After I was elected to the Board of Supervisors last November, perhaps the most common advice I received was, "Don't get involved in the dog issue." The conventional wisdom is that it's too divisive and without a good solution. As my mother can confirm, I was a willful child, and I take advice like that as a challenge.
So, when the Golden Gate National Recreation Area proposed dramatic restrictions on off-leash dog access in Fort Funston, Crissy Field, Fort Miley, Baker Beach, Lands End, and Ocean Beach, I decided it was time to get involved. Currently, off-leash dogs are permitted in a mere 1 percent of GGNRA's landmass, and the proposal would eliminate a significant majority of that space. I oppose GGNRA's proposal, and whether you love dogs or can't stand them, you should oppose this plan, given the negative impacts it will have on our neighborhood parks.
We live in a small city geographically, with over 800,000 people and several hundred thousand dogs squeezed into 49 square miles. Both people and dogs need space, and we have precious little of it. This leads to tension in our city parks and other public spaces. As a result, we need to ensure that we are maintaining or even expanding publicly available space, not restricting it.
GGNRA – which was established in the early 1970s expressly for recreational use and with a large contribution of land by the city – provides a significant portion of the off-leash space that allows people to exercise their dogs and allows professional dog walkers to ply their trade. GGNRA's properties are among the most popular in the city, and it is one of the most visited national parks in the country. Although GGNRA is run by the National Park Service, it is not your standard national park. It's an urban recreation area designed for daily, active uses.
If GGNRA adopts its proposal – one that not only significantly restricts off-leash access, but seems designed to eliminate it entirely in the future through an escalating series of penalties for lack of compliance – where are those off-leash dogs going to go? They're not going to disappear. They're going to go to our neighborhood parks. We saw this last Friday. As a result of the tsunami alert, Ocean Beach and Fort Funston were closed, and guess what? – Stern Grove and other city parks saw a huge increase in dog usage.
Welcome to the future of our city parks if GGNRA is successful in pushing through this policy. There will be many more off-leash dogs in our neighborhood parks. This increase will cause tension with other dogs and their owners, with people without dogs, and with people with kids. It will cause more wear and tear on our parks at a time when the Recreation and Parks Department is experiencing large budget cuts. It will lead to more enforcement demands as Rec and Park struggles to maintain its already-meager enforcement budget.
So, whatever your views are on the "dog issue," you should take a hard look at GGNRA's proposal and decide whether it will benefit us as a city. I think it won't. GGNRA may be federal land, but it provides critical recreational space for San Francisco. GGNRA needs to consider not just its own property but how this change will impact San Francisco.
GGNRA advances several arguments for its proposal, none of which merits such a dramatic shift. It contends that dog access degrades the park, yet the off-leash policy has been in place since 1979 and GGNRA is as beautiful as ever. All recreational uses cause some wear and tear, but that is not a reason to restrict access so dramatically. GGNRA points to the need to protect native plants and the snowy plover, an endangered bird. However, there is no known incident of a dog injuring or killing a plover. In addition, GGNRA is certainly large enough to accommodate both dogs and native plants. Protecting native plants is not an excuse for dramatically reducing recreational opportunities in the park. GGNRA also argues that it is the only national park in the U.S. that allows off-leash access, but GGNRA is not a typical national park. It's an urban recreational area for use by all on a regular basis.
Now, to be clear, I'm not advocating a dog free-for-all in San Francisco. There need to be rules so that our public spaces can be used by everyone. As a result, I'm exploring legislation to regulate commercial dog walkers who use our parks. We are considering various options, including requiring a permit, limiting the number of dogs that can be walked at one time in parks, requiring dog walkers to undergo training, and so forth. I'm working closely on this issue with Rec and Park, San Francisco Animal Care and Control, the SPCA, and dog walker groups.
Let's make sure we continue to have adequate off-leash dog space while also encouraging responsible dog ownership and dog walking. The two go hand-in-hand.
Scott Wiener represents District 8 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He has called for a hearing on the GGNRA proposal and on regulation of commercial dog walkers. The hearing will occur on Monday, April 11 at 1 p.m. in City Hall. For more information, contact Adam Taylor at (415) 554-6968 or [email protected].