The study is structured to support the Park Service’s prior commitment to expanding commercial ranching, retailing and hoteling at the expense of endemic wildlife and plant life and regional water safety. In 2017, the Park Service hired a contractor with a record of defrauding the federal government to produce the EIS. Jared Huffman have pressured the Park Service to prioritize the preservation of private ranching profits over environmental concerns. The Bohemian/ Pacific Sun investigation reveals that the EIS is deeply flawed scientifically, culturally and ethically. This, despite acknowledging that the park ranches are sources of climate-heating greenhouse gases, water pollution, species extinctions and soil degradation. The 250-page report concludes that the ranching industry covering one third of the park should be expanded and protected for economic and cultural reasons.

I read government records, including the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on Point Reyes released by the National Park Service in September. Then, I studied historical and eco-biologic books and science journals. Initially, I had no opinion on the ranching issue. This reporter has hiked the varied terrains of the 71,000-acre park for decades. The North Bay community is divided by conflicted views on whether commercial dairy and cattle ranching should continue at Point Reyes National Seashore. If so, Point Reyes has a story to tell us. It’s way past time to start listening to lessons encoded in the land. California is burning, beset by plague, violence and cultural dysphoria. … You young people must not forget the things us old ones is telling you.’” … An elder prophesied that one day white people would come to us to ‘learn our ways in order to save the earth and all living things. … Everything, even a mere pebble, was thought to have power … Cutting down a tree was a violent act.

Everywhere you looked there were stories. … The landscape was our sacred text and we listened to what it told us. At that time, all of the animals and birds and plants and trees were people. “Coyote created the world from the top of Sonoma Mountain with the assistance of his nephew, Chicken Hawk. In The Once and Future Forest, Sarris tells the story of how the first people came to be in Marin and Sonoma counties. The tribe’s ancestors are known as Southern Poma and Coast Miwok. Novelist and scholar Greg Sarris is the tribal chair of the Federated Indians of the Graton Rancheria. Their subsequent generations explored and civilized the Americas, coalescing into nations, including in West Marin and Point Reyes. A wave of immigrants flowed south from Asia over thawed land bridges. Then, 12,000 years ago, the climate warmed and glaciers melted. Humans migrated from Asia walking the coastal plains toward Tierra del Fuego. “The Farallon Islands were then rugged hills rising above a broad, gently sloping plain with a rocky coastline lying to the west,” according to California Prehistory-Colonization, Culture, and Complexity. Propelled by the energy of earthquakes over eons, Point Reyes slid hundreds of miles along the San Andreas fault at the divide between two colliding tectonic plates.ĭuring the last Ice Age, 30,000 years ago, much of the Earth’s waters were locked up in glaciers, and the Pacific Ocean was 400 feet lower than it is today. Sixty million years ago a chunk of granite located near Los Angeles began moving northwards.

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