Posted on 01/15/2025 8:18:38 AM PST by artichokegrower
An idyllic stillness swallowed Home Ranch on Friday, as there was little to disturb the oldest dairy ranch on the Point Reyes National Seashore. California quail fluttered their wings and scattered in the brush beside a dirt road leading into the historic complex containing several barns, a silver silo and a farmhouse with green window trims that predates San Francisco’s cable cars.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
ALL OF THIS IS DUE TO ENVIROS
EVERY SINGLE BIT
most of the big dairy producers have moved elsewhere. Several to Iowa.
the National Park Service announced a settlement with environmental groups...12 of the 14 ranches will be phased out and folded into the national seashore. The ranches receive a buyout from the Nature Conservancy...In 2026, nearly all the ranches within the national seashore are expected to cease operationsSo dairy bad, but beef good?“It feels like a death,” Point Reyes rancher Kevin Lunny told SFGATE. “Other ranchers are telling me they feel the same way. It’s the only home and address we’ve ever known. It’s who we are — it’s our identity.”
[Surprisingly], the two beef ranches that remain on the seashore are also two of the largest and most commercially successful....neither of those ranches — Marin Sun Farms and Niman Ranch — was involved with the litigation...the park service is negotiating long-term leases with the two holdout [beef] ranches.
So government ineptitude and malfeasance destroyed 12,000 homes in Los Angeles and now government overreach is destroying these dairy families who have been on this land for up to 200 years. Everywhere you turn government is ruining lives and livelihoods.
So how much did these two large beef cattle ranchers need to pay off their California EPA and Coastal Commission persecutors?
Wait until the sh^t hits the fan and the citizens find out that there is no local sources of food available for all of Southern California.
I was wondering that, too. How did Big Beef avoid the same fate as Dairy Cows?How did Big Beef get NPS to enter into long-term lease negotiations?
Doesn’t smell right, does it?
“Everywhere you turn government is ruining lives and livelihoods.”
No it is Democrats; Everywhere you turn city Democrats are ruining lives and livelihoods.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. LIKE THE RESNICKS????
Michael Taylor of Point Reyes Station noted how each departing rancher reached an agreement with the Nature Conservancy to receive compensation. “It’s a shame,” he said. “I have sympathy for the ranchers, but I’m a hardcore environmentalist. The ranchers are not getting forced out; they’re getting paid and not with government money.”
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The Nature Conservancy is famous for driving farmers and ranchers off their land using buy outs - they then sell part of the land to the Feds for the price of the buyouts, recouping their money; then sell off parcels to their members at full price, making enormous profits. The members then continue the same farming/ranching that the previous owners did.
Neat - see how that works - National Park Service is fully aware of the scam and go along with it because it gets more land out of private hands and into the hands of all the new managers and workers they have to hire - all of whom are hardened wacko environmentalists.
The Nature Conservancy is one of the most insidious and destructive movements in recent years. They are buying up (or in this case condemning) productive land and removing it from commerce and productivity FOREVER. They impose perpetual easements or other restrictions on the acreage so that it can never be used for productive or recreational purposes.
Sadly, a bunch of “conservative” folks who believe they are being good stewards of the land, are in fact aiding and abetting this effort by funding the Nature Conservancy and/or donating acreage to them so that no one in the future can ever farm, raise livestock, hunt, develop or live on that land. That is a complete subversion of the historical mission of our nation and our biblical injunction to subdue the land and rule over it.
That's not the point. Cows and goats eat the same vegetation as do elk and antelope respectively, but they are more controllable AND yield economically valuable products that are good for the community that serves the people who care for that land. Hence, from the perspective of true restoration ecology (in which I do have some consideralbe 35 years of experience), cows are better than elk until we have full control of the exotics in that area, which the Park Service surely does not.
“PULL” as layed out in “Atlas Shrugged”.
West Marin county is in many ways emblematic of why California is such a s—t show. The area is spitting distance from San Francisco, and in alternate universe in which development and infrastructure had been allowed it could have been home to middle-class suburbs that would have made the Bay Area more affordable but no. The powers that be going back to Congressman Phil Burton decided that it would forever remain this rustic idyll. And now, after 60+ years of environmental anti-development psychosis, even what’s left of the area’s vestigial dairy industry must go.
I cannot argue with that. I stand corrected.
cutting ther own throats
For decades, the park service brokered leases with ranchers allowing them to operate on the national seashore, while critics argued that the cattle polluted water streams and interfered with the park’s tule elk.From the National Park Service:
Following an initial period of slow growth, the tule elk herd at Tomales Point grew exponentially over several years. In the early 1990s, biologists theorized that tule elk might become too numerous within the Tule Elk Reserve. At that time, park staff attempted to prevent over-population and damage to the range through various means, including an experimental four-year effort to slow growth through the use of contraceptives.Incredible. "Critics" say cattle damage the Tule Elk herds. But the Tule Elk herd at Tomales Point is so numerous that they have to use contractives to slow the population growth! So much for the criticism from "Critics."
I lived in Marin for a very long time. I lived very near this Point Reyes national seashore fiasco for part of the time. I went to church in Inverness for many years, so I know that community pretty well.
I have close friends who bought a place called Bear Valley Ranch. The ranch had a concession to provide horseback rides over to the seashore and back as a tourist attraction. My friends went and bought horses and learned how to care for them and blah blah. They went to the park and asked them if they were interested in that property before they bought it, And the government said they had no interest in buying the property and adding it to the park. Then sine they were not interested they decided to go ahead and buy it. But they moved there from New York and the people of Point Reyes went to the park and asked them to get rid of the New Yorkers, since they couldn’t possibly be environmentally conscious enough to be faithful stewards of the land.
Didn’t take long for the park to offer my friends a buyout. Actually, they forced them out but they had to be compensated in like property. So the only thing nearby was a 320 acre ranch on the other side of the bay. I believe bear Valley Ranch was about 60 acres. The park Service had to move my friends and they had to make a deal not to charge them property taxes on 320 acres, a lot of other perks.
The Bear valley ranch is now home to a park ranger. My friends did very well, but I wonder since their property is right on the water how long it will take the National Park to encroach over there as well.
As far as the dairy ranchers go, they employed a lot of people in that community who now will have no job so it’s going to change completely, and the tule elk that the park brought have free reign, with no fences and will overtake the whole Point Reyes peninsula.
The park not too long ago bought out a very old oyster farm that they thought was polluting the bay and put them out of business as well. The other ranchers on the other side, Straus Dairy (famous in organic foods) and Giacomini are very politically connected so perhaps they can stay for a while.
Since the 1970s, Marin County imposed strict environmental building rules to keep the place to themselves basically. Only the rich can live there. Only the very very rich are going to be able to remain. People like Gavin Newsome live there.
Here’s how it works - rich NGOs, funded by rich liberals and often government grants, sue the government in court, using liberal judge-shopping, to get a favorable ruling, with a policy result that Congress or elected officials never intended.
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