I’ve also seen cows, tons of them, scattered across the grasslands that sweep over the hilly landscape. That’s because cattle and dairy ranches have been part of this area for generations, long before the feds designated the place as protected. Ranching, it seems, has been grandfathered into the park.

What I haven’t seen are white fallow deer. Although they used to roam freely, the National Park Service (NPS), in the last few years, has slaughtered most of the animals—90% by some estimates. But the NPS didn’t do its own dirty work. They brought in hired guns. Wildlife exterminators. Species mercenaries. Bambi hitmen.

The company, White Buffalo, Inc., out of Connecticut, specializes in remote euthanasia of unwelcomed species. Their sharpshooters came into the park and shot the deer while they were feeding—supposedly in the head or neck to guarantee a speedy and humane demise. The NPS then donated the meat and hides to non-profit or charity organizations, at least that’s what they say. Local hunters and hikers often found the dead animals scattered throughout the forests, their carcasses rotting, their eyes plucked out by scavenger vultures.

Even so, the NPS is bent on eliminating the white fallow deer. They believe the animals represent a threat to the local ecosystem because they’re a non-native species.

And they are. The deer don’t belong here, not in an evolutionary sense. A wealthy rancher imported them into the area in 1948 so he and his cronies would have something fun to hunt. But the establishment of Point Reyes National Seashore made the hunting illegal, so the deer—a hearty lot, it turns out—went forth and multiplied.

But the NPS believes that the white fallow deer are extremely disruptive to the region’s natural ecosystem. Unfortunately, the NPS has yet to present definitive evidence, particularly carrying capacity studies, that prove the deer adversely impact the environment to the point they need to be exterminated. Even so, the NPS insists that the deer must go if the park is to be restored to its original pristine roots.

The problem with this strategy, however, is that the park already blossoms with other non-native species, such as Himalayan blackberry, scotch broom, eucalyptus trees, and jimson weed.

Then there’s the coyotes. These critters arrived only 500 years ago, pushed north by the encroaching human populations as they traveled up the coast by way of Mexico and the Southwest. That makes these howling canines a bona fide non-native species.

And what about all those cows? I can’t quite see how dense cattle populations and modern ranching techniques and miles of fenced corridors can have any less of an impact than a few white deer.

Of course, none of that compares to the impact of human activity. If the NPS is serious about restoring the park to its original state, or even close to that state, the park better get rid of most of the cars and most of the people.

But then, taking a step backwards is never easy. Even the NPS must realize this. Too many bad decisions have already been made, and the best we can hope for is to preserve what we’ve got. Virginity is never retroactive.

All the NPS can do is to decide what is acceptable non-native invasion. But that’s like determining what’s acceptable collateral damage, a phrase bandied about freely when we invaded Iraq.

Even so, the NPS must decide. They must contend with the fact that the white fallow deer were brought into the region without considering the impact on the land, both then and in the future—sort of the same logic used when deciding to invade a country without provocation and without protecting the country’s infrastructure or its people and without thought to the long-range consequences of such an invasion.

But the government, it seems, and by extension those of us the government represents, are in the business of trying to clean up messes that are the consequence of poor decisions. Unfortunately, strategies to clean up our messes are often implemented in ways that call for a callous indifference to the sanctity of life and to freedom from pain and suffering.

We have a history of intervention that mismanages, misappropriates, and misrepresents the truth. Not just with Point Reyes or Iraq, but with Katrina and Afghanistan and Vietnam and our national forests and the latest environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Poor decisions keep being made, and we find ourselves making more poor decisions to try to fix them.

Only about a hundred white fallow deer remain at Point Reyes, and the NPS wants to get rid of those too. But there are still plenty of cows and plenty of cars and plenty of fences and roads to keep the cars and cows going.

And there appears to be plenty of owls. I heard two of them hooting last night, along with the howls of distant coyotes. Sounds well worth preserving—in Point Reyes and anywhere else we can save them.

I only hope none of those birds are spotted owls.