Is it necessary that I emphasized the person in question is a local resident?  You tell me.  Although this is a national seashore, the ranchers and ranching advocates usually take the stance of this being a local issue and that the opinions that differ from their own must be from "outsiders".  

This national seashore belongs to all the people of the United States of America, not the private businesses operating within at our expense, but that's beside the point.  The locals don't agree with the ranchers either and slowly they are emerging from the cloud of fear and intimidation that the ranchers have cast over this community.  

This letter to the editor at Point Reyes Light was submitted by a Point Reyes Station resident and is as good as I've seen in a while.  I am sharing it here so more people can read the words of Richard Vacha. 

"With the delay in negotiations over ranching in the national seashore, I decided it was time I made some public remarks about the issue. A hike out to the Drakes Bay headlands in a winter rainstorm is heartbreaking. Erosion is severe and there is only the most cursory attempt to control it. Overused cattle trails have turned into deeply eroded gullies washing down precious soils that clog up the most sensitive wetlands. 
Fencing is haphazard and overgrazed fields are like deserts compared to the mixed meadows and chaparral. The ground is trampled by 2,000-pound cows, ripped up, laid bare, heavily suppressed and cut up by sprawling mazes of old ranch roads. Adjoining off-limits areas show wildly more abundance at all levels of life as the very ground itself begins to relax and heal.
Ranching in the park has never been a truly sustainable practice. The operations depend on constant financial assistance from the government, ever-deferred maintenance, undocumented immigrant labor, substandard housing conditions, subsidized property leases, favorable taxation, overgrazing, toxic runoff and consistent violations of the limits placed on them. It’s no different from average farming practices all over the earth, but this is a national seashore.
Food production as a rationale for keeping the ranches is a red herring, as it was with the oyster farm. With roughly 1 billion acres of farmland in America, the seashore ranches are a drop in the bucket. Too sensitive and remote to farm sustainably, they are marginal agricultural lands at best. Food insecurity for the global human population is not due to a lack of food but to wealth disparity and overpopulation. 
Ranchers claim a historical legacy, but isn’t it obvious that the real legacy and history belongs with the Miwok and the wild animals who were here first? The Miwok were the true stewards of the land.  If you grew up thinking that farms are a picture of a healthy landscape, you are biased. Take a closer look and you’ll see it is not so good. The ranches have inflicted more damage in 150 years than the Miwok did in their 10,000 years. 
And Native peoples didn’t just go poof and disappear. Their land was taken. Removal by taxation was one of the great tricks played on the remaining few who hadn’t died from our diseases, though legalized genocide was the rule in much of early California. Many of the ranch structures are built atop ancient sites that have never been properly studied. 
We have a grave responsibility to protect the earth. This is our true legacy. We should be proud and protective of the simplest of concepts for this park: clean water, clean land, intact ecosystems and the freedom to wander in unspoiled, well-protected wildness. But current administrators of the seashore ignore obvious violations. Recently, when staff were shown photographs of cows in off-limits wetlands, their reaction was anger that the photographer might have trespassed in sensitive areas and they claimed that creeping sand dunes were making it hard to keep fences up. I’ve hiked that area for over 20 years, and I’ve never seen any effective effort to contain the cows. 
Profitability apparently precludes maintenance and responsible farming. And how is it possible that administrators were unaware of failed septic systems on the ranches, one draining directly into a cow pond, or the garbage and machinery dumps in hidden ravines? On top of this outrageous neglect is credible evidence that the ranches cost the park at least a million dollars a year to maintain.
Then there are the tule elk. I consider them to be a distraction, even though they have brought a global spotlight to the environmental violations. It is simply two agencies pursuing contradictory goals without coordinating the inevitable results. The preservation side attempts to forestall the disaster of our impact on the land, while the ranching lobby exerts its will through the park administration. Without extreme culling practices, the elk will expand and conflict with cattle. Simple as that. They are inherently incompatible.
In another 10 or 20 years, I expect the ranches to be gone, or at least seriously cut back to sustainable but financially unviable levels. They just don’t make sense anymore. And no matter how soon they are shut down, it will take many decades of persistent work to restore the damaged land. I apologize to all those who have a stake in the ranches, but no one is owed a living. In America, we go out and find something that needs doing and we do it. But we must do it as responsibly as possible, tending the world for long-term abundance. That is true freedom.
In a small community like ours, respect for each other is what makes us who we are and life good. However much I disagree with others, I try to treat them with respect, and I hope for the same in return. If you are among those who like to imagine punching someone you disagree with, just ask yourself first: Who am I and who do I become if I start down that road? The essence of American democracy is the right to express an opinion in a peaceful society. "
Richard Vacha is a Point Reyes Station resident and the founder of the Point Reyes Tracking School.

The vast expanse of these ranches that have reduced a once biodiverse paradise into fields of death makes me wonder what a recovery program could do. Keep in mind I'm only driving by ONE of the massive ranches in this clip.

In Point Reyes, even those who fancy themselves to be wildlife advocates have drank too much rancher Joonaid over the decades.  Those who have been indoctrinated with rancher lies will repeat the fable that ranchers were promised to be able to stay in the seashore.  This is simply untrue as the video below details.
Gordon Bennett was pressured into silence from the ranching community back when he was actively reporting their violations.  So what has caused him to suddenly become noisy again, but this time advocating for ranchers?
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The announcement from the park service proposing to take down the elk fence has many people excited, but is it good news?  Is it even a real possibility or just another way to distract citizens from continuing their pressure on the park service?
​Filmmaker Skyler Thomas explains all the concerns associated with this announcement.

With admitted cynicism, there's a good chance the fence coming down means the elk will go from starving to death to being shot.  In Point Reyes National Seashore, as long as the ranchers remain, the elk will always face different versions of death.

Re: NPS’s Water Quality Strategy; Agenda Item CD-0006-20 (NPS, Point Reyes
GMPA); Hearing on September 8, 2022

Dear California Coastal Commission:

I have a question for the California Coastal Commission.  Why is there a sense that the ranchers (and park service staff) are owed another chance?  Just answer that question.  What is this foregone conclusion based on?  It seems predetermined that we the public always owe ranchers, no matter what it is they have done and no matter how long they have been doing it.  

Let’s be very clear about something.  Over the last several decades as Point Reyes National Seashore made headlines for its water contamination, as ranching violations and shocking abuses to the land were revealed by citizens (not the park service) the ranchers themselves were NOT oblivious to these issues.  These were not oversights.  These were not accidents.  On the contrary the ranchers were heavily engaged in their ongoing marketing campaign of being stewards of the land…small, local, organic, responsible, loyal, etc.  

If any of those descriptive marketing words just mentioned in the paragraph above actually applied to the reality of these ranchers, then none of these violations would exist.  Maybe some small issues here and there, but we are instead talking about violations that make one scratch their heads in disbelief.  Responsible stewards would be out testing their own water and voluntarily contacting the CCC, Park Service, the county, etc. to find ways to make improvements rather than waiting to be shamed by citizens who took it on themselves to show the reality of the situation.  No, these are instead people who chose the path of getting away with as much as they can as long as they can. This behavior is that of spoiled, entitled children who have never been spanked.  The ranchers behave as though they operate with impunity, and with good reason, for indeed it seems that they do. 

Reading historical documents over the last four years I noticed that the ranchers often refer to themselves as “loyal”.  The “loyal dairy ranchers of Marin.”  What does that mean, anyway, loyal?  Loyal to who?  These people engage in a for-profit business that hurts the land, water, plants, taxpayers, and animals all to put money in their own pockets.  They are loyal to themselves and themselves alone.  

We should be discussing reparations.  We should be discussing how much money the ranchers will pay back to the citizens while they pack up and finally leave.  We should be discussing how quickly they should be forced to exit to any of their multiple other ranches waiting for them outside the seashore.  We should be discussing how much of the restoration process the ranchers will fit the bill for once nature finally has a chance to heal in their absence.

But instead we are discussing whether or not to put any limitations on their next reward.  Yes, we continue to reward the spoiled child and, like a parent in denial, claim that things will get better.  Or even worse, claim that nothing is wrong.

Perhaps worse than the ranchers themselves are those who supposedly manage the ranchers.  Yes, for those who have forgotten, the ranchers are lessees under the management of lessers and the lessers are the Point Reyes National Seashore Park Service.  In this case we can summarize “management” as turning a blind eye to violations while making excuses for the violators.  The violations that are so egregious that they make the news are NOT the only violations.  No, there is a seemingly bottomless pit of them as I have discovered by perusing documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and there are numerous more waiting to be found although the park service is illegally refusing to release these.  As for the violations that I have read, these appear to have all gone unpunished other than receiving a phone call. 

I’d like to share one moment from my 2.5 hour phone interview with the Park Service's outreach coordinator, Melanie Gunn.  After questioning Melanie about some of these violations (and she even volunteered to tell me about other ones) her response was, “You have to remember how long these people have been here and that they still think this is their land.”  Tell me, whose job is it to make sure the lessee is aware that they are the lessee?  Correct, that would be the manager.  But this manager would rather make excuses for the tenant rather than evict the tenant.  Heck, this manager won’t even make the tenant pay for punching holes in the wall of the rental unit.  
As for the embarrassing excuse itself, are we really supposed to believe that after receiving a multi-million dollar payout and then signing new leases and operating permits each and every time these permits and leases need to be renewed, that these people actually think they still own the land?  These same people who pay lobbyists to get their LEASES extend don’t know that they are lessees?  How pathetic of an excuse is that?  And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is the sort of excuse that the park service comes up with. Yes, the very people you are pretending we can trust to do better in future.

‘Better.’ What does that mean?  Considering that the water quality is already the worst in the state we can only go up, right?  Considering that everyone who has ever worked for the Department of the Interior in some capacity has looked at Point Reyes and said to me, “This is the most abused, mismanaged land I have ever seen,” I guess we can only go up.  Hurray, how inspiring!  The bar has been set so low by the ranchers and their buddies, the defunct Park Service, that it will actually be hard to do worse.  So in a few years, if indeed any improvements do take place, perhaps this National Seashore will only be the second most polluted location on the west coast and only a few more threatened species will have disappeared.  Let’s all cheer for the victory.  

Put your fear of or loyalty to the ranchers aside for a moment and take a good look at who you are giving your blessing to.

While droves of wildlife die in horrific ways the park service constantly tells the public that they are actively monitoring the situation.  The last several years are riddled with published quotes from the park service assuring the public how actively they monitor and manage Point Reyes.  So if they already have been actively monitoring, on what grounds does the CCC, or anyone, think the park service can improve?  They already claim to be putting in the work.  Mind you, that every violation I read about in the FOIA papers was initially reported by a citizen.  A birder, a hiker, etc.  NOT the “actively monitoring park service”.  Even the violations so terrible that you can read about them in the news weren’t found by the park service.  

I’ve been documenting the damage caused by the ranchers and the suffering of the wildlife in Point Reyes National Seashore for the last four years.  Never once have I encountered a park service staff member out in the field.  Not once.  Not even using my zoom lens to scan the horizon for anyone.  Not once.  Nor have any of my colleagues.  How’s that even possible?  One would think it must happen at least once, if not to me, then to someone else since the park service is out there actively monitoring.  No, the park service staff only appear when it is time to police the citizens of the United States when those citizens have the gall to hold protests about what is taking place in the park that THEY own, not the ranchers.  

So, CCC, somehow you expect the park service to do a better job even though they claim they have already been doing a great job.  You expect the ranchers to do a better job even though they are currently hailed as “models for agriculture and nature coexisting.”  Both parties involved already claim to be doing a great job, in fact, to hear their public comments, nothing is even wrong.

This blind hope that things will improve is a farce. The mindset that they deserve another chance to improve is a farce.  Even giving this proposed plan a moment of consideration indicates that the CCC bows to the power of the ranchers and the politicians the ranchers control, the same way the park service does.  

With that in mind let me share another moment from my conversation with Melanie Gunn.  I said, “How can you expect the behavior to improve if you don’t ever hold them accountable?”  She replied, “We have tried, but when we try to come down on the ranchers the politicians come down on us.”  

And there you have it.  The bottom line.  This isn’t about whether or not the ranchers will improve or whether the park service will improve, this is about the fact that the ranchers, supposedly harmless little families, do in fact control politics.  This isn’t about science.  This isn’t about the water quality tests.  This isn’t about conducting studies on native species populations.  This isn’t about measuring residual dry matter on ranch land or making sure that more massive landfills aren’t dug in the future.  This is about people who have too much power and have abused that power for too long.  Please, CCC, be a source of inspiration for those still fighting the good fight.  The evidence against the ranchers is overwhelming.  The damage is overwhelming.  The historical evidence that nothing will improve is overwhelming (and even if it did improve it would still be bad for the land and water and wildlife).   You, CCC, can show the public that you care to restore health to the land of Point Reyes National Seashore simply by using the science and data in front of you to do what it is that data says you should do.  Politicians and ranchers be damned, DO THE RIGHT THING!

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#CCC #californiacoastalcommission #water #waterquality #pointreyes #ranchers #california #dairy #marincounty #pointreyesnationalseashore

Does it matter what his credentials are? Does it matter what the history books say? Does it matter what physical evidence is set before your eyes? Probably not if your morals are dictated by selfish gluttony. But here's the data for those willing to learn.

​#dairy #ranching #regeneration #regenerativegrazing #ranchingmyths #juddhowell #drhowell #thecostofmeat #suffering #coexistence #watchinghumans #skylerthomas #thecoexistenceinitiative

It’s strange to hear people state that Marin’s ranches should receive public funding because they are sustainable businesses worthy of saving.  This always struck me as an oxymoron.  Sustainable businesses shouldn’t rely on outside funding.  
In contrast to being self-sufficient, these ranches receive federal subsidies, state grants, state and federal bailouts, the use of incredible amounts of land, and grandfathered water rights for the land (which essentially means they get to use copious amounts of water for their businesses without paying for it while operating in a drought state).  As if all that wasn’t enough, these ranches also apparently need multi-million dollar conservation easements to help them keep operating (enter MALT and Measure A). 
At what point do you finally realize you are using the definition of UNSUSTAINABLE to describe sustainable businesses?
If in fact these businesses are struggling I gotta ask, how many generations are required for these people to finally figure out a good business model?  Why is it our responsibility to bail them out?  What other businesses do you know like that?
The reality is that these businesses were never sustainable, but they had access to plentiful resources thus they could operate in an unsustainable manner and still be profitable.  Mother earth has finally reached the point of not being able to handle the constant abuse and therefore these businesses need even more financial help (trucking in water, drought disaster relief, etc.).  Maybe instead of continuing to spend tax dollars keeping businesses that hurt the planet going it's finally time to look at what should replace those ranches.
#sustainable #ranches #unsustainable #economicdrain #ranching #landabuse #cattle #animalagriculture #MALT #MeasureA #conservation #conservationeasement #ranching #marincounty #cattle #livestock 

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Many people believe a consequence of not funding private ranches with millions of public and private dollars will be for that ranch land to be turned over to urban developers.  

First, this is not a real threat.  Zoning laws prevent such development from taking place.  However, that’s not the topic of focus for this post.  

I’m curious why we must live under the cloud of threat that these so-called “stewards of the land” would choose to doom the land to such development?  The people who love the land and have a connection with the land are willing to doom it for a payout?  Hmmmm.

Next, why do we think the fate of land must exist on only these two extremes?  Why do we perceive no other options?  The argument is always proposed as “It’s either ranching or skyscrapers, wouldn’t you rather have the open space of ranching?”   Make no mistake, this land is highly desirable and many would-be buyers are interested in doing good things with the land, such as natural restoration.  

I happen to be familiar with a recent purchase of ranch land in Marin that fits the scenario I just described.  The buyer was required, as part of the zoning law, to continue with agriculture of some form on the land while also being prohibited from subdividing it into multiple housing developments.  So we can put this myth of development to rest. 

Making the scenario above even more interesting is the fact that the ranch had already received a multimillion dollar MALT easement.  Remind me again what the importance of those easements was…wasn’t it to encourage the ranchers not to sell?   With this one example we already see evidence that( A.) The land is already protected from urban development and (B.) these easements don’t prevent the ranches from selling anyway. 

Let’s go back to pretending that the myth of urban threat is real.  These are all heralded as multi-generational family ranches so I’ve got to ask, how many generations are required to get your business to be self-sustaining?  And after decades of using up the land and water to yield private income the final act is to sell the land off to developers?  That’s pretty messed up.  Anyone with an ounce of ecological sensibility can see that this land is abused and degraded.  They used it for all it could give and now that earth is finally throwing in the towel the ranch owners final act is to finish the land off?  

I’ve been examining urban sprawl in California for the last few years and this is absolutely a massive environmental threat so I’m thankful for conservation efforts that protected places like Marin from suffering the same fate.  But the existence of the ranches is not the savior. After all, it is the ranch and farm owners who are selling to these urban sprawl developers.  The practice of ranching simply prepared the land for development by killing off nature ahead of time.  Ranching is the disease that cripples the land.  Urban development is the death blow that follows. 

#MALT #MeasureA #conservation #conservationeasement #ranching #marincounty #cattle #livestock #urbansprawl 

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In order to help her fellow board members and ranching buddies procure more riches from the tax payers, Phyllis Faber is back telling lies to the media. Dear Ms. Faber, please take us on a tour of one of these flourishing ecosystems on MALT land!

​#MALT #RAGG #Marincounty #ranching #unsustainable #ecosystems #nature #agriculture #animalagriculture #livestock #resources #water