All the dairies and most of the ranches in the Point Reyes National Seashore are set to shut down following a multi-million-dollar settlement announced on Wednesday.
The landmark agreement was reached between ranchers, the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which is underwriting a plan to buy out farm leases and end agriculture in the park. Ranchers will receive a share of an estimated $40-million settlement fund in exchange for relinquishing their multi-generational operations that predate the 63-year-old park.
According to a source close to the negotiations, the settlement includes nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements, ensuring the public won’t immediately know the fine print of the deal.
The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest environmental organization, joined the settlement talks in 2023 to broker a deal between the park service, cattle ranchers, dairy farmers and environmentalists, who argue that the agricultural operations pollute the seashore’s watershed and threaten its wildlife.
The legal dispute over the 71,000-acre national seashore began with a 2022 lawsuit filed by three environmental groups—the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project—challenging the park’s amended general management plan, which would have extended ranch leases to 20-year terms. The park, which was formed in 1962 as an unlikely partnership between environmentalists and agriculturists, is one of only two sites in the national park system where private ranching is allowed.
Efforts to fund the ranch buyouts began as early as 2022. In November 2023, the conservancy convened a group of 25 prominent donors for a behind-the-scenes tour of the peninsula. The day began at the Bear Valley Visitor Center, where officials from the nonprofit and the park service welcomed guests with a presentation on the seashore’s protracted land-use conflict. They unveiled what they described as a “conservation transaction solution,” appealing to donors to help preserve the park’s ecological integrity by financing a buyout of ranch leases.
The tour group visited the Kehoe Dairy, where Tim Kehoe, a rancher whose family has worked the land for generations, shared his story. Mr. Kehoe was in the process of selling most of his herd of Holsteins to ranchers in Texas, and he described the hard calculus of running a dairy within the boundaries of a national park.
“The message they were trying to send that day was clear: The ranchers want out and T.N.C. is stepping in to help make that possible,” said one donor who attended the event and requested to remain anonymous.
The day concluded with a winding drive to the summit of Mount Vision, where donors gazed out over the windswept landscape and were invited to have a hand in shaping its future. The event marked the beginning of a fundraising campaign that continued into 2024, with the goal of raising around $40 million.
At a lavish gathering in March in the affluent town of Ross, Michael Bell, the organization’s associate director of land protection, made an impassioned appeal to donors over a spread of locally sourced fare served alongside a cocktail known as “ranch water.”
Among those in attendance were five rancher-philanthropists who own property in West Marin: Elizabeth Patterson, Sallie Calhoun, Susan Pritzker, Kat Taylor and John Wick. But six months later, the same group penned a letter to The Nature Conservancy expressing their shared concerns.
“We are a group of donors and advocates for regenerative agriculture concerned about the very real and immediate threat of losing ranching on the Point Reyes National Seashore,” the letter, sent in October, began. They proposed an alternative to the buyout: establishing a third-party entity composed of local nonprofits to manage ranch leases for the park service.
“There’s been no middle ground throughout this process,” said Ms. Patterson, a ranch owner in Nicasio who has donated millions to The Nature Conservancy, mainly through the Northern Sierra Partnership, a collaborative operating under the auspices of the conservancy. “This proposal offers a balanced solution. We need to stop framing this as a choice between a clean environment and agriculture. This is an opportunity to demonstrate that both can coexist successfully.”
Since its founding in 1951, The Nature Conservancy has wielded its financial heft to acquire land and preserve it as ecological Noah’s arks. This approach has been its modus operandi, attracting support from both die-hard tree huggers and wealthy corporations drawn to the idea of saving nature through competitive real-estate practices. The strategy is undeniably effective; last year, the California chapter alone raised over $1.5 billion.
In December 2022, Levi Miller and Mr. Bell, leaders in the California chapter, approached Ms. Patterson to discuss what they dubbed the “West Marin Project.” What began as a plan to buy out six dairies in the park soon expanded to include cattle ranches. By early 2023, they claimed they had secured commitments from several ranchers willing to sell their leases.
Requests for comment directed to Mr. Miller and Mr. Bell were referred to Heather Gately, the conservancy’s director of media and communications. In an email, Ms. Gately directed inquiries to Bradley O’Brien, who led the confidential mediation process between the park, the ranchers and the conservancy. He declined to comment.
West Marin attorney Andrew Giacomini, who is representing dozens of farmworker families pro bono, sees the conservancy’s actions as the linchpin of a devastating outcome. “They have facilitated the demise of this sector of agriculture in West Marin and the rupture of a community,” he said. His clients, who live on the park’s four dairies and 17 cattle ranches, now face the specter of losing not only their jobs but also their homes.
Efforts to give these families a voice in the negotiations have so far failed. In November, U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney denied their motion to intervene. In December, Mr. Giacomini filed suit against the park service and sought a temporary restraining order, which was denied. A hearing to reconsider the workers’ motion to intervene is scheduled for this Friday, when Judge Chesney will also review the settlement.
The Nature Conservancy’s involvement has pushed the hand of ranch owners, Ms. Patterson said. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, ranchers are left to choose between cash buyouts and enduring a landlord they describe as increasingly adversarial.
“Over the past two decades, we’ve just seen a complete deterioration of mutual respect and fair treatment by the park service,” rancher Kevin Lunny said. Locked in a series of short-term leases since 2022, ranchers are reluctant to invest in maintenance and infrastructure. Restrictions imposed by the park on herd size, improvements, pasture management and even basic activities like mowing weeds or planting silage have only deepened the rift.
The cessation of livestock grazing on the seashore’s rolling pastures could have broad ecological consequences, including the invasion of weeds and the transformation of lush grasslands into brushy landscapes. Jeff Creque, who farmed at Point Reyes for 25 years and now is a leader in regenerative farming practices, fears the land could devolve into a “poorly managed, pseudo-wilderness landscape” that undermines both natural resource management and the surrounding communities.
The park and The Nature Conservancy are evaluating alternative land management strategies for the post-farming era, including the use of a limited grazing contractor to maintain the pastureland and reduce wildfire risk.
Meanwhile, The Nature Conservancy has reportedly set aside over $2 million in relocation funds for around 75 farmworkers and other residents of the park, to be administered by West Marin Community Services. But how this money will be distributed among the dozens of Latino families remains unclear.
Socorro Romo, the nonprofit’s director, was approached last month by a representative from the conservancy about her group serving as the fund’s financial intermediary, but she hasn’t heard from the organization since. In December, a letter from a group of ranch residents published in the Light called for a far more substantial sum: $100,000 per family.
For residents like Yezenia Hernandez, one of Mr. Giacomini’s clients, the stakes are not just legal or economic, but profoundly personal. Ms. Hernandez grew up on the McClure Dairy, where her father milked cows for over 20 years. “We grew up here without wifi, cell service or video games,” she said. “Instead, we spent our time outdoors, building forts and riding bikes up and down the dirt roads. It’s an idyllic way of life I want my boys to experience.”
When the dairy shut down in 2022, her father lost his job, forcing her parents to relocate outside the park. Now 35 and a preschool teacher in San Anselmo, Ms. Hernandez decided to return to her childhood home with her husband, Louis, and their four sons. Watching her boys grow up surrounded by the same rugged beauty and simplicity she cherished as a child brings her a quiet satisfaction.
In mid-October, Ms. Hernandez attended a gathering of farmworker families at the Point Reyes Community Presbyterian Church. There, she learned about the latest developments in the legal battle and realized that a settlement that could uproot her family was imminent.
“We knew this was coming, but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly,” she said. “We thought we had more time.”
That day, Ms. Hernandez decided to join the group represented by Mr. Giacomini. “We couldn’t just sit on the sidelines and do nothing,” she said.
Her children—ages 13, 11, 9 and 7—attend West Marin School, just as she did. Every morning, they walk the same road to the bus stop that she once traversed as a child. Many of their classmates live on the neighboring ranches and dairies, though the number has dwindled with each passing year.
West Marin has been a lifeline for her family. The school provides vital support for her sons, one of whom has autism, while the others have worked through speech delays. Meanwhile, the broader community has rallied around them as they navigate her husband’s battle with stage-four cancer.
As the holidays came and went, Ms. Hernandez found herself reflecting on the steady stream of cars rolling down Pierce Point Road—a route that is typically anything but a thoroughfare. On her runs to Abbotts Lagoon and along the beach, she stops to pick up trash left by visitors, marveling at the disregard so many have for this place that’s been her home for most of her life.
“They want us out so they can have more of that?” she asked, incredulously. “The environmentalists talk about preserving this ecosystem, but aren’t the people who care about the land an inevitable part of that?”
Rep. Jared Huffman will hold a town hall on the Point Reyes National Seashore from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 11 at the Dance Palace Community Center. The event will feature Michael Bell from The Nature Conservancy, Anne Altman of the Point Reyes National Seashore, Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni, Chance Cutrano of the Resource Renewal Institute and rancher Kevin Lunny. RSVP is required here.