The National Park History
There is much controversy created over a simple 4-page document. In 1962 Congress passed Public Law 87-657 to create the Point Reyes National Seashore, as part of a nationwide public gift to preserve coastal seashores on all 3 coasts. By 1972 funds from Congress paid the full fair market value to purchase all the ranches that now make up our park. As a generous offer to ease the transition, Congress added in Section 6.a that ranchers could lease back “the right of use and occupancy… for noncommercial residential purposes for a term of fifty years.” That temporary lease gift allowed 1/3 of the park to stay fenced off from recreational use, and in the case of elk, to create a wildlife enclosure, an odd choice in contrast to the wording of the Act to conserve lands, “to save and preserve, for purposes of public recreation, benefit, and inspiration.” So, anyone who argues about the actual lease terms, questioning that ranchers would not eventually leave the park, have simply not read that 4-page Congressional document.
In return for those generous terms, ranchers sued for extended leases to exceed the 50-year limit, often claiming that they needed 20-year leases to make a profit. Yet, in those 50 years there has been little stewardship and consistent violation of lease terms. Documentation of lease terms violations revealed pollution and disregard for public lands; illegal bulldozing of a streambed, overgrazing, the largest illegal dump in Marin County at Home Ranch, cows trampling endangered snowy plover habitat on Abbotts Lagoon, raw human sewage in unmaintained septic systems at 12 ranch building sites, and disregard of lease terms to regularly maintain all buildings, creating dilapidated and unsanitary ranch worker housing over those 50 years.
The Problem With Ranching in a National Park
In 2012 the commercial lawsuit to extend the Drakes Bay Oysters lease lost, and the public won, but only after $4.5 million clean-up of the toxic commercial waste left behind. Journalist Summer Brennan wrote a book, Oyster War, recounting the conflicting stories as she eventually sides with the National Park in the clarity of their intent to follow The Wilderness Act to restore Drakes Bay. Lunny knew about the wilderness designation at the beginning of his 7-year lease, enjoyed $1.5 million in annual revenue, then had the Koch Brother’s legal group, Cause To Action, pay his legal fees and fund trips to Washington, hardly the poor victim with funding from hefty lease revenues and national lobbyists.
The consistent pollution by ranches in the park has been the significant factor initiating lawsuits to protect public lands by enforcing EPA, CA Coastal Act, and Wilderness Act regulations. State water quality monitoring ended in 2012 when one dairy at Point Ryes was designated as the most toxic E. Coli site in the entire state. Due to ranch lobbyist pressures state water testing was discontinued the next year. Environmental groups funded a rigorous water quality study in 2021-22 that established significant pollution from ranching at multiple sites around the park. Geoenvironmental Engineer Douglas Lovell’s report studied all the dairies in the park with a large enough sample size to meet current state protocols for water testing. The Center for Biological Diversity conveyed that “Drakes Bay, Drakes Estero, Kehoe and Abbotts watersheds contained bacteria concentrations exceeding state standards. Some bacteria concentrations were more than 170 times the health-based standards for fecal coliform. The study identified discharge of cattle manure as the cause of the pollution. This new report expands on Lovell’s 2021 Water Quality Report, which found unsafe concentrations of fecal bacteria contamination of surface waters that significantly exceeded state water quality criteria. Western Watersheds Project commissioned Lovell to sample five sites that the National Park Service had ceased monitoring in 2013.”
The Cost to Taxpayers
In addition to the question of pollution, the financial reality of ranch lease cost taxpayers money, while substantially profiting private ranchers. One ranch lease includes over 1,000 acres with five houses and grazing rights for 280 cattle for less than $2,000 per month, with most of those houses also generating substantial ranch worker rental income. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) points out that private businesses pay no property tax on those leases while generating substantial revenue. Pacific PEER Director Jeff Ruch adds that “leases cost taxpayers around $3 million every year, noting the annual lease revenue is approximately $800,000 short of covering the seashore’s estimated costs for administering the leases.” Ruch makes the essential point that “Taxpayers should not be obligated to subsidize these private businesses.”
The 2022 Lawsuit Settlement
The 2025 settlement buyout is the culmination of confidential negotiations between plaintiffs (5 environmental groups) and defendants (ranchers) in the 2022 lawsuit that challenged the National Park Service's plan to continue extensive cattle ranching within the park, arguing that it does harm to the environment with detrimental impacts on wildlife - tule elk populations. Water quality testing established detrimental impacts from cow manure runoff into park waterways, habitat degradation from cattle grazing, that contribute to climate change impacts amplified by ranching.
Financial buyouts, funded by The Nature Conservancy, included 11 voluntary decisions by ranch families to retire 12 ranch operation leases. The National Park Service (NPS) issued a Revised Record of Decision (RDD) to its general management plan that included 28,000 acres of former and current ranch and dairy lands in the park and north district of Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGRA). NPS will rezone 16,000 acres of former ranch lands into a Scenic Landscape zone, “prioritizing resource conservation activities. Under the revised plan, tule elk will be allowed to roam freely within the national seashore and expand their numbers without a population cap.” Families have 15 month from the signing date of the settlement to end ranch operations and vacate leased buildings. An additional $2.5 million of Nature Conservancy funding is pledged to assist the approximately 90 people from leased ranch worker housing to find new housing. Marin County has also pledged funding an resource service to assist ranch workers in the park.
In a hypocritical move, some ranch families, at the eleventh hour of the settlement, suddenly claimed to champion the ranch workers they have been quietly exploiting for the last 50 years; substandard housing from neglecting lease terms to maintain housing, sewage spewing at 12 sites, low wages, no healthcare or labor benefits, and pressure from ranchers not to report the delinquent housing conditions to NPS. During COVID, one rancher refused to allow his ranch family with children to install an Internet antenna on their trailer, forcing the family to drive daily to the local library for their children’s schooling during those difficult years, a substantial hardship. Then the same rancher installed a premium trailer for his own daughter to live on at the site, while allowing ranch families to live in substandard housing. Andrew Giacomini claims to have $2.5 million of private funding to assist ranch families to file the eleventh hour lawsuit, dangerously drawing national attention to several of the immigrant families who live on park ranch leased housing. One wonders why, if Giacomini cares so much, he would not simply use that private $2.5 million to match The Nature Conservancy transition funding.
When we examine the simple facts of the park history, the historic lack of stewardship and pollution generated by ranchers in our national park, exploitation of ranch workers, and the annual cost to taxpayers to fund this private business scheme on public lands, the recent settlement of lease buyouts funded by The Nature Conservancy is a magnificent win-win for the environment and for ranchers.
Margo Wixsom
Author & Artist
Box 665
Inverness CA 94937-0665