Environmentalists are licking their lips now that they are driving dairies and cattle ranches out of Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California.
The National Park Service and environmental groups claim the cattle, which have been there for more than 150 years are polluting watersheds and threatening endangered species. I’m thinking this place should be uninhabitable after 150 years of this so-called pollution. But that’s not the case. In fact, the people who live there — not just the dairy farmers an ranchers who are being paid to move out — don’t agree with what is being described as a “landmark agreement.”
Jessica Garrison reporting from Point Reyes Station, California, quoted Dewey Livingston, who lives in Inverness and has written extensively about the history of Point Reyes said, “It’s a big blow to the community.” He said he believes the environmental harms wrought by the cows have been exaggerated. And moving the cows out, he said, will irreparably harm the local culture. “It will turn what was once a rural area into a community of vacation homes, visitors and wealthy people.”
The problem is that the government bought that land in the 1960s and 70s after President Kennedy authorized it as a national park with the understanding that livestock and dairy operations would be allowed to continue operating. Ranchers were offered long term leases by the Department of the Interior to work the land. The intent was to keep the area from being taken over developers building hotels and arcades.
Although the ranching and dairy families didn’t care for the deal, they felt they had no other choice as the government could have taken their land using eminent domain.
One of the species they are trying to protect in Point Reyes Station are tule elk. The elk herd has become rather large and when the park service planned to shoot some of the elk, the environmentalists got involved and filed a lawsuit because of fecal pollution and unpleasant odors caused by the cows. They wanted the park service to come up with a new management plan for the park.
On Jan. 8, the settlement was announced and the ranchers, their tenants and workers were told they had 15 months to move out. The settlement includes 12 of the 14 working ranches in the area, who accepted a buyout worth about $30 million. Most people in the area said it isn’t enough to cover the costs for these people to relocate not only their homes but their livelihoods.
I guess this should be a lesson to us all that letting the government buy land, even though promises were made, is not a good idea.
Albert Straus, who owns Straus Family creamery and buys organic milk from the dairies wrote an op-ed in The San Francisco Standard, asking the Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum and Jessica Bowron, acting director of the Nationa Park Service to reverse the general management plan and allow commercial agriculture to continue at Point Reyes.
The op-ed is titled “Dead set on ‘saving’ Point Reyes, environmentalists want to kills its best stewards.” You can read it at https://tinyurl.com/s5kysss5
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