{"id":11841,"date":"2025-05-15T08:28:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T15:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=11841"},"modified":"2025-05-15T08:28:48","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T15:28:48","slug":"end-of-ranching-in-iconic-california-community-signals-bigger-war-on-land-use-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/15\/end-of-ranching-in-iconic-california-community-signals-bigger-war-on-land-use-in-west\/","title":{"rendered":"End of Ranching in Iconic California Community Signals Bigger War on Land Use in West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We’ve been to Point Reyes several times and hiked many trails, watched elephant seals on the beach during breeding season… In my layman’s opinion the cattle ranchers coexisting was a highlight and the land and creatures were doing fine. But this is really about food and enslaving the nation’s population. Rosa Koira, who was a expert witness in land use for the government, was one of the first to put together the scheme and the OCGFC plans for land use all tying into Agenda 2030 which has been being slowly implemented using local governments, NGOs and duplicity. I highly recommend her interview video<\/a>. Of interest the far left liberals in Colorado are trying to implement their own group for limiting land use based on endangered species, which is an obvious attempt to do away with ranching and farming in Colorado and impact food production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/article\/end-of-ranching-in-iconic-california-community-signals-bigger-war-on-land-use-in-west-5852619?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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By Beige Luciano-Adams<\/p>\n\n\n\n

POINT REYES STATION, Calif.\u2014The buffalo milk soft serve here is an open secret, found near the butcher\u2019s counter at the back of the local market. Like everything else in this tiny farm town, nestled in the coastal grasslands about an hour north of San Francisco, it\u2019s made with milk from a nearby dairy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California\u2019s Marin County is a pioneer in organic ranching, known for its gourmet cheeses, multi-generational dairies and pasture-raised beef. The legacy of more than 150 years of agricultural production is baked into its contemporary rural charms, which, along with the nearby Point Reyes National Seashore, make it a popular tourist destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also a corner of the country where locals tend to see ranching and environmentalism as symbiotic pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But after years of conflict among preservationists, ranchers, and the federal government, a recent deal<\/a> to end most ranching\u2014all of it organic\u2014on the Seashore has incensed locals and revealed a deep chasm between competing visions of environmental stewardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agreement  between three environmental groups\u2014the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Western Watersheds Project\u2014the National Park Service, and the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association saw 12 of 14 ranches on Point Reyes agree to cease ranching within 15 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On one side, preservationists say cattle and dairy ranching at Point Reyes has led to environmental degradation that threatens the future of the park and biodiversity in the state; on the other, family ranchers see themselves as stewards of the land, their practices as the future of conservation\u2014and as a bulwark against the ravages of Big Ag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Trump administration moves to roll back Biden-era reforms, the high-profile case has become a flashpoint in the broader fight over land use in the West\u2014where the federal government owns nearly half of all public land, and where ranching is considered a living legacy, part of the cultural heritage that built the West itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a congressional investigation<\/a> and two new lawsuits against the park are giving hope to critics of the Point Reyes deal that a policy shift could again be on the table, making the future of the park anything but settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s at stake, insiders say, is more than the dozen family ranches set to leave the park by next year. The questions Point Reyes raises will determine more than the fate of the National Seashore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple Use Mandate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While national forests and lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management have long been governed by a multiple-use<\/a> mandate, which includes grazing, timber, resource extraction, and recreation, national parks are typically more focused on preservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Point Reyes, a spectacularly beautiful coastal peninsula where ranching predates the park itself by a century, is an unusual case\u2014and one bound to attract scrutiny from activists who oppose ranching on public lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854793\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A cow runs past a corral of cows waiting to be milked at the Kehoe Dairy in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on June 12, 2007. In a landmark January 2025 settlement, most ranching operations within Point Reyes National Seashore are set to end within 15 months, following a long legal battle between environmental groups and ranchers. Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u200aI\u2019ve never seen a private grazing lease on public lands that wasn\u2019t doing environmental damage, whether it\u2019s to salmon or to sage grouse, it doesn\u2019t matter what ecosystem you\u2019re in,\u201d said Jeff Miller, a senior conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations that sued the National Park Service over its ranching leases in 2014 and 2022, resulting in the current agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the West, damage from private cattle grazing leases is \u201cimmense,\u201d Miller said, second only to logging. Preservationists cite water pollution, soil erosion, and habitat loss, among other concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organization has focused on the issue since its founding in 1989, routinely intervening with National Forest and Bureau of Land Management plans and suing over grazing leases in cases where there is explicit and documented environmental damage, Miller said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past several years, the Biden administration advanced an agenda broadly favorable to conservationists, with national monument expansions and an initiative to conserve 30 percent of the nation\u2019s land and water by 2030, as well as the 2024 Public Lands rule<\/a> that allows prioritizing conservation above established multiple uses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump White House has indicated its intent<\/a> to rescind the Bureau of Land Management\u2019s Public Lands Rule, a move lambasted<\/a> by environmental groups, who argue the administration is ushering in an era of unrestrained exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congressional Republicans contend<\/a> Biden\u2019s upending of the multiple use doctrine has been a disaster both for rural communities and the country, driving up housing prices in Western cities surrounded by federal land and gutting local economies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Biden left America\u2019s public lands and natural resources in a sorry state,\u201d Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) told the House Natural Resources Committee during a February hearing on restoring multiple use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor four long years President Biden and his federal land managers have abandoned the longstanding and previously uncontroversial principle of multiple use. Instead, they adopted top-down, preservationist schemes designed to placate extreme environmentalists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same hearing, Tim Canterbury, president of the Public Lands Council, an organization representing cattle and sheep producers who hold 22,000 grazing permits across the West, highlighted challenges for ranchers, and urged Congress and federal agencies to recognize public lands ranching as an essential part of the multi-use framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI manage these lands and waters, and the wildlife and multiple uses they sustain, as if they were my own,\u201d Canterbury said. He said the infrastructure, ecological stewardship and investments that ranchers provide benefit the public and environment, not just privately owned livestock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy family has managed the lands we utilize since 1879. Our commitment to these lands is baked into our way of life,\u201d Canterbury said of his Colorado ranch operation, adding that \u201cdeep historical and ecological knowledge of the working landscape\u201d are handed down through generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854797\"\/
Point Reyes Lighthouse in Inverness, Calif., on March 16, 2025. Keegan Billings\/The Epoch Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ivan London, a senior attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which frequently intervenes pro-bono on behalf of ranchers facing challenges to their grazing permits, said regulatory interpretations may shift with the balance of power in Washington, but the law governing grazing rights hasn\u2019t changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCongress actually said, \u2018Here are some priority uses of public land\u2014grazing, timber, harvesting, mineral production.\u2019 And that law hasn\u2019t changed. But from administration to administration the various regulators find ways to read it differently,\u201d London said, pointing to President Bill Clinton\u2019s attempts to increase grazing fees in the 1990s, and President Joe Biden\u2019s embrace of conservation easements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAccording to the Taylor Grazing Act\u2014an actual law, unlike the conservation leases\u2014grazing and ranching are the highest use of public lands,\u201d London said. That regulations allowing conservation leases to \u201clock up land away from ranchers\u201d might be ending under the Trump administration is \u201chuge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mountain States Legal Foundation in 2023 successfully intervened on behalf of Wyoming ranchers when the Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Watersheds Project, and other groups alleged that one of the oldest cattle drives<\/a> in the country threatened grizzly bear populations in violation of the Endangered Species Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognized as a Traditional Cultural Property on the National Register of Historic Places, the Green River Drift cattle drive is still operated by descendants of families that homesteaded the area in the 19th century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a familiar narrative, often reduced in court to a zero-sum game between preserving either vulnerable animal or plant species, or prized human cultural practices with histories that pre-date the authority managing the lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The families in question, their lawyers argued, cared for the land longer and better than any agency or activist, their continued existence providing \u201c124 years of evidence that ranchers are the real conservationists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In other cases, such as Santa Rosa Island\u2014now part of California\u2019s Channel Islands National Park\u2014the outlines of which presaged the fate of Point Reyes, environmental activists have succeeded in bringing nearly a century of ranching to a close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1986, the federal government purchased Vail & Vickers Ranch, run by four generations of cattle ranchers on what was known as \u201cCowboy Island.\u201d  In 1998, the last working island cattle ranch in the United States shuttered for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCowboys versus environmentalists\u201d is a common tableau throughout the West, with infamous spectacles such as Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy\u2019s militarized standoff with the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Point Reyes, the fight has pitted environmentalist against environmentalist in one of the most liberal enclaves in the country, exposing an existential schism within the conservation movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranchers Say They Were Pressured<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a protracted battle over the park\u2019s ranch management plan that culminated in lawsuits in 2016 and 2022, both ranchers and the organizations who sued the park service accuse the agency of bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After years of studies and thousands of public comments, the park service in 2021 decided to issue 20-year leases, finally following through on a 2012 directive<\/a>. Environmentalists filed a new lawsuit, ranchers intervened on behalf of the park, and the parties entered private negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854796\"\/
Point Reyes North Beach in Marin County, Calif., on March 16, 2025. Keegan Billings\/The Epoch Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the settlement, completed just before the Trump administration took office, was celebrated internally among Department of Interior senior staff as a \u201cwin\u201d for the department, the park, and for conservation\u2014a \u201cnice one to go out on\u201d in the final hours of the Biden administration, according to emails unearthed in a Freedom of Information Act Request and published<\/a> on Substack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese emails prove they were totally in on it and celebrating this victory against ranching,\u201d said Andrew Giacomini, a San Francisco attorney representing pro-bono more than 60 ranch workers and subtenants who are set to be displaced by the Point Reyes settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite apparent neutrality, Giacomini accused the government of conspiring with the conservationist organizations, which brought in a third party to mediate a settlement behind closed doors, all in an effort to push out ranchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey could have defended that lawsuit and won,\u201d Giacomini said. Instead, he alleges, the park service entered secret negotiations, overturned the results of a public process, and kowtowed to a \u201chandful of special interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exactly as our lawsuit says. The way it was handled violates the law in multiple ways and it can\u2019t stand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before the case begins moving through the courts, Giacomini said he thinks shifting priorities in the new administration may result in a reversal of the decision to end ranching at Point Reyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Miller, of the Center for Biological Diversity, said the idea of any collusion between his organization, fellow plaintiffs, and the park service is \u201cabsolute nonsense,\u201d calling the park\u2019s 2014 ranch management plan a \u201cwish list\u201d from the ranchers, developed in secret without input from conservationists or the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Particularly egregious to conservationists was a request to cull once-endangered tule elk herds, which compete with cattle for food during periods of drought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey rolled this thing out in 2014 and said, \u2018Guess what? We\u2019re going to shoot tule elk. We\u2019re going to expand ranches, and we\u2019re going to enshrine private commercial ranching forever in the park.\u2019 That was the park service\u2019s first bite at the apple,\u201d Miller said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is not conservation, that\u2019s collusion with the ranchers, which is what the park service has been doing for half a century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of the Interior and its National Park Service did not respond to inquiries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miller contends the park service \u201chas never taken an environmental position in their entire history\u2014we\u2019ve had to sue them the entire way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Center for Biological Diversity, he said, will intervene in two new lawsuits against the park: one brought by ranch workers set to be evicted due to the recent settlement, and another brought by remaining ranchers seeking to preserve agricultural use in the park. \u201cWe are not going to allow a settlement between them and Trump\u2019s Department of Interior.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ranchers say they were pressured to accept the January settlement and keep quiet about the process, which they say was negotiated behind closed doors by The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit powerhouse that raised a reported $30 million for the buyout. Once ranchers agreed to leave, the Park Service rezoned 16,000 acres of land originally set aside for ranching as a new Scenic Landscape Zone, and handed over management of it to the Conservancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a March letter to the Center for Biological Diversity and other plaintiffs, Republican members of the House Committee on Natural Resources alleged<\/a> a \u201clack of transparency surrounding the settlement,\u201d as well as potential environmental and legal consequences. The lawmakers requested extensive discovery information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854795\"\/
The National Park Service logo is displayed at a Joshua Tree National Park visitor center in Twentynine Palms, Calif., on Feb. 20, 2025. Both Point Reyes ranchers and environmental groups accuse the agency of bias. Ranchers argue the agency’s actions violate federal law and harm the area’s agricultural heritage, while groups such as the Resource Renewal Institute say the agency’s plan fails to protect the environment and wildlife. Mario Tama\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPoint Reyes National Seashore was specifically established to protect ranchers and their lands and their livelihoods,\u201d Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chairman of the committee, told The Epoch Times, suggesting a campaign to force ranchers off the land violates the congressional mandate that founded the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawmaker expressed dismay that organic ranches, in a region recognized for regenerative agriculture, would be targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like these groups are attacking the Western way of life,\u201d Westerman said. \u201cWe want the park to remain as it was agreed upon, and I don\u2019t know an agency has the authority to come in and usurp a law passed by Congress. It\u2019s the kind of executive overreach that I think has really aggravated Americans across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pointing to efforts in states such as Montana to buy up vast blocks of grazing land and donate it to the federal government for conservation, the congressman added, \u201cThey want to create something like the North American Serengeti. And that\u2019s attacking our Western way of life. It\u2019s also attacking American agriculture and the people who actually feed the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food Supply<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After visiting bovine-themed bakeries and a feed store that moonlights as a caf\u00e9 and gift shop, visitors to Point Reyes Station can follow a winding road off Highway One to a celebrated cheese store; depending on the season, they might be greeted by a pair of silky Holstein calves, followed by the sharp smells of a working dairy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For urbanites who rarely encounter the origins of the food they eat, it\u2019s a chance to experience the elegant circuit of a local food ecosystem, a Platonic ideal of the \u201cfarm-to-table\u201d movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those critical of the Point Reyes settlement contend that what\u2019s at stake is not only the loss of the ranches and the displacement of their long-time workers and tenants, but the critical role family ranches play as stewards of the land, and as small-scale producers of high-quality food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranchers point to a declining critical mass in the industry: Farmers are aging out, demand is exceeding supply, and compounding industry pressures means more food will come from large conglomerates\u2014or from overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur neighbors and friends, their cows just left this beautiful, cool marine layer peninsula with green grass year-round, and they\u2019re in a hot loafing barn in Texas right now,\u201d said Kevin Lunny, one of six multi-generational cattle ranchers who, along with six dairies, have agreed to leave Point Reyes by next April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cattle from ranches like Lunny\u2019s, which is certified both organic and grass-fed, live their entire lives on grass and are locally marketed. \u201cThat\u2019s rare and it\u2019s hard to find, but the demand will still be there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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According to the most recent data<\/a> available, published  in 2021 by South Dakota State University Extension, grass-fed beef comprises only around four to five percent of the overall U.S. beef market, while cheap imports make up 75 to 80 percent of U.S. \u201cgrass-fed\u201d label sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe love humane treatment of animals and we like having them out on pastures, not in confined spaces. But people are still going to drink milk. They\u2019re not thinking, what kind of dairy produces this milk? They just need the milk,\u201d Lunny said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With demand exceeding supply, the animals will just be raised elsewhere, he said. \u201cThey\u2019ll be on feed in Nebraska. That\u2019s our standard model. It\u2019s making the big factory farms, the bigger industrial operations bigger, and we lose those family farms. It\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albert Straus, whose Straus Family Creamery sources from two dairies on Point Reyes, says more than 90 percent of dairies in Marin County are organic, and supply more than half of California\u2019s organic milk. But in just a few years, the county has lost more than half of its organic dairies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201dWe\u2019re now short organic milk in California and nationwide, so this loss of family farms, of the ability to produce organic milk, is having a direct impact on our ability to produce organic dairy products,\u201d Straus said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854800\"\/
Point Reyes Bay Blue, from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company in Point Reyes Station, Calif., in this file photo. Courtesy of Ellen Cronin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While American dairies generally have declined by more than 90 percent since the 1970s, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data, an estimate<\/a> by Progressive Dairy points to a 20 percent loss of organic dairy farms in the United States in the last five years alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to 2025 reporting<\/a> from the USDA, while demand for organic agriculture has grown over the past two decades, acreage has decreased in recent years, driven by a drop in pasture and rangeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result, ranchers say, is more power concentrated in the hands of large conglomerates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s getting bigger and bigger and less environmentally friendly and the quality of the milk\u2019s not as good, because organic cows have to be on pasture, but conventional cows are mostly confined in smaller areas where there\u2019s water pollution issues, air quality issues,\u201d Straus said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the first fully certified creamery in the country, Straus\u2019s dairy is a leader in organic farming; he expects to be fully carbon neutral in the next few years, and he works with other local farms toward the same goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last year, his plan was recognized by the United Nations as a global model. In October 2024, Straus joined dairy organizations worldwide in signing the Global Dairy Sustainability Declaration at the 2024 World Dairy Summit in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But environmentalists who support closure of the ranches say there is nothing sustainable about Point Reyes agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranchers and advocates who want agriculture to continue on the peninsula want to privatize the park and are averse to the idea of public lands, Miller said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing sustainable out there. I know they like to use all the buzzwords, but they were causing pretty significant environmental damage. And the park, the ecosystems and the public interest is going to be a lot better off without them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the vast majority of the park\u2019s carbon emissions coming from cattle, he said, removing the ranches will take care of around three-quarters of its carbon footprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Environmental groups argue that ranches already struggled with droughts; it was a matter of time before they folded\u2014the settlement just accelerated the timeline by offering them a way out, and nothing is preventing them from relocating to private land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Straus estimates the cost to relocate is between $5 million and $10 million per dairy, far more than the settlement will cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the problem is bigger than the individual ranches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have a list of 40 defunct dairy farms that have gone out of business and I\u2019ve not been able to relocate even one of them,\u201d he said. \u201cLand is being bought by wealthy individuals that use it as a hobby estate, even ones that have agriculture easements are not being fully utilized for food and fiber production.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States, meanwhile, is importing more food than ever, with a growing trade deficit as imports have outpaced exports over the past few years. According to a USDA report<\/a>, projected agricultural exports in 2025 are expected at $170.5 billion, with agricultural imports expected at $219.5 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, as organic acreage declines in America, global organic and transitioning land is growing, meaning the United States has slipped from its rank as a top global producer, according to the USDA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u200aWe\u2019re less food secure because we\u2019re importing a vast amount of our food,\u201d Straus said, referring to import estimates<\/a> from federal agencies that include more than half of fresh produce, the vast majority of lamb, and up to 85 percent of seafood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the United States clocked record dairy imports, while beef production is expected to decline in 2025 as imports continue to rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Shifting Paradigm<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Family ranches and dairies have been operating on the Point Reyes peninsula for longer than the state of California has existed. Since it was designated a national park in the 1960s, the abiding vision\u2014and congressional mandate\u2013has been a harmonious amalgam of private agriculture, public access, and wilderness preservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservationists say change was necessary to confront a broader, looming extinction crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854794\"\/
A farmer carries a newborn calf at his farm in Vinton, Iowa, on Jan. 11, 2024. While U.S. dairies generally have declined by more than 90 percent since the 1970s, some estimate 20 percent of organic dairy farms in the United States have been lost in the last five years. Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The idea is that the park\u2019s new management plan will lead to a larger scale restoration, \u201cto stave off the worst of the extinction crisis and biodiversity crisis that we\u2019re currently experiencing across the state,\u201d said Chance Cutrano, of the Resource Renewal Institute. He estimates about a third of the state\u2019s species are currently at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for ranchers and their supporters, this vision of a rewilded park\u2014imposed by activists viewed by some on Point Reyes as radical and out-of-touch\u2014erases human culture and history, prioritizing tourism while gutting the scenic landscape of its economic engine and life force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ranchers Nicolette Hahn Niman and Bill Niman, who were not party to the negotiations that resulted in the settlement, but are now suing the park along with another ranching family, are well-known advocates for sustainable food production and humanely raised meat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hahn Niman said she feels the push to move ranchers out of Point Reyes was motivated by a desire to end animal agriculture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She points to other initiatives, including Measure J, which sought to end<\/a> \u201cfactory farming\u201d in Sonoma County\u2014but which critics said would have put small family farms out of business\u2014as examples of a broader push to eliminate meat and dairy production altogether. Voters roundly rejected Measure J.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe same kind of work is being done here with the Point Reyes National Seashore by a sort of amalgam of groups that purportedly have environmental concerns at the top of their list, but if you look at their work and their websites and the stuff that they are always saying and doing, it\u2019s really largely driven by an animal rights agenda,\u201d Hahn Niman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A former environmental attorney who worked on industrial agriculture pollution issues with Robert F. Kennedy Jr\u2019s Waterkeeper Alliance, Hahn Niman has focused her advocacy in recent years on both humanely raised meat and defending the \u201cvalue and importance of animals in agriculture and our diets,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More broadly, in her own interactions with environmental advocacy organizations over the years, she describes a shift from animal welfare to an animal rights paradigm, in which veganism is the only acceptable answer to climate change, and any ownership of animals is a kind of barbarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She recalled discussions in 2021 over the park\u2019s management plan, during which she was seated across the table from a member of one of the conservation groups that sued the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is supposedly an environmental lawsuit. And he began talking about why they filed this lawsuit, and he really focused on the fact that 15 elk had been culled by the National Park Service.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hahn Niman said those specific elk had been culled because they were diseased, an action she describes as necessary in the management of animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cutrano, of the Resource Renewal Institute, said the motives of his organization, founded by an avid hunter and angler, were specific to years of environmental degradation the park sustained, not an anti-agriculture agenda, and that the group supports<\/a> regenerative animal management on private land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854798\"\/
Tule elk graze at Point Reyes National Seashore Elk Preserve in Point Reyes Station, Calif., on April 19, 2015. Conservationists opposed the culling of the once-endangered Tule Elk herds over competition with cattle during droughts. Ranchers said the elk were diseased and culling was necessary for animal management. Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Center for Biological Diversity views<\/a> animal agriculture, particularly dairy and meat industries, as one of the worst threats to endangered species and the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Center suggests<\/a> the solution is a reduction in beef consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nimans\u2019 attorney, Peter Prows, suggested that targeting some of the most reputable and responsible organic ranches in the country for removal was a peculiar strategy if the end goal is animal welfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy start here, why pick this as the big fight? Unless it\u2019s not about ranching but about trying to mold people\u2019s lifestyles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vision, said Straus, the dairy farmer, \u201cis to get rid of all livestock on public land. It\u2019s a vision that doesn\u2019t have people included in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I Gave My Youth\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On a Friday afternoon in March, Kathy Hunting, a Point Reyes Station resident and retired environmental health scientist, was volunteering for a local climate action organization at a fundraising party in town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said she was disappointed in the decision to phase out the ranches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m an environmentalist. And I think that this is a case of extreme environmentalism. [People] who have put the purity of the environment and tourism over people,\u201d Hunting said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u200aI believe strongly that local food systems are important for community resilience and for climate resilience. And this is destroying part of our local food system,\u201d said Hunting, a former professor with the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision to remove ranching may have been supported by thousands of people around the country, she said, but most in the local community are very much against it\u2014not least because it will displace around 100 people, many of them low-income families, from their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An employee of a local nonprofit who asked not to be identified by name told The Epoch Times, \u201cI\u2019m all for the practice of \u2018land-back,\u2019 but the decision-making happening with the ranch closures, I find it performative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both pointed to the area\u2019s housing crisis, and a wealth disparity between lower-income workers who commute to the area or live on the ranches, and those who own homes there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"image-5854799\"\/
People walk along the coast as the fog rolls in at Drakes Beach in Inverness, Calif., on Dec. 13, 2019. Philip Pacheco\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lourdes Romo, a local business owner who grew up on the Point, came to the United States from Mexico when she was 9 years old, joining her father on a Point Reyes ranch, where he worked for two decades. She stayed in the area and raised her family here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor me, this is one of the fondest memories that I have, living up in the Point. I mean, what a treasure, what a place to live,\u201d Romo said, balancing her grandson on her hip while running her home decor shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While reports have surfaced over the years of mistreatment of ranch workers, Romo said her family\u2019s experience was always positive. \u201cThey took care of our needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, there are only a dozen workers remaining on the ranches slated for closure. Along with subtenants, they have joined a lawsuit against the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past 34 years, Margarito Loza Gonzales has risen daily at 1 a.m. to milk cows on Point Reyes ranches. With his wife, who cleans the Dance Palace, a community center in town, he raised six children on the peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 58, his face is weathered and work-worn but youthful beneath a trucker\u2019s cap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNobody has a plan,\u201d he said, describing how workers were left in the dark during negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nature Conservancy has committed to raising more than $3 million to relocate workers and ranch subtenants, but Gonzales said he hasn\u2019t seen a dime of that yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey should give workers half of it now, and half when we leave, so we have something. Because otherwise we\u2019ll end up under a bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After decades of working the vampire shift, rescuing lost tourists, tending the land as if it was his own, it\u2019s a devastating blow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI gave my youth,\u201d he said, removing his cap for emphasis to reveal a smooth pate above wolverine sideburns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI gave my health. And now I\u2019m saying goodbye, after 34 years staying up all night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve been to Point Reyes several times and hiked many trails, watched elephant seals on the beach during breeding season… In my layman’s opinion the cattle ranchers coexisting was a highlight and the land and creatures were doing fine. But this is really about food and enslaving the nation’s population. Rosa Koira, who was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11843,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11841\/revisions\/11843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}