Closed-door talks extended on Point Reyes ranching conflict

A court order suspending the litigation says the Nature Conservancy is trying to facilitate a settlement.

Mediation talks to determine the future of dairy and cattle ranching in the Point Reyes National Seashore have been extended for another three months.

The closed-door negotiations have been going on since 2022, when environmental organizations sued the National Park Service to prevent the continued use of the seashore for limited agricultural operations. The plaintiffs are the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project.

The Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association and more than a dozen individual ranchers have intervened on the park’s side, becoming co-defendants.

“This thing just keeps getting pushed back without any resolution, except ranchers continue to ranch,” said Jim Coda, a wildlife photographer and former assistant U.S. attorney who worked for the Department of the Interior.

The stay of the litigation had been scheduled to expire on July 19. The new order, which continues the stay until Oct. 18, states that the Nature Conservancy has “entered into confidentiality agreements with the parties to facilitate its participation in the mediation negotiations aimed at facilitating a comprehensive settlement.”

Heather Gately, a spokesperson for the conservancy, directed inquiries to mediator Bradley O’Brien, citing “the confidential nature of the mediation process.”

O’Brien, also citing confidentiality, declined to comment.

Albert Straus, chief executive officer of the Straus Dairy and the Straus Family Creamery, said the Nature Conservancy’s goal is to remove all of the dairies and ranches from the park by buying out their leases.

“They’re collaborating with Point Reyes National Seashore and the Park Service to negotiate an exit for all the organic dairies and ranches in Point Reyes,” Straus said.

Straus is not directly involved in the settlement talks, but he buys milk from the Nunes and Mendoza dairies, two of the four dairy operations still operating in the park.

“This endless mediation is causing these farmers undue pressure,” Straus said. “They’re not able to improve their infrastructure to address water quality concerns because the park has not given them leases.”

The National Park Service approved a new general management plan amendment and environmental impact statement in 2021 that allows it to extend agricultural leases from five-year terms to up to 20-year terms. The plan also included new requirements for ranch operations, restrictions on ranch operation diversification, and improvements to the management of free-ranging elk.

After the lawsuit was filed, the National Park Service issued two-year leases that expire on Sept. 14, 2024.

Straus worries that the North Bay is approaching a tipping point at which the number of dairy and ranching operations in the area will fall below the number required to support the larger agricultural infrastructure that includes feed mills and veterinary services.

“We have 17 dairies left in Marin County,” Straus said. “Our critical mass is at risk.”

In April, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, secured a $1 million federal earmark for “San Francisco North Bay Dairy Community Transition Assistance.”

The summary of the earmark by Huffman’s office states that the funding will be used “to restart organic dairy farms in the North San Francisco Bay that are facing a gutted market for organic milk, environmental conditions severely reducing on-farm forage production, feed cost increases from supply chain bottlenecks and inflation, and lease termination.”

“For lands where a lease is terminated and dairying ceased, it is worth noting that they are already part of an open and connected natural landscape providing wildlife habitat and corridors,” it said. “And there is potential for those lands to be opened for direct public enjoyment and recreation.”

Huffman declined to comment on the record regarding Straus’ assertion.

“I don’t want to do anything to undermine a potentially positive resolution of this longstanding conflict,” Huffman said. “I am going to support the negotiations and the confidentiality of the settlement process, and I’m going to hope that it is successful.”

Huffman said that no ranch or dairy will be “forced out or evicted” from the park. He added, however, that, “if individual ranches and dairies make a business decision to accept a settlement voluntarily, they’ll be the ones to make that decision.”

“There is an economic reality here,” Huffman said. “Dairies all over the North Bay have been blinking out. The seashore is not immune from that economic reality.”

Regarding the $1 million earmark, Huffman said, “I would love to see any dairies that leave the seashore voluntarily as part of the settlement at least consider relocating somewhere else in the North Bay, and that’s what that was for, to provide relocation assistance.”

Where would dairies relocate to? David Lewis, a farm adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension, said one possibility might be North Bay land that supported dairies that have failed in recent years. At least 11 dairies in Marin and Sonoma counties have ceased operations in the past few years.

“There’s some locations that are worth looking into,” Lewis said.

The challenges facing dairies and ranches in Marin and Sonoma counties continue to mount.

The National Park Service is considering removing the 8-foot tall, 2-mile fence that separates wild tule elk from private cattle ranches that lease parkland south of Tomales Point. Removing the fence is the preferred option of three alternatives the park is considering as part of an update to its 1998 Tule Elk Management Plan.

“If the Park Service takes down the elk fence, then farmers won’t have much to negotiate,” Straus said, “because they won’t have a business.”

In addition to that, a coalition of animal welfare, environmental and social justice organizations have succeeded in placing Measure J on Sonoma County’s ballot in November. The initiative would outlaw animal farms of a certain size in the interest of preventing water pollution and animal cruelty.

If it passes, Measure J would ban the Tresch family’s 2,000-acre organic farm, which has more than 700 milk cows, Straus said.

The general management plan amendment and environmental impact statement that the National Park Service approved in 2021 contains additional requirements for waste discharge and manure and nutrient management.

“It costs millions of dollars for methane digesters and other state-of-the-art equipment to take care of all this manure that these dairy cows create,” Coda said. “Many dairies in Marin are just hanging on by their fingernails.”