Families have been ranching on the lush green pastures of Point Reyes, a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles north of San Francisco, since before California was a state.
But no more.
Thanks to a lawsuit filed by environmental extremists, and a settlement agreed to by the Biden administration, the land will now be rezoned as a “scenic conservation zone,” where cows are not welcome but elk can gaze free.
“It is extraordinary to have this restoration opportunity within the only national seashore on the West Coast,” Nature Conservancy Director of Protection Michael Bell said of the settlement. “It could be quite a platform for science and monitoring — and create an awesome opportunity for the expansion of that learning beyond the national seashore.”
Restoration of what exactly Bell didn’t say.
The land has been ranched by humans since at least when the Mexican government issued grants to soldiers to encourage settlement in the area. Dairy farming took off after the Gold Rush when a fast-growing San Francisco had a strong demand for fresh milk. Some wealthy San Francisco investors consolidated the land around Point Reyes before 1870 and then leased parcels of that land to immigrants, mostly from the Azores and Ireland, who built up what would become the largest dairy operation in California at the time.
These same immigrant families eventually bought out the investors, and many of them have been maintaining family-owned dairy farms in the area for generations.
“The Point Reyes ranches have anchored the West Marin community for 170 years,” historian Dewey Livingston told the Marin Independent Journal. “This is about the people who live there and have lived there for generations.”
Threatened by urban sprawl in the 1950s, the ranching families formed an uneasy alliance with environmentalists, transferring titles of their land to the federal government to prevent sales to speculators in exchange for long-term leases.
Those leases came up for renewal in 2021, and that is when the environmental activists, including the Chinese Communist Party-funded Nature Conservancy, pounced. They sued to stop the lease renewals in federal court, saying the Department of Interior failed to conduct an adequate environmental effect statement as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Specifically, the environmentalists argued that the Interior Department failed to properly consider the damage caused by dairy cows to the habitat of native elk populations.
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The litigants, including the dairy farmers, agreed to mediation, and last week, a settlement was reached that bought out the dairy farmers, ending the dairy industry on Point Reyes. It is unknown what will be done with the over 300 buildings on the federal land in dispute. Some will be turned into employee housing for the National Park Service, and most of the others will be demolished.
“We’re losing our rural character,” third-generation rancher Kevin Lunny told KQED. “We know that our agreeing to this has profound repercussions on our community. And that’s what tugs at our hearts.”