A lawsuit targeting dairy and beef cattle operations in the Point Reyes National Seashore can move forward, a federal court has ruled.
Senior U.S. District Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong rejected a legal motion by the National Park Service to dismiss a lawsuit brought by conservation groups seeking an updated general management plan and assessment of the environmental impacts of commercial dairy and cattle grazing at the Point Reyes National Seashore.
“We appreciate the court allowing this important case to proceed,” said Michael Connor of Western Watersheds Project, one of the groups that filed the suit, in a statement. “The lands and habitats of Point Reyes National Seashore are too special to be managed by decree. We’re eager for a full and fair scientific review of the impacts of ranching on the many protected species in the park, as compared to other, public uses of the seashore.”
Seashore superintendent Cicely Muldoon said she could not comment on pending litigation. The ruling was filed Friday.
Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, said he was disappointed by the ruling, adding he “unequivocally and completely” supports ranching in the seashore.
“This ruling will continue to needlessly drain taxpayers’ dollars and take attention away from a good process, which is the ranch management plan,” he said.
Looking to provide West Marin ranches with more security and opportunity, the park service was in the middle of a planning process for working beef cattle and dairy ranches within the Point Reyes National Seashore when the suit was filed. Longer leases for ranchers is the cornerstone of the plan, dubbed the “Ranch Comprehensive Management Plan/Environmental Assessment.”
“That is the process these groups should have used to air their concerns,” Huffman said.
Instead, the groups who filed suit allege park service officials are violating federal law because they are moving forward with a ranch plan without conducting adequate environmental studies on how the thousands of cows are affecting the seashore’s scenic resources. Nor have officials updated their 36-year-old park management plan to consider other options, like reducing the number of ranches in the park or the size of the cattle herds, the lawsuit contends.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in February, also claims that the cattle are causing erosion, polluting waterways with manure, harming endangered salmon and other species, while blocking public access.
Many of the cattle ranches in the iconic park have been operated by the same families since the 1860s. Park service officials have said they have no plans to remove them.
Ranchers at the seashore say their operations are a beloved part of Marin’s coastal history. They note that when developers were threatening to build subdivisions on the Point Reyes Peninsula in the 1950s, ranchers formed an alliance with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups to convince Congress and President John F. Kennedy to establish the park in 1962.
There are 15 families grazing on about 18,000 acres in the 71,000-acre national seashore, an area famous for its towering cliffs, windswept coastal prairies and rich history dating back to Sir Francis Drake’s visit in 1579.
The park service spent $50 million from 1962 to 1972 buying out all of the ranchers’ property. It allowed them to stay until the death of the original owner and their spouse. But now nearly all those agreements have lapsed, and park officials have continued to renew leases with family heirs for 5- and 10-year periods.
It was the park service that didn’t renew a lease for the Drakes Bay Oyster Co., another business within the seashore. Ranchers in the park worried they might be next to get the boot. But when the order came down in November 2012 to not renew the oyster company’s lease, then-interior secretary Ken Salazar said existing ranching operations within the national park would continue.
He directed the park service to pursue extending the terms of agriculture permits for up to 20 years to provide greater certainty and clarity for the ranches operating within the national park’s pastoral zone and to support the continued presence of sustainable ranching and dairy operations. —— (c)2016 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. AMX-2016-07-20T00:01:00-04:00
