“Seen any Pocket Mice?” another hiker asked as he and his son passed us on the Dana Point Headlands Preserve trail last week.
“No – have you?” one of my companions asked.
“Yeah! I’ve seen them running across the trail before,” he replied. “They’re thriving.”
A tiny endangered rodent known as the Pacific Pocket Mouse is at the center of a bitter conflict between the City of Dana Point and the Center for Natural Land Management (CNLM) over public access to the world-famous Headland Nature Preserve – the striking promontory that is literally the “point” in Dana Point.
For the last few years, the City has been battling, via litigation and legislative action, to fully restore the public right of access to what is was before COVID. In November 2022, after being ordered to do so by a Court, CNLM restored trail hours to the pre-pandemic norm of 7:00 a.m. to sunset every day.
READ: Questions Raised About Environmental Group’s Management Of Headlands Preserve
Now, the City is seeking to enshrine that in law, rather than leaving it to the whim of CNLM to determine public access at its discretion.
The community’s bitter experience with CNLM’s lengthy closure of the trail during COVID is behind that drive. CNLM was given custody of the Headlands promontory as part of a publicly negotiated bargain between the Developer, City and Coastal Commission. That agreement allowed portions of the Headlands site to be developed, and in exchange the Headlands “point,” which comprises Dana Point, was to be preserved from development in perpetuity, and instead set aside for public enjoyment.
CNLM opposes the City’s effort and wields the PPM like a talisman in its campaign of resistance. It is completely opposed to the City efforts to enshrine full public access in law – claiming such access would be harmful to the already endangered Pacific Pocket Mouse population.
This table provided by CNLM shows the number of PPM trapped during the organizations periodic trapping efforts, generally trending in a positive direction – toward more mice:
The actual number of PPM in the Preserve is higher than the numbers trapped, but there is “no direct way” to correlate the number trapped with the size of the actual population, according to CNLM Executive Director Deborah Rogers.
“The population has fluctuated over the course of the last 16 years,” the City asserts in a report to the April 22, 2024 meeting of the Dana Point Planning Commission, “but overall the PPM population has continued to survive and persist as compared to the dire predictions in the EIR.”
“Studies have shown that climate and vegetation management are the two most important factors in the health of a PPM population,” continues the report. “CNLM has asserted that the presence of human beings on the Nature Trail could impact the PPM population, but a direct causal link between appropriate use of the Nature Trail by the public and impacts on the PPM has never been documented.”
For it’s part, CNLM sems to posit a correlation between trail use and fluctuations in the PPM population in the Preserve. According to Rogers her group has been using trail counters at the two gate trail entrances since 2011, and the number of visitors doubled between 2011 and 2017. She said the average number of daily visitors from October 2022 to September 2023 was 648, compared to 444 daily between 2011 and 2017.
Such a correlation is elusive. Trapping numbers jump around regardless of trail use. 30 mice were trapped in May-June 2008, six months before the Headlands tail opened to the public, and after of laying unused for years. In May 2012 – after nearly three years of the public using the trail – 57 mice were trapped.
The next two trappings – May 2017 and June 2019 – caught only 6 and 2 mice, respectively. Yet a year later – amidst rising public trail use – the number of PPM trapped rocketed to 77. The CNLM ascribes that rise to the COVID trail closure; this seems dubious, however, considering th closure occurred only a few weeks before the June 2020 trapping took place.
Pacific Pocket Mice in the wild have a life span of 3-5 years. At 2-5 months, female PPM can produce offspring, and can produce 8-10 “pups” annually.
Dana Point resident and open space advocate Denise Erkeneff scoffs at CNLM’s stance that enshrining generous public access in law poses a threat to the Pacific Pocket Mouse population in the Headlands.
“For the CNLM to have used COVID as an excuse to keep the public out of the Headlands was despicable,” said Erkeneff, who was the lead plaintiff in the litigation that resulted in establishment of the Dana Point Headlands Preserve.
“The Pacific Pocket Mouse is not an issue,” said Erkeneff said, pointing at the CNLM’s own data shows protecting the PPM can be successfully balanced with full public trail access. “According to the official studies, the pocket mouse population has increased tremendously since 2008.”
