The activist groups that sued over the policies of the Point Reyes National Seashore will look to settle the matter out of court, seeking to avoid litigation with the National Park Service and coalitions of ranchers who joined the suit.
The three plaintiff nonprofits, whose leaders oppose agriculture in the park, have been battling with the federal agency for six years, alleging its plan to grant 20-year ranching leases violates federal law and fails to safeguard natural resources. Two groups of ranchers intervened in the suit in April and June, asserting their own interests, which sometimes conflicted with those of the park service. This fall, the nonprofits, ranchers and park attorneys will sit down to attempt a compromise.
“All the parties have agreed to enter into good-faith settlement discussions,” said Peter Obstler, an attorney for a group of ranchers who intervened in the lawsuit.
None of the interested parties were willing to share any of their hopes or demands for the potential agreement. Attorneys for the ranchers and plaintiffs cited the need to avoid compromising the mediation conference set for Nov. 4, and the park declined to comment.
The park’s final general management plan amendment from last fall, produced in response to a 2016 lawsuit, was already something of a compromise. To the plaintiffs’ chagrin, the park service held firm on plans to cull a free-ranging elk herd—albeit at a higher threshold than first proposed—and to extend land-use agreements with ranchers. But ranchers were troubled by a new ban on growing silage and restrictions on diversification that severely limited their ability to branch out by raising chickens or growing row crops.
This spring, after being sued again over the new G.M.P.A., Superintendent Craig Kenkel informed the California Coastal Commission that the park would hold off on the long-term leases, offering only short-term extensions, and didn’t plan to kill any elk, though the Drakes Beach herd had already exceeded its newly established population limit of 140 animals.
In trying to chip away at the policies that most concerned environmental activists, respond to water quality concerns from state regulators, and keep a decade-old promise to the Department of the Interior to extend ranching leases, the park service alienated nearly everyone.
“The claims are numerous against the National Park Service,” said Neal Desai, a senior field operations director for the National Parks Conservation Association who has followed park planning closely. “Everything could be on the table. That’s why mediation sometimes is not successful.”
Though the ranchers, activist groups and park administrators appear to be willing to resolve their disputes informally, court documents suggest that reaching a settlement agreement will not be easy. Not only do the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project allege that the park is abdicating its conservation duties and violating the intent of its establishing legislation, the ranchers are also dissatisfied with park policies.
In declarations filed in federal court, all the ranchers wrote that they had deep financial stakes in the litigation, and they expressed their frustrations with the uncertainty and instability of short-term interim leases. Individual ranchers represented by Mr. Obstler directed more specific ire at the park service and its management.
Beef rancher Julie Evans Rossotti, who operates the historic H and K Ranches with her parents, Dan and Dolores Evans, decried what she described as dysfunctional ranch management by the park since the arrival of Superintendent Kenkel in 2020. “Since the departure of [former Superintendent Cicely] Muldoon, N.P.S.’s ability to communicate with us, conduct day-to-day land management tasks and operations, and competently operate as our landlord in a manner that complies with our land rights has noticeably declined,” Ms. Evans Rossotti wrote.
Ms. Evans Rossotti’s declaration was echoed in similarly worded testimonials by dairy farmers Tim Kehoe, William Nunes and Bob McClure, who shut down his I Ranch dairy last year. Ms. Evans Rossotti wrote that park officials had failed to protect ranch core areas from “extremists who continue to harass and threaten the safety of my family and our employees,” an apparent reference to gatherings of animal-rights activists protesting elk deaths and others who have ventured onto ranches and found lease violations.
The declaration also blames Superintendent Kenkel’s administration for a “consistent failure to communicate in a timely, cogent and respectful manner with us” regarding issues like ranch infrastructure, water conservation, elk encroachments and regulatory compliance. Among the most egregious examples, she wrote, was the park’s sudden notice this spring that ranchers would be required to execute short-term interim leases instead of the promised long-term renewals.
The park will be taking heat from both sides: Mr. Obstler wrote in his brief that his clients may file crossclaims against both the plaintiffs and the N.P.S., asserting “land rights” based on leasehold interests and land-use authorizations that he argued are being infringed. In a response brief, park attorneys took no formal position on the ranchers’ intervention but questioned the assertion that they had any protectable legal interests that could be described as land rights to historic ranches that they have leased from the federal government for 50 years.
The ranching families represented by Mr. Obstler first splintered from the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association after the 2016 lawsuit. The association has taken a slightly different legal approach to fighting the new suit and has no apparent plans to make crossclaims against the park. Ranchers Richard Grossi, Gino Lucchesi, Kevin Lunny, Jolynn McClelland, Ted McIsaac, Paulette Percy and Ernie Spaletta, represented by the Oregon-based law firm the Western Resources Legal Center, assert that the short-term leases “paralyze” their operations. Ranchers are charged with maintaining their leased land and infrastructure in the park, but without long-term assurances, they suggested that they have no incentive to do so.
“Longer-term permits are necessary for continued good land stewardship, investments into capital projects (e.g., fences and ranch building repairs) and the ability for the next generation of young ranchers to be able to carry on the ranching tradition,” Mr. Spaletta, the association’s president, wrote in his declaration.
A proponent of culling and a new elk fence, Mr. Spaletta voiced alarm that any challenges to the elk culling plan could threaten his family’s dairy at C Ranch. Since two elk first appeared on the ranch in 2000, the growing Drakes Beach herd has impacted the ranch daily, he wrote, damaging fences, trampling trough pipes and eating expensive hay meant for cows.
He said any limitations to the park’s ability to manage elk would make his ranch “unworkable.” But Mr. Spaletta’s worries went beyond his own dairy. “If the elk are able to continue to access cattle pastures into the future,” he wrote, “the elk will eventually force the ranchers out of business, regardless of the duration of any leases issued to the ranchers.”
Another lawsuit against the seashore, filed by the Harvard Animal Law and Policy Clinic last year on behalf of local elk activists, is at a standstill. Since a February hearing focused on technicalities of legal standing, a federal judge has not issued a decision on whether the park has violated the law by failing to prevent elk die-offs in the Tomales Point Elk Reserve. And in May, the activists’ lead lawyer, Kate Barnekow, withdrew from the case after leaving the Harvard clinic.
Separately, the California Coastal Commission is set to review an updated version of the park’s water quality strategy in September, after finding the plan seriously inadequate three months ago. Several coastal commissioners aligned themselves with anti-ranching advocates, suggesting the state agency should reverse its concurrence with the G.M.P.A. But the commission ultimately has limited recourse to dictate the park service’s policies, and it decided to take a collaborative approach to the water-quality plan.
This story was amended on July 14, 2022 to correct the name of the law firm representing the Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association.