Marin County environmentalists won a big victory when cattle ranchers agreed to a multimillion-dollar deal to leave the Point Reyes National Seashore. Now the Trump administration might want to blow that deal up.  

One of the big controversies in coastal Marin County these last few years has been an estimated $30 million buyout of cattle ranchers to make them pack up their operations and leave the Point Reyes National Seashore. That 71,000-acre park was established in the 1960s, but the federal government struck a deal with the area’s dairy and cattle ranchers to let them continue ranching on park lands. There are 14 ranchers using about 28,000 of those acres for cattle, a significant amount of the park.

Environmental groups had long complained that the thousands of cows and their prodigious volumes of manure were creating extremely high levels of E. coli in the surrounding environment. So a particularly well-funded conservation nonprofit called the Nature Conservancy came along with a pretty sweet deal. They offered the ranchers an estimated $30 million buyout (though that amount is secret) to just plain leave the Point Reyes National Seashore, and move their ranches elsewhere. Ranchers took the deal, and they’re supposed to be out by mid-2026.

But then Trump was elected. That meant new animus against California and anything that benefits the environment, and as the Bay Area News Group reports, Republicans in Congress are now investigating the secret $30 million-ish deal, and may want to completely undo it.    

The GOP-led House Committee on Natural Resources sent a letter to the Nature Conservancy saying, “The Committee is concerned not only with the lack of transparency surrounding the settlement but also with the environmental and legal consequences the settlement may impose.”

This is clearly a partisan effort. Marin County's representative in Congress, Democrat Jared Huffman, sits on that very committee. And he says he was not even notified of the letter, and fears this is an attempt to completely nix the deal.

“If the Park Service, and this is the Trump administration’s Park Service, wanted to revoke this or blow it all up,” Huffman told the News Group, “they could.”

Huffman emphasizes that the ranchers took the deal willingly, so none of this really merits investigating.

“I’ve asked them straight up any number of ways; do you want this or not?” Huffman added “They have all confirmed that this is indeed what they want. It is up to them, not to outside parties.”

Still, it does appear the ranchers feel they need more time to complete the transition. And these are ranchers whose products you might have in your fridge right now, like Straus Family Creamery, Clover Sonoma, and Organic West. Those ranches sent a letter asking Huffman to help extend for relocation.

“In the last decade we’ve lost 25 dairy farms in the North Bay milk shed, a place where 60% of the state’s organic milk is produced,” the letter said. “Our three companies contract roughly 80% of the milk supply in the North Bay. Reversing the loss of local dairy farms is an urgent matter for our businesses and local farming industry.”

There is also a concern about the people who live on those ranches, largely immigrant Latino workers. They would all be evicted and forced to move, though presumably, would just be rehoused on other new ranches once the relocations are complete.

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Image: @pauljimerson via Twitter