One was the appeal from, you know, a purely legal argument was focused on this mandatory duty issue. So we were focused on saying that the statutory requirement that the Park Service shall revise general management plans in a timely manner is a mandatory duty that is actionable under Section 706. 1 of the APA, and thus, this should be remanded back to the district court to then look at the track factors and decide whether a 40 plus delay in revising the General Management Plan was in fact unreasonable when it led to the suffering of these elk. And so, that was kind of the core legal argument.

But at the same time, the Park Service is now involved in updating the General Management Plan. So, I'll say, and this is where it gets a little bit confusing, there is that other lawsuit that we talked about before, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and, a few other organizations, and that one dealt with an update to the General Management Plan of the National Seashore that excluded Tomale's Point. So there was an amendment to the General Management Plan, but it specifically excluded Tomale's Point, the elk, and the fence. So we were focused on saying, as it pertains to Tomale's point, there is no update to the General Management Plan, and eventually the Park Service seemed to agree. And they start to go through this process of updating the general management plan, but then things got even more confusing because in their press releases, it started to be unclear whether they were saying they were just going to update that 1998 Tule elk management plan, or whether they were also going to revise the general management plan. And maybe unsurprisingly, they were kind of dropping language about revising the general management plan after they won the case in the district court that said there was no mandatory duty, which of course we pointed out to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. And then after we filed our brief saying, hey, it looks like they're not doing this anymore. Then they had another press release saying, oh no, we are updating the general management plan. So it was, it was very confusing about what exactly they were

Mariann Sullivan: So they wanted the court to think they were doing this so that the court would not order them to do it.

Rebecca Garverman: Exactly, exactly. But we did know they were doing something. There was at least an update to the 98 elk management plan going on. And so we were working, with ALDF and the activist clients, to put together comprehensive comments, kind of encouraging them to take down the fence, to move forward with this plan. And so part of what came up in front of the court was, Well, are they already doing this? And if so, how does that weigh in on this case? And, you know, our position was kind of, one, well, they haven't done it, and until that fence comes down, then we still have a concern about the elk. But also, just from a purely legal standpoint, We still thought that, you know, as long as they continue to argue that there is no mandatory duty to revise the general management plan, they can delay and abandon this effort at any time with no consequences. And so it was important for us to continue to press the matter to make sure that they actually complied with this requirement and actually revise the management plan and therefore hopefully remove the fence.

Mariann Sullivan: And, did the court order them to do something or just put the case on hold until they did something or what?

Rebecca Garverman: It was kind of a little of both. They ordered them to, you know, report on their progress and set some deadlines in place. But mostly they just put the case on hold. Then, of course, they did report on the progress. They missed their deadline. You know, they said we're going to absolutely have this finished.

We'll have a final decision by August. They reported in early September to the court saying we haven't finished it. but then they did in fact finally come out with a final decision in December. and so despite the fact that then that led to the case kind of just being voluntarily dismissed by the parties.

The outcome of course is really wonderful, which is that the Park Service did decide to remove the fence.

Mariann Sullivan: So in December, they decided but, what happened in January?

Chris, do you want to fill us in on that?

Because I'm, I'm unclear as to December and January.

Chris Green: But it seems like there was an intervening phase, right? I thought while this was all going on in the fall of 2023, the Park Service Center took regulatory action to kind of propose and finalize this new plan and that the clinic. prepared comments to say, they gave a menu of different options and one of them was removing the fence.

and so the clinic got involved and said, yes, we submitted comments on behalf of the plaintiffs, pushing for this alternative B, to help conserve the native elk and would remove the fence, which was restricting their movement. And it's my understanding, I think something like that.

35, 000 public comments came in over the environmental review of all of that. Is that, correct?

Rebecca Garverman: I'm not sure if that number, that number actually might be lower than it actually is. I think that might have just been for one of the public comment phases. There were two. but there were an incredible number of comments that came in, especially a huge, huge number supporting removal of the fence. and then that is what I believe in December.

So what this process was, was that they were doing an environmental assessment, examining their alternatives, and then coming up with a final decision. And then that December decision is their final environmental assessment, along with what they call under the National Environmental Policy Act, a FONSI, a finding of no significant impact, which basically states that they find they can move forward quickly with their proposed action, which was removing the fence.

Mariann Sullivan: So they, put out this new management plan. They decided that they were going to remove the fence. But there was also a settlement agreement going on in the other lawsuit, the one that you weren't involved in. Isn't that right?

Chris Green: Yeah, I think before we get to that, it's worth pointing out that, the Park Service announces and releases this management plan on December 2nd of last year, 2024. And basically announces that they're going to remove the fence. They actually then start removing the fence the very next day.

They have this crew of six Park Service employees who managed to take down 850 feet of this fence in one day. And immediately the California Cattlemen's Association, which represents ranchers and beef producers, filed a legal challenge against the Department of Interior and the National Park Service seeking injunction to stop them from removing any further fence. They wanted to even ask them to restore the dismantled sections, and even ask them to round up any elk that had already moved through the fence and returned to the north part of the park. And their argument was that you're going to love this, the rancher's argument was that the Park Service violated the National Environmental Policy act by failing to prepare a full environmental impact statement and neglecting to, adequately evaluate the harm to ranching operations or consider alternative solutions.

So it's pretty rich slash hypocritical that you've got a bunch of dairy and cattle ranchers who've been polluting the Point Reyes National Seashore for decades. There are then filing a NEPA claim over the, you know, lack of environmental impact statement for it to tear

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. the environmental impact would presumably be pretty good.

Chris Green: Yeah. immediately a couple of days later, so the ranchers file for a temporary restraining order as well as a preliminary injunction. And so a couple of days later, on December 6th, they had this initial hearing, and it was really heartening that, you know, because, In the background of all of this, we just had an election exactly one month before, and everyone kind of involved knows there's going to be a change in administration, which could be a change in sort of policy as well.

And so I think that was maybe informing this, and why they started tearing down the fence as quickly as they did.

Thankfully, the Park Service attorneys were really well informed and they, you know, while they agreed to press pause and stop taking down any more fence until the full hearing could be held on the preliminary injunction, they totally refused the rancher's request to round up the elk.

And so the schedule for that is that basically they and the judges order him like. Okay, you guys go downstairs, you figure out a hearing schedule. by the end of business today, I want to get a hearing date. So that hearing on the full preliminary injunction is set for, March 27th. and there's a, you know, a briefing schedule before then. so that's, what's happening with, you know, the fence and tearing it down and but as you mentioned in the background, on January 8th, There was this other lawsuit that had been going on for a long time in these negotiations, and when the announcement came down about the fence being torn down, you had the cattlemen incensed because they felt that while they were doing this years long negotiation on the future of these ranches even remaining in the park, to all of a sudden, Park Service come in and remove the fence, really, they were arguing was undercutting those negotiations, because that was a big part of what they felt that they were negotiating.

But yeah, as you mentioned on January 8th, this historic agreement was announced where the Park Service and, you know, this is being really led by the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, and other groups and Nature Conservancy announced they reached a deal where 12 of the 14 ranches will be phased out in the next 17, 15 months or something like that. And, you know, they're going to receive a buyout of. estimated to be around 30 million dollars from the Nature Conservancy. So it's not public money, it's private money. Under this new plan, the Park Service will rezone roughly 16, 000 acres of these former agricultural lands into what's called a scenic landscape zone. Which will prioritize conservation and under this plan, the Tule Elk will be allowed to roam free across this entire area and expand their numbers, importantly, without a population cap, because that's one thing we haven't talked about is that at several stages during this process the Parks Service would just kind of throw out these arbitrary numbers like, well we think really the population should be around like 300. Ok, well what did you base that on? Well, you k now, we just think that number sounds there wasn't really that much science behind them just sort of arbitrarily deciding where they felt the population should be. So it's really important. This new plan does not include a population cap. So, yeah, several ranches would be going away altogether.

They have approximately 15 months from the signing of the agreement to wind down their operations and move off the land. Um, the Nature Conservancy will be collaborating with the Park Service, to an agreement to kind of share resources to promote conservation in these areas. And, yeah, it's just, pretty cool that you have these things kind of that have been going on in parallel.

But they actually have quite a bit of interplay

Mariann Sullivan: Well, what, what is still going on with the preliminary injunction? Is that now moot?

Chris Green: Well, not really, because the ranches are claiming that because they're still going to be there for another 15 months, allowing the elk to come in there and eat up all the good food and water will still negatively impact their dairy and ranching.

Mariann Sullivan: So, but it would still only be for 15 months. So there are a couple of ranchers who didn't join in this agreement, right?

So they're not totally gone too, but for most of it, it would just involve what's going to go on for the next 15 months, not permanently.

Chris Green: yeah, I mean, this new plan basically says, or I think at the worst, which I think it's really funny to have this role reversal, because these are claims that animal advocates very often make when we're trying to oppose government action, like, well, failure to file an environmental impact statement or do this. And it's just really funny to see these two folks being on opposite sides of this issue, where what often happens when animal advocates are trying to fight for this, like the agency is like, okay, fine. And they just will then go and perform a perfunctory environmental impact statement and like, okay, fine.

Here's your EIS. We're still going to do what we were going to do anyway. So, you know, there's always the option for the park service to go ahead and do that. But there is a bit of a question mark now that we will be operating under a new administration. But I think the writing's on the wall. I mean, it, it does become relatively moot if the vast majority of these ranches are moving off that it's not going to matter that the elk are going to have access to that land. Do you have anything to add, Rebecca?

Rebecca Garverman: No, I mean, you know, as Chris points out, this is a purely procedural issue that the, ranchers are complaining about, you know, they did comply with the National Environmental Policy Act insofar as they put together an environmental assessment and that's where their, final finding and their final decision is under. But an environmental impact statement would have taken much longer. And so I think part of what we're seeing here is that, you know, the Park Service maybe was trying to do the right thing. They were trying to remove the fence. They were trying to do it in a, if you'll excuse that, in a somewhat timely manner. Um, and so as a result, they did choose to go this environmental assessment route. and, and I will say that that. left them open to this kind of claim from the ranchers, which, you know, was something we were a little bit concerned about and, now has come to fruition, unfortunately.

Chris Green: And I would like to point out you know, people have to, as environmental or animal advocates and attorneys, you know, We lose a lot, right? It's just par for the course when you're really trying to push the envelope on things. You're not always going to win, especially when the laws and agencies are often stacked against you.

So there's this kind of concept of like winning by losing that gets mentioned quite a bit that like through the process of litigation. You actually can affect the public consciousness so much on an issue that you end up losing that battle but winning the ultimate war. A classic example of that was with the clinic founder Kathy Meyer with the Ringling litigation.

You know, that was decades long and really contentious. But all of the footage and everything that came out as a result of that really did have an impact on public consciousness. And now, you know, Ringling Brothers ended up going completely out of business a few years ago. And, you know, Getting rid of all their elephants.

and I feel it's a similar case here. You mentioned the, the media coverage, you know, as you said, like the only

real legal hook we could find on any of this was the fact that they hadn't updated their management plan in 40 years. You know, that's, and even then at most we could just get the court to order them to do a new management plan.

We couldn't ever tell them what to put into management plan. They said, okay, our management plan is like, we're going to let all the elk starve and there's nothing we can really do about that necessarily.

Rebecca Garverman: we could say it was arbitrary and capricious.

Chris Green: There's no way that we could order the court to, like, order them to, to substantively dictate what would be in the management plan, but as a result so I'd always thought before, like we said, Sarah Pickering and the communications director that, like, the role was just to sort of help publicize the legal work.

Like, we're doing all this really important legal work. And it's a job of communications director or department to just go educate the public about what we're doing, where in this instance, it really struck me that actually, rather than the media being an adjunct to the litigation here, it was the other way around where you have this litigation. That even if we won was somewhat limited, but it was the act of actually filing this lawsuit that was the hook to go out there and get a bunch of bunch of really fantastic media coverage. And it was actually the media coverage, which really galvanized public opinion and essentially sort of shamed the park service into doing the right thing.

So, you know, the litigation was great, but it kind of actually was, In my view, the media attention was what really won the day here.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I think that's an enormously important lesson from this and I guess one of the reasons why I kept bringing it up in that it does seem different you know, something different happened here

you know, the attention of the public was really caught for these animals and we have so much trouble making that happen.

and you know, they're, they're beautiful and they're extraordinary, but, so are white

tailed deer and they don't get a lot of sympathy. So I think it's an amazing legal effort with a lot of different moving parts by a lot of different people. But it's also just an amazing, public, information effort that really paid out.

And I think that's an enormously important, lesson that can be learned from this. In this case, I can't believe that, that what happened in January. This has been going on for so long and for them to suddenly just collapse like that. Of course, 30 million dollars helps, but still.

Chris Green: Well, and again, I think the interplay, I think the rancher's kind of right. I think that the fact that all of a sudden the fence, you know, 800 feet of fence comes down, it really sort of forced them to the table to get those negotiations done pretty quickly.

And as far as like the way it captured the attention, it's sort of like

the reintroduction of wolves, right?

Mariann Sullivan: totally. That's another issue that like people just are

so wound up about.

Chris Green: But I think there's a core thing of like just a fundamental absurdity of like reintroducing these elk only to let them die of thirst and

starvation. The same thing with wolves, to reintroduce them, take all this time to build a population,

just to have them, killed. But, if I could, I'd love to point out a fun little coda to all of this. so the Harvard Clinic was the ones, representing ALDF, but internally ALDF, Uh,

Christopher Berry and Kristin Suarez were the two attorneys that were interfacing with the clinic and handling our side of things. it was really cool. A little over a year ago, Christopher Berry left ALDF to go to the Non Human Rights Project and have a leadership role there. but he was the one who was sort of interfacing most closely with Rebecca working on this case. and just recently, it's soon to be announced that, now Rebecca herself, will be joining Christopher, Barry at NHRP, working on some really cool,

uh, work. So just, it's cool

Mariann Sullivan: very exciting to hear.

Chris Green: Students and fellows in the different phases that have gone through and Kate Hendricks, who was one of our students at Harvard who then stayed and became a clinical fellow, is now a staff attorney working on wildlife issues at the Humane Society of the United States.

So it's just, really cool to see the real value of having a clinic, which is now being run by Mary Hollingsworth at Harvard. Just getting, exposing students to these issues in the first place, letting them get their feet wet in being involved and then having fellows as well that can actually go and both Kate and Rebecca, you know, arguing these cases in federal court and getting that experience before they're even out in the working world.

It's just really, it's a great

process.

Mariann Sullivan: You've kind of given away the end story, but I still wanted to ask Rebecca, like, just about your plans and what you're looking forward to at NHRP, because that's very, very exciting news.

Rebecca Garverman: Yeah, I'm very excited. So I'm, actually coming on to start something new. I'm doing some research into some new areas where maybe we can find some ways to vindicate legal rights for animals. so NHRP is doing some incredible work, and I'm kind of looking at what else we can do that will complement their existing line of habeas petitions.

So, I'm really excited to dive into that. I think it'll be really interesting and, I mentioned earlier, I could wax loquacious about standing for a while, but standing for animals and legal personhood is something that's really dear to my heart and has always been a passion project of mine. And so I'm really excited to do more in that area.

And I'm just so grateful for the clinic and the opportunities that Chris and Kathy gave me. How often do you get to be a law student with less than three years of experience arguing in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals? It was amazing.

Mariann Sullivan: Law will shoot you right to the top of everything. It really will. Like, it's just the best thing to go into. I'm very excited to hear. Obviously, you don't have a lot of details yet. I'm looking forward to you coming back on in maybe a year or so to give us all the details of whatever it is.

Whatever matter you're, pursuing. And Chris, I mean, probably a lot of people know, but you are, of course, you've been referring to ALDF as we, and that's because you're no longer with Harvard, but you are now the Executive Director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. So get us a little up to speed on what's going on there.

And I'm sure you'll be back as well.

Or your, attorneys.

Chris Green: Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. It's been eight years of my life working with Kristen Stilt to build up the program and clinic at Harvard. And, that's the longest I've ever worked anywhere. It was just the single most rewarding thing I'd ever done in my life.

Not only having the privilege of spending my time working on these issues that matter so much to all of us, but as I was just saying, being in this role where you can help these students, find their path in life and expose them to these issues and have many of them go on to, to do this for a career.

I mean, Kate Hendricks, who we've mentioned a couple of times, she came to law school to do something completely different. and in more circularity, her 1L year, we just happened to show a screening of Unlocking the Cage, the Steve Weiss film, and, um,

Mariann Sullivan: I'm in that movie.

Chris Green: yeah, exactly.

Mariann Sullivan: want to say it's

not a speaking part and it's only for about maybe a split second, but I'm in it.

Rebecca Garverman: say

Chris Green: were in it at Harvard, right? There was like, the moot was done

Mariann Sullivan: It wasn't at Harvard, it was at St.

John's Law School in

Chris Green: but yeah, so, she went to that and was like, wait, what? I can do, she had been raised vegetarian and vegan for

the last 10 years or whatever, and it never occurred to her that she could combine these things and do animal law as a career and just did a total 90 degree turn. so yeah, it was really rewarding being there. and we got this really generous endowment from the, Brooks Institute things were going really well. And then I got a call that, there's going to be this opening at ALDF and I had been there prior to going to Harvard for two years as their first legislative director.

so yeah, I ended up, I think I

did the podcast talking about the EATS Act, right? As I had just been

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that sounds right, yeah. And God, thank God help us, that fight's still going on.

Chris Green: Yeah. But, uh,

so yeah, it's been really, been really wonderful. it's great being back there. And, and again, as you can see, I was pretty excited about this elk case. I kind of found when I was at Harvard, just personality wise that, you know, The things I found myself getting most excited about was the work of the clinic, was the direct advocacy.

And I think

after eight years being in an academic setting, I was pretty itchy to just get back and

get my sort of hands dirty again with the actual advocacy part of things. and so yeah, it's been really wonderful. There's just a incredible team of, folks at A LDF, but there were things to clean up as well.

So, we've spent a lot of time just really. Getting our operations side in order, we brought in a bunch of great new people. We've got a new Chief Programs Officer, Caitlin Hawk, a new Chief Operating Officer, AJ Kroboth, and then we brought in a Chief People Officer as well, a new Communications Director, a new Development Director.

There was a lot of change that happened on the operations side.

Mariann Sullivan: What about on the litigation side, anything in particular you're looking forward to?

Chris Green: I kind of had to resign myself to the fact that I was going to have to spend most of this first year just sort of focusing on the operations to get the engine running most efficiently.

And so now that we have done that, we are embarking on a larger strategic planning process now to really take a look at things on the programmatic side. But, yeah, there's been just some really good wins. We've been really active involved. on sort of aquaculture. So, we were involved in getting Washington state passing the first octopus, agriculture ban, then getting one passed statewide in California, a ban on octopus farming and helping get a federal bill introduced on that.

There also was just a big win that a lot of organizations were involved in. and we played a small part in that in, Washington state as well, with the first banning of, ocean fish pens. So this is the first place in the world that has not only, banned the future, use of open water fish pens, but it's also removing all the existing pens.

Mariann Sullivan: That's remarkable, really remarkable work. Do you see yourself doing a lot more legislative work? I mean, all of those things that you've mentioned were legislative efforts, which I think ALDF has always done a lot of, but has really been more well known for litigation.

Chris Green: Certainly, but you know, we do have a large legislative team. In fact, I think this year, Stephanie Harris, who is in the Northeast, she helped get five different laws passed in Massachusetts. just two of them were signed the very first week of January. Massachusettes became the third state in the country to pass a comprehensive declaw ban for cats. Also, there was a, comprehensive, animal cruelty law that was passed primarily dealing with sort of puppy mills and things like that. Yeah, there's been some really, really, really good work we've been able to do legislatively. And since we've been involved in it, you know, as you likely know from our work in the American Bar Association, the issue of police shooting people's pets has always been a real personal hot button for me.

And there was this awful case in Missouri last May where a, police officer shot a 13 pound deaf and blind Shih Tzu, and, it's all caught on body camera. So, we were able to help fund, that and within a matter of days, got a million dollar lawsuit filed against the city there. So that's something also when I was at ALDF in the past, in 2015, we were able to get a, A statewide bill passed in Texas.

Colorado was the first state to pass a mandatory animal encounter training law, and then we got a resolution passed to the American Bar Association, and on the heels of that, passed a statewide, law in Texas, mandating statewide training. And I mean, it's not rocket surgery. Literally it's a one time ever four hour training session. And in just the first two years, the number of dogs shot by police in Texas went from like 283 down to 17. So, it's a great issue and one that there's litigation involved for sure, but then that becomes a sort of hook to go move in and try and get legislation passed as well to prevent this from happening in the future.

So, there's a lot going on, you know, animal agriculture, I'd say, comprises about 60 percent of what our litigation team does. And again, like I said, this point raised issue at first on the surface, it just seems like a wildlife issue, but it all circles back to back to animal. animal ag.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, well, almost everything does. Very exciting. We'll be looking forward to hearing more and hopefully some of your folks will be coming on the podcast, during the next year as well. A lot going on and thank you so much to both of you for, straightening out some of this for me. Um, I think I have it a whole lot straighter than I did when we started talking.

Chris Green: I was just thinking, trying to remember when I first met you, Mariann, but I think it was just over 20 years ago,

it was. 21 years ago, I think it was at the, uh, the first animal law competitions, which were,

Mariann Sullivan: In at Harvard. Yeah.

Chris Green: I was still a student and, fun

Mariann Sullivan: You were a student and you won the um, closing argument competition.

Chris Green: Yeah, and in other fun news the Brooks Institute, helped revive the animal law competitions. They've been dormant since about 2016, and we did a virtual version in 2022, and then last spring held a live one, in person one at Harvard again, and now, we're going to be hosting that, at ALDF, and we're going to have the final arguments happen as part of our Animal Law Conference.

There's a student day, kind of student summit happens.

Mariann Sullivan: A great

idea. Yeah.

Chris Green: in person with a crowd of other students.

So yeah,

Mariann Sullivan: But also people don't come just for the competition, but they also come for the conference. That's a great idea.

Chris Green: Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to that.

Mariann Sullivan: Lots going on. Thanks so much for doing all of it. Thanks so much for joining us today to explain this piece of it. It's really been great.

Chris Green: Thanks, Mariann. Thanks, Rebecca. Yeah. I'm just always astounded by your knowledge.