The Environmentalists Keep Pushing

We visited the Tomales Bay Oyster Farm in
2013 before it lost its lease.

The Point Reyes National Seashore was established in 1962 to preserve wilderness area threatened by development. 40 miles north of San Francisco, its 71,000 acres along the Pacific coast comprise one of the most beautiful areas in Northern California.

Under the Obama Administration environmentalists killed the 100-year-old oyster farming operation in Point Reyes National Park.

Now environmentalists want to eliminate the ranch and dairy operations that were explicitly permitted under the 1962 act. [bold added]

Tule elk at Point Reyes (Chron photo)

The suit takes issue with a policy that permits native elk to be killed, in order to keep elk populations in check and make room for cattle, as well as with dirty runoff from ranches that threatens the health of local waterways...

Having completed years of analysis and public hearings, park officials say they’ve completed the proper review and paperwork.

The newly updated plan allows commercial dairies and beef ranches to continue operating, maintaining past livestock numbers of about 5,500 total cows and bulls.

The ranches, officials say, are part of the park’s history and culture. Much of the national seashore, established in 1962, was acquired from ranching families, and the park’s enabling legislation gives administrators the ability to continue the practice.

There's no question that cattle operations, oyster farming, and other commercial enterprises such as mining and logging conflict with wilderness esthetics.

However, in the creation of national parks agreements have to be struck with private interests in order to get them not only to go along but to agree to sell their properties to the government. In return there are formal and informal understandings that the businesses can continue on or adjacent to park properties.

In fact one of the original goals of the environmental movement was to demonstrate how businesses could still prosper while preserving nature. That balanced viewpoint is long gone, and the movement has been co-opted by extremists, who, for example, want to blow up the Hetch Hetchy reservoir that provides water for millions of Californians in order to re-create a beautiful valley that few will see.

First with the oyster farming and now with ranching and dairy, the new environmentalists' ultimate goal is clear: they want to get rid of businesses that long predated the park. Through a mix of regulatory pressure (tougher pollution regulations) and explicit legal authority (not renewing a lease) they will get their way.

Ironic footnote: tule elk, which had numbered in the hundreds of thousands, were believed to be hunted to extinction in the 19th century when cattle rancher Henry Miller found and protected a tiny herd in 1874. 22 herds, totaling 5,700 elk, now exist in California, with nearly 600 living in Point Reyes National Seashore.