I have several questions concerning ongoing allegations and other issues regarding ranch operations within the Point Reyes National Seashore.

First, housing. One of the problems with shutting down the ranches that would impact our community the most is the affordable housing that the ranches provide for non-ranch workers. I’m not sure it is strictly legal for the park to be renting ranch housing to non-ranch workers, but I gather that a significant number of our community members are using this housing. Could the park close the ranching operations but continue renting ranch housing to current non-ranch workers, and perhaps even expand the affordable housing opportunities if far fewer ranch workers are required?

On a related note, how many undocumented immigrant workers are housed and working on the ranches? Is the park turning a blind eye and violating its own laws by allowing the ranch operators to continue this longtime practice? Can the ranches operate at all without an underpaid, illegal workforce?

Another related question is: When the ranches are finally closed to ranching operations, could current ranch workers be employed and housed as part of the long-term land restoration processes that will be required going forward?

If housing in the park is lost and ranch-worker families move away to other opportunities, we stand to lose the children who fill our schools. Our schools have always followed population trends, opening and closing with natural demographic shifts. But there is a long way to go before these trends are at all clear.

Another issue concerns erosion. I have carefully examined a lot of the ranchlands on the outer point for ongoing erosion problems. Most of the erosion is occurring around the many dams that have been built, some of them decades old. Almost all the dams I’ve inspected have large, un-restored bulldozer cuts where the material to make the dam was carved out of adjacent hillsides. Most of these are badly eroding, as are poorly engineered roads that provide equipment access to the sensitive canyons and valleys that stock ponds are built in. 

Furthering the erosion impact are the deeply rutted networks of paths that cows repeatedly follow to get down to the water and back up to their grazing fields. The neglect of these scars among the ranch operators appears universal. This is where you see the “use it up while it’s still here” attitude of our modern agricultural culture. There has been more erosion in the last 100 years than during the 10,000 years of Native American occupation and use. Is it possible to run these ranches profitably without ignoring these long-term costs? I don’t think humanity and the earth can afford to ignore them any longer.

Then there’s ranching infrastructure. For years now, I’ve read claims from pro-ranching advocates that the park ranches are critical to the whole Marin County ranching community, helping keep the overall infrastructure viable and economically feasible. I’ve inquired but have found no serious accounting for this claim. I think it is typical misinformation that gains credibility by continuous repetition. I think the park ranches are actually insignificant to the overall ranch economy, especially if you don’t define the industry along county boundaries. The non-park ranch lands of Marin flow seamlessly into adjoining counties that have larger agricultural industries and support the required infrastructure that is shared with Marin ranches. I think this is a non-issue. 

Next, fences. A corollary to the erosion problem is the proliferation of barbed-wire fences. The park is paying for the installation of ever more fences in a laudable effort to keep cattle out of sensitive marshlands and waterways and away from cliff edges. There are already miles of fences crisscrossing grazing areas. The whole outer coast, from Muddy Hollow to the lighthouse and up to Pierce Point, is sliced up by networks of fences, yet their maintenance is poor and inconsistent, and cows get into the boggy areas anyway. Is it even possible to run cattle ranches in complex lands like these without cows breaking out of containments?

Finally, the vision. Imagine the seashore with no fences or cattle, and with tule elk free to roam and expand up to their carrying capacity. What would that look like? The land would return to a patchy mosaic of woody chaparral, open meadows and slowly encroaching forest edges—more or less the way it was for the last 100,000 years, and much like the Pierce Point enclosure has become. To my eyes and soul, this wildness—not the artificially maintained open fields we see as a result of overgrazing—is the definition of beauty. We’ve used up the earth. We’ve depleted its resources and exhausted the land. We are causing climate change. It is time to reduce our impact and claw back a little healthy wildness.

Richard Vacha lives in Point Reyes Station, where he runs a tracking school.