Editorial: Some fallout from Pt. Reyes ranch closures appears to Marin responsibility

Marin Supervisor Dennis Rodoni framed it well.

He predicted Marin would be “left holding the bag when we have people displaced or homeless or worse – without jobs and without homes” after the closure of the historic ranches that have been part of the Point Reyes National Seashore long before the park was created more than 60 years ago.

A behind-the-doors $30 million deal with 12 dairy and cattle ranchers has set the stage for the closure of their family businesses over the next year. The Nature Conservancy is buying their longstanding leases, setting the stage for settling lawsuits leveled by environmental groups that had challenged the National Park Service’s plans to extend those leases.

The agreement included a $2.5 million fund to help farmworkers and tenants make the transition. The conservancy has extended the timeline and is now working to raise the money needed to boost that funding.

The county, meanwhile, has extended its emergency declaration for another three years to help pave the way for construction and protection of affordable housing for West Marin residents threatened with eviction or left homeless.

The crisis plan was already in place before talks began to push the private ranches out of the park. That initiative, pushed by environmental organizations, is only increasing the challenges facing West Marin.

The Nature Conservancy estimates that there are 28 worker and tenant households – some 90 to 100 people – affected by the purchase of the leases.

Those are people, some of them longtime residents, who are losing their jobs, their homes or both.

That doesn’t include the possible effects on local schools, West Marin’s economy and the future of Marin’s fragile agricultural industry.

The economies of scale that have sustained West Marin agriculture and businesses and their workers who rely on it are not going to be improved with the closure of 12 ranches and the sale of hundreds of cows and heads of cattle.

Backers of the purchase say that West Marin ranching is facing a generational transition, but the purchase and ending of the Point Reyes leases amount to a push – in the wrong direction.

The economic viability of local agriculture is also one of the linchpins of the county’s restrictive zoning over West Marin’s ranchlands.

The fact that the agreement is contrary to the goals set forth in the park’s updated management plan – a document approved after more than a year of public review – doesn’t seem to trouble architects of the deal.

In retrospect, perhaps the county should have been more of a factor than a spectator in the closed-door talks that led to the agreement.

When it came to defending the ranches and the future of Marin agriculture, the Civic Center could have been a lot more forceful.

Now, it has to deal with the fallout, short- and long-term.

There are already two lawsuits in play challenging the agreements, but the clock is ticking for the ranchers to leave, for some, homes and livelihoods for generations of the families.

For the environmental groups involved in pushing this part of West Marin’s so-called “transition,” it means fulfilling the goal of removing private use of public park lands, increasing the park’s wildlands and removing barriers on the roaming of elk herds. The updated master plan’s commitment to make ranches meet stricter anti-pollution standards apparently didn’t matter to them.

Understandably, ranchers felt they were no longer considered valued partners in the seashore.

The park now faces the costs of maintaining the buildings and land on those properties.

But when it comes to the humanitarian and economic impacts, as Rodoni put it, the county is “left holding the bag.”