West Marin residents packed the Dance Palace on Saturday to express their outrage over a settlement deal that will shut down all the dairies and nearly all the ranches in the Point Reyes National Seashore, bringing a historic era to a close.
At a hastily convened town hall hosted by Rep. Jared Huffman, representatives of the county, the National Park Service and environmental groups presented the results of a three-year negotiation to resolve a lawsuit aimed at ousting commercial ranches from the park.
They described the deal, hammered out in secret and underwritten by The Nature Conservancy, as a hard-won if imperfect compromise.
But many of the more than 200 people in attendance viewed it as a sellout that would strip West Marin of its agrarian character, weaken regional food systems, undermine the local economy, drain students from local schools and leave dozens of people, nearly all of them Latino, homeless and jobless.
“You’re driving a stake through the heart of our community,” Albert Straus, president of Straus Family Creamery, said to loud applause. “We’re about to wipe out a third of the organic dairies in Marin County. This is devastating.”
In addition to the ranchers and their families, roughly 90 people live in housing in the seashore. Some work at ranches and dairies, but many work in retail establishments, medical clinics, schools and nonprofits around Point Reyes Station and beyond.
The residents did not have a seat at the settlement talks and, like many others, they only learned about the town hall, where translation was an afterthought, at the last minute. Email invitations were sent with two days’ notice, and those who received them forwarded them to others.
But within a day, more people had registered to attend than the Dance Palace could hold; with the seats inside taken, most of the ranch residents in attendance listened to the proceedings over a loudspeaker outside.
Jasmine Bravo, who grew up on ranches and now works as a community organizer for the Bolinas Community Land Trust, asked the panel a pointed question: “I’m just wondering if you all have a plan for a workforce after the residents who live on ranches have been evicted, and you lose Isabel at the clinic, and my sister at the clinic, and Gabriel Romo at the bank, and everyone who works at the grocery stores and makes your food?”

The Nature Conservancy has reportedly set aside $2.5 million in relocation funds for farmworkers and other park residents, but residents fear that won’t be nearly enough to secure housing in a town where rentals are scarce and expensive.
Many speakers were outraged that a deal that radically transforms a treasured park financed by tax dollars had been crafted in secret. Moreover, participants had signed non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements preventing them from discussing details of the mediation.
“There are so many people here today because we’re mourning the loss of something that’s been so vital to our economy, our environment and our culture,” said Andy Naja-Riese, director of the Agricultural Institute of Marin, which operates several farmers markets. “A decision was made for us, without us.”
Kevin Lunny, the third generation in his family to ranch on Point Reyes, was the lone rancher on the dias, and his testimony garnered numerous standing ovations. His family is one of 11 who accepted a buyout. They have 15 months to dismantle their operations and move out.
“It’s sad to see such a profound change in our community with almost zero community input,” Mr. Lunny said.
He said he had accepted the deal reluctantly after concluding that the ranchers were losing the support of park and county officials, who had intervened to support them in a previous suit filed by the same three environmental groups.
“This could have ended differently, but we had the wrong people in the room making decisions, and everybody else was not allowed in,” he said.
Under the circumstances, Mr. Lunny said, a buyout seemed to be the least objectionable outcome. He was grateful to the Nature Conservancy for brokering an agreement and breaking a stalemate in the talks, but said he accepted it “with the deepest sorrow imaginable.”
Mr. Lunny said he didn’t tell his 94-year-old father, who still helps with the cows, right away, and he hesitated to tell his children and grandchildren, who love the ranch.
“It’s who we are,” Mr. Lunny said. “It’s our existence. It’s our identity and we have to walk away from it. It’s enormously emotional.”

Before the talks began, he pointed out, the park service had offered the ranchers 20-year leases as part of an update to its general management plan. But the parties to the lawsuit never met in the middle, he said, with the ranchers giving up far more than the environmental groups who sued.
He challenged the sole plaintiff on the panel, Chance Cutrano of the Resource Renewal Institute, to describe what his side had conceded during the talks. He did not receive a direct answer.
“Throughout the entirety of this process, there have been a lot of heavy feelings,” Mr. Cutrano replied. “I know there’s been a lot of grieving both out at the ranches and in the community.”
He said the institute felt compelled to get involved because drought and climate change were stressing the park, the wildlife that depend on it, and the farms themselves.
“It just wasn’t a sustainable situation,” he said, echoing remarks from Michael Bell, who appeared on behalf of the Nature Conservancy.
Mr. Cutrano stressed that the agreements were voluntary and that two seashore leases and seven managed by the seashore in the neighboring Golden Gate National Recreation Area will receive 20-year terms under the deal.
“Everybody found some common ground and said this is one way that we can both create an end to conflict and forge some sort of future for the seashore that seems to be more in alignment with the ecological or environmental conditions that are changing out there,” Mr. Cutrano said.
Rep. Huffman agreed that the ranchers had made the greatest compromises but said concessions had been made on both sides. “It was not an absolute sweep for the plaintiffs,” he said, pointing out that the “absolutists” among them wanted an end to all ranching and grazing in the seashore.
Under the agreement, managed grazing will continue under the supervision of the park and the Nature Conservancy. “You have to graze if you don’t want all these lands to revert to coyote brush,” Rep. Huffman said.
Like Anne Altman, the park superintendent, Rep. Huffman stressed that the details of the settlement had been posted on the seashore’s website, although the contents of the financial agreements—which are said to total as much as $40 million—will remain under wraps.
“I’m not aware of any mediation that doesn’t have a confidentiality agreement about the mediation itself,” he said. “In terms of what’s in the settlement and how people feel about it, I don’t think there’s any restriction. Kevin Lunny just poured his heart out about this settlement.”
But Abraham Simmons, an assistant U.S. attorney who lives in Marshall, said the settlement process should have been conducted openly.
“I have been involved in federal litigation for more than three decades,” he said. “I have represented everyone from gun manufacturers to the federal government on every level, and I know this is not the way this is supposed to happen.”
He challenged the participants to release themselves from the non-disclosure agreements.
“Can we start with everyone at the table committing to signing such an agreement?” he asked.
No one answered.
Speakers representing West Marin social service agencies, community foundations and housing groups stressed that finding homes for displaced workers would be difficult. The supply of rentals in town is extremely limited and expensive, and park officials have said that federal law prohibits them from renting park properties to anyone other than employees. The county is planning to build 54 units of affordable housing in the former Coast Guard development in Point Reyes Station, but federal rules prohibit setting aside units for farmworkers.
“We as a community need everyone to come together to make sure that people who are living in the community can stay in the community,” said Sarah Hobson, executive director of the West Marin Fund and chair of a farmworker housing committee. “I just received a text from somebody who’s lived and worked on a ranch for a very long time saying, ‘We’re desperate. We don’t know what to do. We’re not being considered. Help us.’”
She chastised the event organizers for failing to adequately publicize the event to the Latino community and lamented the fact that they were not participants in the mediation.
“It’s incredibly important to give voice and leadership to those families,” she said.
The elimination of ranch housing will demand urgent and creative solutions, said Cassandra Benjamin, the interim director of housing and homelessness with the Marin Community Foundation.
“We’re going to need to change our rules and move faster,” she said. “We need to look at how to legally prioritize displaced families for the Coast Guard housing and other units. There are ways to prioritize people who are affected by eviction and homelessness and displacement.”
Other speakers said the settlement dealt a blow to an agricultural ecosystem that has been at the global forefront of sustainable and regenerative farming—an ironic outcome to a lawsuit brought by environmental groups.
“What confuses me is that the very organic dairies and ranches that were pioneers in this work to build a movement for climate-smart agriculture are now being taken away and shut down,” Mr. Naja-Riese said to loud applause. “We need to stop vilifying and attacking animal agriculture.”
Ms. Altman stressed that the new 20-year leases would provide the remaining ranches the security they need to make long-term decisions.
But David Evans, one of the two ranchers who can continue operating in the seashore, said that for him to succeed, he will need favorable lease terms. If he gets them, he can continue employing people and embracing sustainable and regenerative agriculture.
“I want to make the best of what I have,” he said. “We know how to do this. I need to be given the tools to make it happen.”
Throughout the event, emotions ran high. Kegan Stedwell of Point Reyes Station portrayed the environmentalists and politicians involved in fashioning the settlement as outsiders who don’t understand the local impacts of their decisions.
“You can come in here from your ivory towers, talk about how you love to recreate here, but the people who live here know the hardest-working people in this land are our ranchers,” she said. “We support multi-generational ranching. We support the families and all those people who work there, because we drink the food. And for all of you who had half-and-half in your coffee this morning, I hope you understand you’ve just taken a third of the production out from this area. And if you think your half-and-half comes from Whole Foods, we have something to tell you.”
Only one person in the crowd voiced support for shutting down commercial agriculture in the park.
“Nobody is vilifying anybody,” said Margo Wixsom of Inverness. “Nobody’s against anybody. Nobody is trying to do any harm to anyone else.”
Water testing has shown elevated E. coli levels at several locations downstream of ranches and dairies in the park, she said, praising the environmental groups seeking to restore the park’s habitat and protect its wildlife.
West Marin’s ranchers are not victims, Ms. Wixsom said, but rather receive significant financial largesse from the county through tax breaks and agricultural easements. “Let’s not confuse facts with mythology,” she said, chastising farmers for failing to repair dilapidated farmworker housing.
As they develop a habitat restoration plan, the park service and the Nature Conservancy will consult with the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, a federally recognized tribe that has a co-stewardship agreement with the park. No one from the tribe appeared at the town hall.
But other Coast Miwok descendants did. Theresa Harlan, the adopted daughter of the Tamal-ko family that was the last to live in the seashore, said park officials should consider the views of Indigenous people who are not members of the rancheria.
“I feel the pain for the ranchers, because that was the pain our family felt when we were kicked off without any say,” she said.
Dean Hoaglin, one of several members of the Coast Miwok Tribal Council to attend the town hall, said it was heartbreaking that 11 multi-generational families would soon be leaving the park.
“We want to support those ranchers,” he said. “Everybody has a vested interest in making Marin County as beautiful and sustainable as it should be and has been. Why are we changing that?”