Federal wildlife officials expressed “concern” that the environmental group charged with managing the Dana Point Headlands Preserve has been using the endangered Pacific Pocket Mouse as an excuse to exclude the public from accessing to the Headlands trail. This is according to internal Fish and Wildlife Service emails disclosed as a result of litigation between the City of Dana Point and the Center for Natural Lands Management (CNLM) over the latter’s attempts to restrict public access to the Headlands.
The CNLM, which owns the Headlands Preserve, closed all public access at the advent of the COVID pandemic in March of 2020. Previously, the public could access the 1.4 mile trail that runs along the Headlands perimeter – which affords stunning views of the Pacific Ocean – from 7:30 a.m. to sunset, daily.
On June 25, 2020, CNLM Co-Executive Director Deborah Rogers e-mailed Dana Point City Manager Mike Killebrew to say they were unwilling to re-open public access to the Headlands. In addition to claiming they were concerned that visitors to the trail might be endangered by COVID, Rogers expressed concern that renewed public access would harm the Pacific Pocket Mouse (PPM) population that lives in the interior of the 29-acre Headlands Preserve.
“We do not see a reasonable way of opening CNLM’s Dana Point Preserve trail to the public at this time that would not involve considerable risk to their health,” wrote Rogers. She went on the imply the PPM population trail closure benefited the PPM and that the mouse population would be “sensitive” to re-opening it to the public.
Jonathan Snyder, a federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) scientist, forwarded Rogers’ e-mail to William Miller, a biomonitor in the FWS Carlsbad office and followed up with an e-mail about the CNLM’s efforts in the area of PPM trapping.
Miller replied by voicing his worry that Rogers, in her response to the city, was using the Pacific Pocket Mouse as an excuse for keeping the public out of the Headlands. The PPM habitat is only 10% of the Headlands.
Miller stated his desire for the CNLM to be more concerned about properly trapping Pacific Pocket Mice (a means of capturing the creatures to assess their numbers, for breeding, and re-introduction into their habitats) than with using the PPM to keep out members of the public.
“Frankly, I am more concerned that Deborah is focused on using PPM as an argument for keeping the preserve closed, than alarmed with the 10% habitat occupancy rate that Korie and USGS just measured!”” Miller wrote to Snyder.
The City of Dana Point has continued to push for complete restoration of pre-pandemic hours of public access to the Dana Point Headlands, citing the need to balance public access with PPM protection and pointing out that the mouse population has increased even while the public had full access to the Headlands trail.
