Big Trouble in Little Point Reyes – a Congressman comes to Point Reyes Station, CA, and some hell breaks loose
Who-da thunk that the innocuous, last-minute invitation to Congressman Jared Huffman’s hastily organized, Saturday, January 11th, 2025 “Town Hall” in the rural west Marin County, CA town of Point Reyes Station, would kick up such a crowd, such heat, and such a hailstorm of cowpies surrounding the settlement of a nearly 3-year-long lawsuit brought by 3 environmental organizations (WWP, CBD, RRI) against the National Park Service (NPS) for their mismanagement of beef and dairy ranchers and the ranchers who ranch them thar?
“There was a give on the rancher’s side, and I want to hear if there was a give on the plaintiff’s side.” – Kevin Lunny, operator of G-Ranch at Point Reyes National Seashore who is accepting an undisclosed portion of a reportedly $30 million settlement to voluntarily relinquish his lease. That large amount is being raised by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), to provide a golden parachute, a soft brown landing on the other ranchlands most of these cattle ranchers own outside the park. All but two ranchers, Dave Evans and Bill Niman, accepted the TNC’s reportedly multi-million dollar offer.
The land Lunny runs his cows on at Point Reyes Seashore is owned by the public, because he (or his father) sold already it to the federal government for millions of dollars, decades ago, in exchange for agreeing to leave the park, by approximately 1987. That, obviously, was decades ago.
But every beef and dairy rancher reneged on that original deal from which the Seashore was founded as a national park unit. Instead, ranchers dug in their boots, flexed their considerable political muscle, refused to leave and, ever since, have written and spoken a revisionist history about all this. Now they claim, against the facts and in defiance of common sense, that their being paid millions did not require them to ever leave the park. (The common sense question being: Then why were you paid milions of public tax dollars? To do what? Hand over your deeds and have the feds pay all your operating costs? WTF?)
The Congressman’s invitation to his quickly arranged January, 11, 2025 Town Hall read:
Please join Congressman Jared Huffman for a Town Hall on Point Reyes National Seashore on Saturday, January 11th from 10 – 11:30 am (PST) at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes Station. Rep. Huffman and special guests will provide information and respond to questions about recent news about Point Reyes National Seashore.
When: Saturday, January 11th Time: 10 am (PST) – 11:30 am (PST)
Where: Dance Palace, 503 B St, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956
Special Guests:
- Dennis Rodoni, Marin County Supervisor, District 4
- Michael Bell, Protection Strategy Director, The Nature Conservancy
- Anne Altman, PRNS Supt, and media relations rep Melanie Gunn
- Kevin Lunny, Rancher
- Chance Cutrano, Director of Programs, Resource Renewal Institute
Lo and behold, over 200 people jammed the town’s best meeting hall and the Dance Palace joint was jumpin’ and a-buzzin’. Some representatives of all the many parties involved in the settlement would each provide more information to the public with a run-down of the deal from their varied perspectives. On either side of Congressman-in-the-middle Huffman, sat six speakers at a dais on the stage at the front of the room. After initial comments from each, they’d take comments and questions from the assembled public herd.
The National Park Service (NPS) had been the first to break the settlement news publicly, on January 8th, 2025, via email: the 2-year-long mediation of the 3-year-long lawsuit finally bore fruit, which included several invited third parties (and some uninvited leakers and rabble rousers along the way, too). Most notable by far was the linchpin rainmaker in the pay-outs-to-get-ranchers out final deal brokered by The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
The wealthy conservation org is raising an estimated — but exact amounts will remain undisclosed — $30-40 million dollars to buy out 12 of 14 dairy and beef cow ranches at Point Reyes National Seashore. The 12 ranches include all 6 of the Seashore’s dairies, and 6 of its 8 beef ranches. All of the 12 have — and this is key to remember — voluntarily agreed to relinquish their lease agreements with the National Park Service and leave Point Reyes National Seashore within 15 months in order to receive full payment.
Two of the beef ranchers chose not to sit at the negotiating table with the TNC. One of these ranchers was here and later spoke passionately, tearfully, of not liking the hand he chose to not be dealt.
It was quickly obvious that this was going to be a 2-hour long public pressure-cooker steam-venting session for rancher supporters and ranching advocates who filled the room, outnumbering a few who identify as environmentalists (like me) who want all wild elk in Point Reyes National Park to roam free, as all wild animals are legislated to be in all national park units. And just as critically, and maddening to the madding cow fans in the room, we wild animal and national park advocates want all the thousands of beef and dairy cows removed from the park, not just many of them. And, while we’re laundry-listing, we want all 300 miles of miscellaneous wood post and wire cattle fencing removed. Ringing the multi-thousand-acre ranches, the fences are integral to these commercial, private, for-profit cattle businesses, but prevents the public from accessing 18,000 acres of the park, and another 10,000 acres of lesser known, contiguous Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) cattle pastures which are also managed by the NPS.
All 28,000 acres is public land managed by the National Park Service. Ranches currently have only leases, not deeds of ownership, and wanted 20-year lease extensions which they felt entitled to, even though they already sold the land to the NPS, received the equivalent of about $400 million of today’s dollars and have been leasing it back ever since (1962) — after reneging on the original agreement to vacate the land in 25 years, for all that dough, by 1987.
This simple reality was not mentioned once in the next 2 hours of testy testimonials and cries of unfairness and complaints about being screwed by the feds and the politicians and those darn elk-hugging environmentalists getting all the breaks from the feds. Oh, how we have such a radically different take on that view. The only difference between the two opposing and emotional views on this hot topic is only one side has corroborating documents, facts and the law.
I was sitting with an attorney friend and as much as I had to bite my tongue, I knew his being subjected to so many statements with strong emotions but few facts and no law was especially torturous. Even I know from listening to Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Constitutional scholar, in the last few years, in the face of disinformation and outright lies, America is a country founded on a Constitution, not mob rule or even majority opinion alone. And that America’s courts are supposed to follow the facts and the law.
This Dance Palace Town Hall was far from any courtroom. A large spill-over crowd of ranch advocates and ranch workers was accommodated by opening the hall’s French doors in the back, which lead to the outdoor deck (frontyard) lawn, in effect increasing the room and crowd size by about one-third.
A lot of emotion, more than a few tears, and plenty of anger filled the room and overflowed onto that front lawn, and then ricocheted back in. Commenter ire found targets everywhere, especially at 5 of the 7 panelists seated at the dais at the front of the room. These biggest targets were anchored by Congressman Jared Huffman (of the 2nd Congressional District which contains Marin County) in the center. To his left and right were The Nature Conservancy (TNC) negotiator Michael Bell who took heat for being involved as a third party; Marin County Supervisor Dennis Rodoni who caught Hell for not getting involved, somehow, earlier, and going to bat for ranchers to keep their national park leases despite that being a federal not county jurisdiction; the National Park Service’s (NPS) relatively new Superintendent, Anne Altman (alongside Melanie Gunn assigned public outreach) of the National Park Service, which is always and forever caught in the middle, getting flak from both elk and cow advocates; and the lone, lonely Chance Cutrano sitting with the only, uh, bull’s-eye on his plaid plaintiff’s shirt, representing The Resource Renewal Institute, one of the three plaintiffs in the lawsuit (along with the Western Watersheds Project and the Center for Biological Diversity) which just got resolved in the big-deal January 8th announcement.
Congressman Huffman navigated the angry, roiling waters well, as he does, absorbing some blows while expressing empathy, but also explaining to the cow-milkers in the room that the environmentalists didn’t get everything they (we) wanted either — all of which fell on deaf ears. Other targets were, as is typical in these public meetings, the system itself for, it was repeatedly claimed, shutting people out and ignoring voices. Which is of course true to some extent; not everyone who wants a seat at the table of a lawsuit — even those affecting them — is gonna get one. Chaos would ensue. That’s just the way these things (sort of) work.
When citizens file lawsuits, they become plaintiffs who get more legal and thus political power and media attention than those who don’t. For people without money or education or access, they feel shut out, and understandably so. More than one angry commenter complained that decisions being made being closed doors, or “in secret,” as several rancher-friendly reporters have put it, complaining about the standard nature of the legal mediation beast.
But the relatively wealthy, politically powerful players here today, would, with this settlement, have a direct impact on the lives of the little people. Meaning, the ranch workers who have never had their own legal leases from their rancher landlords because their rancher landlords were illegally subletting to them.
The nearly 3-year legal process (which really is a follow-up to an 8-year-old case filed by the same three plaintiffs in 2016) which, in this case, has ended by buying out the ranch worker’s employers, which may or may not put them out of a job. Ranchers could bring workers along with them to their other ranches outside the park, along with their park cows. This is one of many possibilities that didn’t get emphasized in the two hours of lamentations, blame-casting and creative, suggested fixes (like building more housing on the federally managed land of a national seashore to house more low-income people in Marin County).
The voluntary ranch closures will definitely put the low-income workers out of their sub-standard and likely illegal and definitely overlooked rancher housing. The mostly undocumented workers have no legal (sub)leases. Evicting ranch hands who live in ranch housing in the park, including their family members who don’t even work in the park, may be cruel or unfair, but they have no legal claims, no signed documents make it legal or even authorized.
A free pass for ranchers, for decades.
Also unstated today, as with so many rancher-biased media stories, concerning so many Point Reyes management issues for so many decades, the NPS let ranchers get away with countless land, water, housing and pollution violations with almost no oversight, inspections, fines or penalties. And only one rancher eviction in six decades. But like squatters in an abandoned city building, after a few years it sure may feel like home to them and that they should have some claim on it.
Are national parks supposed to provide housing for families of people working at businesses who lease property from the park? (As of today, the law is clear: No.) And what if those businesses pollute the park, and repeatedly violate the terms of their lease agreements? And who’s to blame if ranch owners don’t pay their employees enough to afford rentals in pricey Marin County? Who should pick up that slack and pay their tab?
And before you knit your brow over that question, factor in this: the ranchers are paying far below market value for their leases and for their grazing rights, and for their prodigious water rights for their water-consumptive businesses. Meaning ranchers are already heavily subsidized for the public. And in return ranchers are the park’s major source of public park land degradation (compaction and desiccation), water consumption, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. (Please read that last sentence again.) Did I have the courage to make this factual statement to the crowd at the Town Hall? I may be an idiot, but I’m not stupid. In hostile crowds, facts have no effect. Or worse, are gasoline on the fires of ignorance, grievance and victimization. Facts and the law are irrelevant; opinion is reality.
Equally chilling is how practiced and skilled ranch owners are at encouraging their workers and ranching boosters to blame on anyone and everyone except them, the relatively wealthy owner-employers. These mostly middle-aged to elderly white men are worth millions of dollars and are now being offered more millions to move their ranching business out of the park. They don’t even have to give doing their brutal businesses! (Only their sweetheart lease deals which give them federal land for a song will have to end.) These are the men who pays their slaves – – I mean ranch hands – – wages so low that these mostly undocumented immidgrant workers can’t afford to live anywhere but on the plantation – – I mean ranch. Especially in Marin County with its sky-high real estate and rental rates. But is this the responsibility of the National Park Service and the general public to remedy? (Hint: NO.)
Later in the session, one commenter suggested to the power brokers in the room they should build more low-income housing in the Seashore, in addition to all those ranch buildings that ranchers will soon abandon. Presumably because, hey, there’s lotsa space out there to build on and house folks in need. Which was one of many comments that stirred the unspoken undercurrent of class in the room, a topic most Americans and most politicians (except Bernie) are loathe to mention, lest it have to be addressed and dealt with.
Beef & dairy ranching even cures the common cold!
Most challenging for this observer was the organic, regenerative cow in the room who was repeatedly championed by the surly crowd as the answer to not just producing beef and dairy products, but pretty much everything.
These “small” “organic” “regenerative” ranches, it was stated again and again in myriad ways, provide sorely needed food; local food; to the community; and to the Marin economy — as usual without any comparison to the magnitude more dollars that tourism brings into Marin with magnitudes less pollution. Other problems fixed by Point Reyes ranchers include job creation — no matter how few jobs per dollar of subsidy they create. Or how monstrously inefficient a few score of jobs are spread over 18,000 acres of public park land are being fouled by beef and dairy operations, and have been for decades. Housing is for these folks solved too, but not mention of it being not just at national taxpayer expenses, which you might excuse, but also at the expense of the entire purposed of creating a national park in the first place — one of the few places in America where wild lands and wild animals are prioritized over us destructive humans (who have wiped out most of Earth’s original wild animals). Just sayin’.
And of course for this crowd, “a way of life” is being “destroyed” — without a reality check of what, exactly, that “way of life” entails. If you’re okay with killing young animals after using their bodies only into adolescence before killing them, then ranching is the way of life for you!
Another false flag benefit of cattle ranching now being claimed everywhere in the west: wildfire reduction. This ignore the fact that ranching causes the fire hazard in the first place. At Point Reyes, for one specific example, this is the destruction of thousands of acres of the original fire-resistant coastal scrub and replacing it with flammable, imported, annual grasses which die back every year and become tinder for wildfires.
Pouring bovine gasoline on the bovine climate fire
And last and most, cattle ranching is — who knew?! — a cure for the climate crisis. This last one is when we quiet (and in my case fearful) environmentalists in the room bit down even harder on our already bloody tongues. Our muffled groans were less for the blood in our mouths, and more for the sheer insanity of this non-science nonsense. READ WHY you don’t manage wildfire by mowing down all the vegetation; you protect structures and houses, not destroy more of nature.
The climate crisis, I will write repeatedly in this essay, is of course what cow farms of ALL sizes, both small and large, contribute so handsomely to. Full stop. Cows generate huge amounts of methane, a heat-trapping gas at least 20-30x more potent than CO2. Full stop. And don’t blame the poor cows; it’s not their fault. They have been bred to eat unnaturally huge quantities of feed, and drink huge amounts of water, in order to produce unnaturally huge amounts of meat and milk, for profit.
Beef and dairy are luxury products extraordinarily few humans in industrialized nations of the 21st century need to eat. Full stop. But so many, too many, humans are just addicted to and crave out of long habit. Unless you’re a fellow vegan freak, this means you too. Just as all us vegan freaks used to be normie, non-vegans too.
Even wild elk-loving environmentalists in this Town Hall, I’d bet, still eat cheese, thus funding the very industry they want out of the park, as if moving the cows elsewhere magically diminishes the problem of cows causing the climate crisis.
But wait, there is more wasteland caused by every cattle operation. Grazing 1200-lb.-plus beef and dairy cows compact and degrade soils, as is plain to see for at least seven months of the year, all across Marin and Sonoma and other Bay Area Counties. Literally millions of acres in California have on full display the desertification that cattle operations wreak on the land.
But the commonplace becomes invisible. The cow-tastrophe of ranching was something people, including me for decades, didn’t see even though it’s in plain sight. Only after watching the searing 90-minute documentary, “The Shame of Point Reyes” by filmmaker Skyler Thomas (currently my “Sky-Jack” Podcast live every Tuesday at 9am – TreeSpiritProject.com/podcasts) was I able to see the truth. The truth is hidden behind the almost impenetrable veil of our cultural conditioning.
When I moved to the Bay Area in 1996, I was, as most Marin-ites are, and as I was taught to be, enamored of the “beautiful, green, rolling hills of Marin” which are usually likened to those of Ireland. (I assume their original forests were also destroyed to graze sheep, and cows, along with house and ship building, but I’m no expert of European farm animal history.)
Left out of the romantic Marin County narrative is what it looked like before the (we) Europeans invaded, moving west to the Pacific, and eventually killing all of California’s grizzly bears, her wolves, and of course her Tule elk, along with most (but not all) of her mountain lions and black bears. Why? Pop quiz: why do you think?
Answer: to let European cows loose on the land, like hooved locust, the phrase John Muir reportedly used to describe European sheep introduced to Yosemite Valley. Ah, the joys of domesticated animal “agriculture.” This destruction-by-farmed-animal, is hidden behind a fantasy facade, like a “Our Cows Are Outstanding in Their Field” Clover cartoon cow billboard. In this advertising fiction, cows are loved and provide healthy milk and meat. Read why this is total nonsense. All this non-science was on full dysfunctional display here at the Point Reyes Station Congressional-level Town Hall. (So I can sympathize when ranch-loves complain about a corrupted system, but not for the same reasons they do.)
How can any person, given the two-minute cap on comment time here, address the depth of the deception and delusion here? The majority of venting ranchers were, by the way, allowed the opportunity to vent for as long as they wanted; not one was cut off or interrupted. Because it was apparent this crowd was pissed, considered elk-loving enviros the Winners of this settlement and themselves the Losers — and they were pissed!
I kept fulminating on what one short, trenchant comment I could make to challenge any aspect of all the disinformation filling the hall. But anything I could think to say, even if I grabbed the mic from the Huffman assistant assigned to keep the mic out of mic-greedy speaker’s clutches, for 5 minutes or more, would only be met with anger and outrage. What can any liberal or leftie say to the mob at a Trump rally? What hard, factual truths can penetrate a lifetime’s accumulated fog of anger, resentment, misinformation, blame and fear?
“Regenerative” organic ranching: the “clean coal” of the cattle industry
The coal industry gets a bad rap for being one of mankind’s dirtiest polluters. But zippity-doo, there’s a Quick Indutry Fix for it: add the modifying prefix “clean” and, Voila!, you’ve got “clean coal” – – and the public perception problem is solved! (“Clean coal” refers to several different technologies, including capturing the emissions from burning coal and storing them underground in porous rock. But of course burning any “clean coal” formulation is still filthy and toxic.)
Similarly, “cattle ranching” is getting a bad rap for being a ‘climate-killer,’ the populist shorthand for the industry’s invisible dirty, open secret: emitting massive amounts of methane, carbon dioxide and, most heat-trapping of all, nitrous oxide emissions (from fertilizers) into the atmosphere. Combine all this cow gas with massive global rainforest destruction, especially in the Amazon, to create cattle pasture from the felled forest boneyard, and you get yer climate killing-est food business. It all exists to satisfy humanity’s addiction to eating beef and dairy products, and of course to turn a profit doing so.
In the U.S., eating dairy and beef products is the single most “climate-killing” behavior you engage in (unless you’re vegan). And, oddly enough, the easiest one to quit.
But just stick the modifier “regenerative” in front of the word “ranching” and Presto-Change-O, the cattle-created climate-killing cow-tastrophe is solved with so-called, “regenerative ranching!” In this era of Trumpian total lies, you can even stand up in a room full of supposedly educated, intelligent people — as here at this rustic-tony west Marin Town Hall — and claim, as organic dairyman Albert Straus does here today (and regularly in public), that his flavor of dairying, which in his mind is some kind of “regenerative” — and Shazam!, he is no longer the climate killer, he is the Climate Savior!
READ MORE about public relations marketing ploy known as “regenerative ranching.“
The dairyman’s solution to the climate crisis caused by cows is… yes, that’s right… more cows! You see, his (dairy) cows graze his magical way, on more land, with more grass, more water, a little methane capture here, a little supplemental algae feed there, and you’ve got your solution to global warming! How wonderful! Why not?! Go for it, buddy!
This Town Hall is a fact-free environment, just say whatever makes people all warm and fuzzy about heating the planet (and killing cows when they’re not yet middle-aged) and every customers can keep enjoying their warm Straus milk and cool Straus organic ice cream.
What does he have to lose since he’s already losing in a dying industry (“blinking out” as Huffman says here today). Go for the whole cheesy enchilada; claim that up is down, black is white, and that making cow-based food products are the solution to the climate crisis caused in large part by cow-based food products! You da candyman dairy man, Albert Straus of Straus Magical Organic Creamery!
D.C. Donald’s tutor, Roy Cohn, is licking a Straus organic ice cream cone in his grave! Well done, boys! Stand your cattle ground and spew lies as big as your bovines. Also as smelly as their runny manure which coats thousands of acres of land that was once healthy coastal scrub. That original, actually ‘regenerative’ landscape was devastated well over a century ago by thousands of imported European cows.
Milking the cash cow
Fortunately, despite the dairy industry’s fusillade of disinformation, enough consumers are apparently discerning the truth — and choosing dairy alternatives from the shelves, like creamy oat milk, delicious coconut ice cream, and cashew-based cheeses instead of buying into the industry’s hot dairy air. LEARN MORE about plant-based eating.
The dairy industry also has countless willing partners, including in academia, and in most major media outlets, because the lies about cow products — including the new, widespread marketing of “humane” animal products — are profitable to help promote and keep the milk money game going. The classic milk-does-a-body good lie makes too many millions of dollars to abandon now.
But today, in this room at Point Reyes Station, with emotions running hot, and facts running stone cold, all my mental cost-benefit, risk-reward calculations to argue this stuff publicly were coming up short. No way undocumented Jose. Although I didn’t fear the undocumented immigrants; I identify with them, because my grandmother came to the U.S. (NYC) around 1917, from the Ukraine, to escape the Russian czar. With her marginal English, she worked as a seamstress. No, it was the angry, uneducated, farmer’s daughters weilding the verbal pitchforks, who boast of “working with ranchers who work harder than anyone she knows” — further proof she doesn’t have much knowledge beyond her own world.
Righteous anger driven by ignorance is a combustible mix. Since most enviros in the room remained silent, I’m guessing their instincts matched my own. Only one brave activist, whom I will identify only as MW, had the courage to speak truth to ignorance. God bless her for trying, but she was met with boos and yelled interruptions, the opposite of how we enviros tolerated the blizzard of misinformation being sprayed around the room.
At least five speakers bowed to the Lord God Organic Small Farm Cow, and no amount of science, or water quality studies, or recitation of hundreds of Tule elk deaths-by-cattle-fence, or methane emissions stats, could change the bovines-are-beloved mythologies being aired in the room.
This was their room today; their Town Hall; the ranching community’s commons to commandeer. So be it. In their minds, they lost the settlement talks, and we won, and facts be damned. Even if the “win” is, from our perspective, not their milk monied one, an incomplete victory. Because thousands of cows, and ranchers, and grazing will continue in a national park. Ranchers will, by their very manurey nature, continue to pollute Point Reyes National Seashore land and waterways downslope. Or course, if they ran far fewer cattle, the land could absorb the manure, but then they couldn’t turn enough profit to justify their operations.
And this is the crux of the beef and dairy problem: the economics, and the hoax and hucksterism that is unavoidable with cattle ranching. Tiny ranch means less pollution but less profit. Big ranch equals bigger profits and lotsa pollution. So the fantasy sold to the public is lots more “small” farms, which requires more land and more cows, which means more wild land giving over to making money, even fewer wild animals, no wild predators (coyotes, wolves, cougars, bears, etc.) and even more climate-heating from grass-fed cows which generate more enteric methane. READ MORE about the myth of “regenerative ranching.”
This is why the cattle industry spends millions selling you the romance of the “small” rustic dairy and beef farm, even as those “small” farms produce only 1-2% of the cows fed to America’s hundreds of millions of meat addicts. Even celebrity omnivore Michael Pollan was caught on film in the documentary “Cowspiracy” saying that a “sustainable” amount of beef consumption would be a few ounces per week per person.
Lots of “small” beef and dairy farms simply cannot be scaled to feed the nation. SEE WHY:
And of course none of this talk deals with the screaming cow in the room; the fact that what is done to cows is so cruel that you’re most likely squirming reading this sentence. Think about that. (And if you love animals, which the majority of people do, read this: https://www.TreeSpiritProject.com/EatingAnimals )
For us actual cow lovers, as opposed to the cow lovers who really only mean that they love to eat cows, this was our silent mantra: Don’t be a sore winner. Just shut up and have some compassion. Forget the facts for now; these folks clearly believe they are losing something which they had a right to, not something they had just taken from native Americans, and then took for granted.
Cruelty at the Creamery
One woman who identified herself as from Sonoma County, who said she worked to block Measure J’s anti-factory farm ballot measure, gave testimony that every single farm worker she knows loves his cows. What can you possibly say to challenge that claim?
When someone passionately believes that you can “love” a cow (or any animal) and forcibly impregnate her, and then take her baby (calf) away from her, and then take all the mother’s milk and give none to her baby none because you make money selling it to humans who will drink it into adulthood, and turn it into butter and cream and ice cream and yogurt and a million cheeses, and then repeat this violenct, emotionally tormenting process again, and then do it again, and then do it again, and then do it again, until, finally, after five or six or seven years, send that young mother off to the slaughterhouse as an exhausted young adult? And their “love” for this cow is perpetrated upon all the mother cows, and all her babies of both genders, generation after generation. All for money. What space remain in that farmer’s distorted reality is left for reason, for rational thought, for common sense, for deep understanding, for empathy?
Upton Sinclair’s quote repeatedly came to mind during the meeting: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”
And then there was the genuine, emotional, rancher testimonies: dairyman Albert Straus of Straus Organic Creamery, who does not own cows in the park but sources milk from two park dairies, spoke passionately about the wonderfulness of his business and its pioneering organic dairying. Rancher Kevin Lunny, who owns two ranches in the park and accepted an undisclosed payout to leave, spoke as emotionally as he did erroneously.
He choked up about losing his way of life and being forced to leave even though he will receive an undisclosed number of millions of dollars to do so. That didn’t stop him from playing the victim. He explained that he felt he had no choice, that if he didn’t take the money, he’d “die a slow death” of attrition, so better to take the deal. One woman called out to support him, “We love you, Kenny!” This friend or fan or employee seemed to represent the majority view of the room.
Ranchers who showed their emotions were supported by the crowd, and the emotion seemed genuine, even if the facts in the stories that elicited them were not.
This is Marin County’s modern-day milk monied plantation mentality. The kindly slave master is loved by the slaves he employs and houses, and any threat to his business and livelihood is taken as a threat to their livelihoods, their homes, and their very lives. As if ranch workers have only the binary choice of working for the kindly milk (or beefy) man, or not at all. The fact that the wealthy plantation owner was getting a multi-million dollar pay-off for the second time (the first was decades ago) and wasn’t offering to share any of it with his hard-working and beloved slaves — or even pay them minimum wage and any benefits — seemed irrelevant to the slaves. Receiving a raw deal is familar; and being treated fairly is foreign. Easier to turn on those who would shut down the plantation, enemies of the boss who keeps them in loving, exploitative bondage.
These workers, a few different reporters have revealed, get from the plantation owner no benefits, no insurance, no health care, no profit sharing, no vacation pay, no pension, no contract, no union, no severance pay or package, and no job security. If rancher massah gets a golden parachute out of Point Reyes, like Trump is for Trumpers, he remains the revered, beloved, God King upon his golden toilet throne. Never mind that all these old, white, privileged men are rich — in part because they don’t share their wealth with their workers, and none of the gold in their parachutes. Only one rancher, to his credit (Evans), spoke of hiring workers if his business survives. Some ranchers may retire with their pay-out. And some, presumably, will continue being the boss of cows outside the park, even though they likely won’t get the sweetheart giant discounted rates they’ve wrangled from the cowed Park Service of the past. (I don’t blame the NPS as much as many do; I blame the politics to which the NPS must bend.)
Like Trump, these cow-men are good at the public relations game; playing the poor victim while being wealthy business owners. Hell, I was half-convinced by today’s crocodile tears. And really, that’s not a fair term to use because crocodiles don’t lie. And don’t receive millions of dollars in public subsidies that all the “oh-poor-us” Point Reyes ranchers do. By sucking mightily on the public taxpayer’s teat. Poor massah Lunny. He owns multiple other businesses, and he left a mess behind when he took yet another pay-out to abandon his previous polluting business, oystering in Tomales Bay. The government was left to clean up the wreckage of that business he left behind, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. His environmental mess of rotting rope, rusting metal and decaying wood was hidden, underwater, out of sight; an apt metaphor for how one man has made millions making messes and then getting paid to leave them behind for others, including an adoring public, to clean up. Sound eerily, orangely familiar?
Rancher Dave Evans, who owns the D-Rogers ranch in the park, said he chose not to partake in the settlement talks. He will remain in the park, “alone” as he put it. He also spoke passionately, emotionally, and bitterly about losing his home, and his way of life, facing an uncertain future. He claimed that he wasn’t given warning that all the buy-outs were happening since each was confidential. He told the sympathetic audience,
“…there was nothing voluntary about this…” “I’ve been in the dark this entire time… everybody’s been bound by non-disclosure agreements…
…And also I haven’t had any choice. There’s been no choice…”
From which one can infer he either didn’t speak with any of his rancher neighbors in his tight-knit community for months (including his sister who took the buy-out), or was intentionally excluded from any cash buy-out offer by the TNC. Or perhaps simply didn’t think so many ranchers would jump ship. But the TNC was very intent on convincing every single one of the park’s ranchers to negotiate a deal, take money in likely multi-millions of dollars, because at least $30 million is being distributed to the dozen or so families who took the deal.
But that didn’t stop rancher Evans from attacking all the other players represented in the room for a good seven minutes. And, holding back tears, he won the sympathy from a room filled with supporters who either empathize or identify with him. They clearly feel — and probably are — victimized by a system in which they have little voice or power. Although that sentiment is shared by millions of citizens all over the country; half of America’s eligible voters apparently don’t even feel it’s worth voting for their President.
Who “won?” Who “lost?”
Remember, environmentalists wanted all elk freed from all fences and all exposure to cattle and cattle diseases and cattle manure pollution. And didn’t get it. We wanted all the ranches out of the Seashore. We didn’t get that. We wanted all ranchers off all the other public lands they lease, which is being gifted to them with sub-market value rates. And then they degrade it, defoliate it, desiccate it, pollute its downstream waterways which threatens salmon populations — and we didn’t get an end to all that nastiness either. We wanted to end all cattle grazing in the park on the lands ranches will give up – – and we didn’t even get that!
The TNC says it will perform the oxymoronic practice of “conservation grazing” to keep grasses and plants shorter. Even though the grasses are there in the first place because of grazing cattle. Both the cows and most grasses are European imports; “invasives” if ever that sloppy term were to be used. If any species of animal in the west could be legitimately called an “invasive non-native,” because it is definitely a destructive force that kills countless other species of plants and animals, it is the modern dairy and beef cows brought to this country. They are why most native ungulates and all predators are so often reviled, and become targets for extermination campaigns, then being slaughtered by the millions.
If you don’t believe that fact, check out my Wildlife Services page, which introduces you to a division of the U.S.D.A. which sole purpose, its “service,” is killing millions of wild animals every year, almost exclusively to benefit the cattle industry.
As Good As Dairying Gets
Straus’ narrative was equally outrageous, claiming what he does to cows is a way to not only feed (wealthy) people, help the local economy, reduce wildfires, and mitigate the climate crisis – all of which is mostly or completely false. But again, this room was a Trump-lite rally; people were bonding over their grievances, legitimate and not, sharing lots of alternative facts, and pinning blame on all the “others” in the room. With some justification, I’ll concede. But it also ain’t that simple. Because so many folks just wouldn’t/couldn’t/can’t accept that their businesses are a thing of the past; that dairies are, to use Congressman’s Huffman’s term earlier in the morning, “blinking out” for economic and market reasons having nothing to do with all this Marin marinade.
To be even-handed, plenty of environmentalists drink this milky Kool-Aid flowing here. They eat “only the good, small, local organic” beef and dairy products, still unwilling to face the truth that all small beef and dairy making is unavoidably all this: climate-killing, planet-polluting and just about the worst possible way you could make sweet, innocent cows suffer. Learn more: https://www.TreeSpiritProject.com/vegan
Coast Miwok are more “historic” than ranchers. By millennia.
More than one rancher spoke of their long history on the land, and at Point Reyes. “Multi-generational” ranchers and dairy farmers being “kicked” or “forced” off their land is a common narrative in the media, in rancher/dairymen public relations, and of course there is some truth in this lamentation. But in this case they’re not so much being forced to shutter their businesses, as given an exit buy-out — and on land they were already paid to sell! That nugget of truth, like the alternate reality in the room, is ignored. As with a good, fiery and thrilling Trump rally, anger and blame have more power and utility than do truth and facts. And get the juices flowing.
Fortunately two Coast Miwok people spoke. Theresa Harlan who grew up on what was called Laird’s landing on the land of Point Reyes peninsula, and on the waters of Tomales Bay. And before Theresa, Tribal Council of Marin Dance Captain and Headman, Dean Hoaglin. Both referenced their peoples being on the land far longer — hundreds of generations and for thousands of years – and kicked off the land by white European land-buying land owners — and without the equivalent of multi-million dollar payouts.
Even as the rancher-sympathetic crowd received their words respectfully, they obviously could not or would not synthesize the reality being presented to them; that whatever frustration, anger, impotence, rage and pain they were feeling these last few months or years, was but a drop in the reservoir of tears and blood that native peoples have experienced and somehow survived. A little polite applause and now back to our scheduled white man worker’s complaint about being screwed out of their claims to land they’ve been hired to work and/or live on for a few years, or in some cases maybe a few decades — with no understanding, let alone internalization, that the farm land they complain is being stolen from them is land that was stolen so recently from peoples who lived on it for thousands of years. And, it has to be pointed out, did so without destroying the land and polluting the water, and killing wild animals who threaten profits, as every modern day commercial, for-profit small farm does.
