Until now I have declined to comment on the Tomales Point elk fence plan, reluctant to share my fear that the anti-ranching-in-the-park folks are succeeding in their efforts to eliminate dairies and ranches in the Point Reyes National Seashore. But after listening to Senator Mike McGuire’s recent town hall on wildfire preparedness and prevention, and knowing the difficulty of reversing the flight of insurance carriers from California, I am speaking up. Serious wildfire conditions in the park would be compounded by the end of grazing in the pastoral zone if the dairies and ranches close. With strong coastal winds during fire season, that could impact many of us living near and east of the park, including the San Geronimo Valley. It does not have to be this way.
Under its 1998 Tule Elk Management Plan, the park moved some elk from a crowded Tomales Point to the wilderness area south of the dairies. Today it proposes to replace that management plan with a new one, remove the elk fence and allow elk to migrate onto the adjacent organic dairy and further south. The Tomales Point Area Plan provides a piecemeal proposal for managing a small portion of the Phillip Burton Wilderness and the elk confined in it. It appears that the ranches and dairies are being used as pawns to settle litigation over the park’s management failures.
The park could and should revise its proposal. The role of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria should be expanded to include restoring the historic Native American landscape in the southern wilderness and assisting with elk management in that area using the same tools and traditional ecological knowledge proposed for use in the Tomales Point wilderness. The tribe could reduce the very high wildfire risk along the Inverness Ridge while reducing flammable brush along the coast. This would benefit communities facing intense wildfire risk. And restoring the coastal grasslands would restore historic elk habitat for excess elk from Tomales Point.
I anticipate that before the plan becomes final, the dairies participating in the confidential mediation talks will have agreed to close down. And even if the remaining ranches do not leave immediately, they will not be far behind. Removing the fence is the final blow in a battle to eliminate agriculture in the park that began as far back as the late 1990s, when most of the rights retained by the dairies and ranches at the time the government purchased their property expired.
The impacts of the drought, along with poor economic conditions for small family farms, have been compounded by the National Park Service’s failure over many years to develop competent long-term management policies. Instead, it has used piecemeal planning to justify short-term goals and has shown a reluctance to resist lawsuits by well-funded nonprofits that appear to speak for environmental interests or animal rights.
Although ranchers are respecting the confidentiality of the mediation, we have clues that the park is conditioning new leases on terms that are impossible to meet. For example, the chair of the California Coastal Commission, Caryl Hart, recently observed that the ranches are in a “very difficult situation.” According to Ms. Hart, the ranches cannot get long-term leases until they can “deal with water quality issues.” But after 25 years of operating with short-term leases, ranchers don’t have the finances to deal with alleged water quality issues.
There are visible changes as well. Last fall, a friend who grew up on one of the dairies described the operation as a ghost town. People who worked at the dairy for many years have found other employment, and there are fewer children from any of the ranches in local schools.
Other reports are consistent with the likelihood that the mediation is being used to negotiate the departure of dairies and ranches that are too exhausted to continue. Congressman Jared Huffman secured a $1 million appropriation for “transition assistance” for dairies in West Marin. The Nature Conservancy, long known for working with ranches and environmentalists, is participating in the mediation. And last month, Berkeley radio station KPFA aired an interview with FIGR tribal chair Greg Sarris in which he said that the “dairies are slowly going to move out.” Mr. Sarris said he was working with dairies near Tomales Point to “move out some of the cattle, cut down some of the fencing and give the elk more room to roam.”
If the dairies and ranches leave the park, lost to the park and the public will be the wildfire risk-reduction service provided by cattle grazing the grasslands. Lost to an underfunded park will be agricultural partners who can share in the labor and costs of maintaining historic buildings and the scenic landscape. Lost will be opportunities for carbon farming methods that improve the health of the soil, increase water retention and restore native grasses. And lost will be the human community that has long populated the peninsula.
Judy Teichman is a retired public law attorney who lives in Point Reyes Station.