Reflections on the Recent Seashore Settlement

In early January 2025, a private settlement was reached between the National Park Service (the Park), environmental groups, and ranchers in the Point Reyes National Seashore (the Seashore) and Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) to retire multi-generational dairy leases and change grazing leases in the Seashore.

You can read a press release from The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the National Park Service on the settlement for more details.  

As a result of the settlement, all dairying and some beef operations will end on the Seashore. Twelve of fourteen ranches in the Seashore will voluntarily cease operations within 15 months, while 20-year leases have been issued to nine beef ranch families in the GGNRA and Seashore. The grazing operations that remain will be modified based on the Park’s General Management Plan Amendment. The vacated lease areas will be managed through a cooperative agreement between TNC and the Park and will include targeted grazing as a component of the land management efforts.

The full settlement agreement was posted on the National Park Service website on January 8, along with the Revised Record of Decision, and General Management Plan Amendment.

The solution that resulted from the mediation required the agreement of all parties. We respect the difficult and personal decisions that the farmers and ranchers made for their well-being, families, and businesses. The agreement includes payments to compensate ranchers who chose to retire their leases.  

We also acknowledge the issue is far more complex, especially the impact on farmworkers, tenants, and their families living in the Seashore who were not part of the negotiations.

No. 

The settlement agreement came out of a federal lawsuit brought against the Park by the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Western Watersheds Project. Along with the environmental groups and the Park, more than a dozen dairy and cattle ranchers participated in the mediation. The Nature Conservancy was invited into the mediation to help find a solution for the settlement negotiations.

One of our community’s biggest concerns around the settlement agreement is the impact on farmworkers, tenants, and their families living in the Seashore. A component of the agreement is to provide transition support for these households, including funds and resources for relocation and job support. However, we know we can do better as a community.   

The 2024 study “Growing Together: Advancing Housing Solutions for Workers in West Marin” brought to the forefront the need for affordable and dignified housing across Marin County – not just at the Seashore. The study, commissioned by a coalition of  community funders, partners, and leaders, outlines a complex network of problems facing West Marin’s workforce who increasingly cannot afford to live where they work.  

Much of rental housing in West Marin is in poor condition and lacks basic amenities, including those on the Seashore. Latino agricultural workers and their families are most likely to live in those substandard houses because they comprise the majority of the workforce on Marin’s farms and ranches, and this housing is all that is available, affordable, and in proximity to their work. In our community, agricultural workers experience high rates of poverty, live disproportionately in housing that is in the poorest condition, have extremely high rates of overcrowding, and have low homeownership rates. These problems are complex and require systemic and innovative solutions.

MALT is committed to supporting the building of new housing, rehabilitating existing homes, and fast tracking this process through streamlined permitting, as well as building the public and political will to empower the voices of those impacted.

The Park and TNC have communicated that the vacated lease areas – approximately 16,000 acres on the Seashore – will be managed through a cooperative agreement between TNC and the Park. Part of this land management will include targeted grazing to achieve the ecological management goals outlined in the General Management Plan. 

Targeted grazing, also known as ecological or conservation grazing, is the use of livestock animals to maintain or increase the biodiversity of natural lands. This type of grazing is typically less intensive than regular commercial grazing and is a proven land management tool to support ecosystem biodiversity, weed control, and wildland fire risk reduction. Monitoring is a necessary factor of conservation grazing. Monitoring indicators like vegetation and soil health help land managers use adaptive management to improve ecological, social, and economic outcomes.  

Targeted grazing is familiar to MALT’s work because it is an underlying component of regenerative agriculture, helping restore soil and ecosystem health for working lands. Many of MALT’s easements and ranching partners practice this type of grazing to build soil health, manage erosion, reduce fire risk, and contribute to an overall healthier ecosystem.     

Unfortunately, what’s happening at the Seashore is not isolated. Dairies, ranches, and farms are closing locally due to climate impacts (like the historic drought), high costs and inflation, supply chain disruptions, and an overall aging population of farmers. Disruptive local policies have been proposed, like Measure J in Sonoma County, that threaten family farms and animal agriculture. To accommodate for this, producers and creameries have been building contingency plans into their business models to sustain production, and ranchers will need to increase production to meet demand. 

MALT believes that we need to be preserving, not eliminating, productive agricultural land. We remain strongly committed to the work where we have a strong track record: permanently protecting private agricultural land in Marin for agricultural use. To date, we have protected nearly 59,000 acres of family farms and ranches through 98 agricultural conservation easements. Thanks to partnerships and collaborations, we have leveraged more than $112 million towards this milestone, including through Marin County voter-supported Measure A.

The settlement at the Seashore is simply the latest sign that, as a community, we need to prioritize the protection and strengthening of agriculture. We need to invest in agricultural resilience.

MALT remains committed to our mission to permanently protect Marin’s agricultural land for agricultural use, and our vision for a thriving and inclusive agricultural community in a healthy and diverse natural environment.

We will continue to do what we do best: permanently protect land and invest in stewardship projects.

We also recognize that things can and do change over time.

Therefore, as we are in our 45th year of work and on the road to 50, we are also exploring ways that we can deepen our work to have even greater impact.

On the land protection side, we are exploring other ways to protect agricultural land permanently, not just exclusively through conservation easements. Our goal is to keep evolving this work.

With the land stewardship work, we have already begun this evolution. We have grown from our Stewardship Assistance Program grants to the DRAWS program and now to our small grants program, which benefits a greater number of community members with a broader range of impacts.

In response to the settlement, we are working on housing through West Marin coalitions and at the county level to support more streamlined permitting for agricultural worker housing, educating easement holders and decision-makers on what types of housing is allowed on MALT easements, and supporting farmers and ranchers who are looking for farmland.

While we will continue to ground our work through our Strategic Pillars, we also want to be there for our community, listening to concerns and ideas, and playing an impactful role in ways that may not yet be known.

Strengthening agriculture is a community effort. It is not the charge of a single organization or a few individuals or one agency or one industry. It is all of us coming together. Strengthening agriculture is also not a single act or piece of legislation; instead it is a way of working and being.

What can people do now?

• Support working ranchers and farmers by buying their products and publicly supporting them in the community.
• Support policies like Measure A and Proposition 4 that invest in the future of agriculture.
• Donate to the diverse nonprofit organizations that support agriculture in Marin, the North Bay, and California.
• Help shift public discourse on why we need communities with strong and resilient agricultural lands now and into the future.