Coalition petitions for leash-law enforcement

A coalition of 10 animal welfare, wildlife conservation, child welfare, and park-volunteer organizations, including the Sierra Club, filed a formal emergency petition today asking the National Park Service to implement and enforce leash laws at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) within 60 days. Federal regulations require dogs to be leashed or otherwise physically restrained in the National Park System. The GGNRA is the only unit of the National Park System known not to enforce leash laws throughout the park.

Leash laws provide important safeguards for people, our pets, wildlife, and our parks, and the National Park System's leash law has effectively protected every other unit of the National Park System - while providing access for dogs with responsible owners - for decades.

Leash laws are also widely supported by Bay Area residents. In a recent poll of Bay Area residents sponsored by the GGNRA, over 71% of respondents said they support the leash laws that protect the GGNRA. This is in part recognition of the GGNRA's irreplaceable biological treasures: the park contains more imperiled species than Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks combined.

Unfortunately, GGNRA administrators have failed to enforce leash laws in vast portions of the park for many years. As a result, hundreds of dogs have been lost, injured, or killed at the GGNRA; dozens of imperiled species have been harassed or harmed; people have been charged, bitten, and excluded from the park; and the GGNRA's purposes and goals are now threatened.

The petition documents nearly 100 of these incidents, culled from the past five years of GGNRA records alone. Because of poor-record keeping by the GGNRA, the National Park Service believes that many more incidents have gone unreported. Yet even with limited data, Park Service biologists have concluded that off-leash dogs pose "the most significant recreational threat" to imperiled birds such as the snowy plover.

The groups have filed the petition in response to a recent court decision that has undermined the Park Service's ability to enforce the leash law at several areas within the GGNRA. The GGNRA recently announced that it may form a negotiated rulemaking committee to implement leash laws. If this committee is formed, however, it will not be able to issue a recommendation until 2007, and rules may not be in place until 2008. In the meantime, people, pets, sensitive wildlife within the park, and the park itself would go unprotected. The petitioners are asking the Park Service to initiate emergency rulemaking procedures to restore leash-law enforcement at the GGNRA on an interim basis.

The formal administrative petition was filed by Guide Dogs for the Blind, Action for Animals, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, Environmental Quality for Urban Parks, Center for Biological Diversity, Golden Gate Audubon Society, San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club, Yerba Buena Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, Dune Ecological Restoration Team, and San Francisco League of Conservation Voters.