All but two of the bought-out ranching families have left Point Reyes.

“It’s devastating,” says Albert Straus, founder of Straus Family Creamery in Marin County. Two of the departing dairies were his suppliers. More than his business, he mourns his community.

“We’ve lost over 200 people between the farm families and farm workers. Schools may be closing. The farmer’s market is dying. We’re losing our whole community.”

In the waning days of the Biden administration, officials at Point Reyes National Seashore announced a deal had been made behind closed doors: 11 ranching families on 12 properties would be leaving, their historic leases with the National Park Service—promised as part of the permanent design of the Seashore when it first became federal land in 1962—transferred wholesale to The Nature Conservancy, a large and well-funded NGO.

While the move generated national outrage, for Sonoma and Marin Counties, the impact has been tangible. Removing a dozen farms and ranches in one fell swoop has put farmworkers out of jobs, shrinking schools, devastated local food supply chains, and looks to change the face of the storied organic agricultural community forever.

“In Marin County, we had 64 dairies in 1976,” Straus says. “We’re down to 13 now.”

Ranching families mourn the end of an era: a “living dream”

Patrick Lunny’s childhood was idyllic. Blanketed in fog much of the year, his quiet peninsula was home to a handful of intrepid ranching families, many of them descendants of immigrant tenant farmers hired to work the land, then owned by wealthy investors during the founding days of San Francisco. These families went on to purchase the land. For many, farming on Point Reyes was their family legacy, their American dream.

The Lunny family had been here for four generations.

“Not long ago I felt as though our family’s beef ranch was one of the most magical places on earth,” says Patrick Lunny. “It was somewhere you could work and spend time, and all of the static from the rest of the world would just fade away.”

He describes his family’s life of hard, rugged outdoor work on an isolated coastline as a “living dream.”

“Four generations being together, sharing a passion of raising beef and working with the land, developing long-lasting, deep friendships with the families on neighboring dairies and ranches that went back generations,” he says. “All that joy has disappeared.”

Last weekend, Patrick and his wife Teala took their 8 month-old son back to see their old home, which now stands now empty.

“Seeing the abandoned buildings left to crumble, our yards overrun by uncontrolled vegetation, brought on feelings of shock that I was not prepared for,” he says. “Seeing someone else’s cows grazing the very pastures we were forced to vacate was a painful reminder that my son will not be able to share the same privilege I had of growing up on the Lunny Ranch and carrying on the dream his great-great grandfather started.”

For other families, the loss is too raw to revisit.

“It’s too painful to go back,” says Jolynn Mendoza McClelland. “I have not been out there since our animals left.”

But she hears rumors: Gardens, once carefully tended, now overgrown; historic homes falling apart; equipment sheds and barns deteriorating.

What’s next for Point Reyes?

Karen Budd-Falen, associate deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior (DOI), met with community members in April of this year in a town hall format near Point Reyes. Over 600 people showed up.

Budd-Falen asked Straus to develop a proposal for a demonstration dairy. He obtained conceptual support from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Chico State as part of a vision for next-generation farmers and cheesemakers on Point Reyes.

Now they wait, hoping Trump’s DOI will hear them.

In the meantime, they mourn the impact of a decision the Biden Administration oversaw in January 2025, with one foot out the door.

Although National Park Service (NPS) officials maintained they were neutral throughout the process, emails exposed through a FOIA request by journalist Chris Bray tell a different story.

“A big win for NPS, PORE, and conservation,” wrote Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife Sarah Krakoff on January 9, just over a week before President Trump’s inauguration. She was forwarding an email announcing the ranchers’ exit. “Nice one to go out on y’all!!!”

Last days of Biden Administration brought end of legacy ranches

Some locals I speak with speculate about political corruption.

Governor Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, are now being investigated by the federal government over “behested payments,” donations the governor solicited from interests with business before the state and steered to nonprofits his wife runs.

The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria is said to be the single largest tribal donor in the United States. The tribe has given at least $500,000 to Siebel Newsom’s nonprofit. They have a 20-year co-management agreement with Point Reyes National Seashore, signed in 2021—a unique arrangement that gives the tribe a say in how the park is run.

“Public servants aren’t public servants anymore,” said one local farmer, who asked to remain anonymous. “There’s a whole power structure.”

This individual is a longtime Democrat who says he is left disillusioned with the party after Congressman Jared Huffman appeared to join talks on the side of NGOs to boot these ranchers out.

“It’s such a disconnect,” he says.

Agriculture advocates say The Nature Conservancy is using its funds—including the $232 million in taxpayer dollars it has received from the federal government, according to writer Jim Mundorf of Lonesome Lands podcast—to buy up private ranches, and now even farming leases on federal land, displacing long-time ag families.

“These are fourth-generation families with nowhere to go, because land prices are too expensive,” Straus says.

The amount The Nature Conservancy paid to take over the ranch leases is unknown. The ranchers are all bound by nondisclosure agreements and unable to speak about what happened behind closed doors during the mediation process.

Future uncertain on Point Reyes

The Nature Conservancy is currently taking over all the grazing management on Point Reyes. They have a 40-year management agreement.

Only three ranches are currently being grazed, raising fears about wildfire.

Shelina Moreda, a fifth-generation dairy farmer in nearby Petaluma, runs a rescue organization that helps evacuate animals during wildfires. She had to evacuate animals from Point Reyes just a few years ago.

“They are not exempt from wildfire on Point Reyes,” she says. “The only thing keeping it at bay is those multi-generational farmers managing grazing out there.”

Not only does their exit mark a loss for local food and culture, it’s ecologically dangerous, says Straus.

“Livestock numbers have declined significantly over the past several decades, while wildfire risk has increased dramatically,” he says. “50 years ago we had 132 million cattle, now we have around 80 million. Active land management matters.”

He’s among locals who hope the Trump Administration will intervene and open grazing lease applications on Point Reyes to independent producers. He says Budd-Falen was “gracious and understanding” at the town hall.

When Point Reyes became federal land in 1962, the farm families who had managed it for generations were opposed to its seizure. The government moved forward anyway, but promised they and their descendants would be protected; the storied agricultural heritage of Point Reyes would be a permanent feature of the park, with long-term leases ensuring its continuation. That promise has now been broken.

Moreda feels her community is on edge.

“The fact that this happened right under our noses infuriates everyone around here,” she says. “It’s not what anyone wanted, yet it happened anyway. Everybody wonders when their neighbor will be hit next. It’s an unsettling feeling.”

The last two families on Point Reyes will be gone by August 1. The peninsula feels haunted. Locals describe it as eerie and quiet.

As for Straus, he hasn’t been back.

“It’s too depressing,” he says. “There’s nothing there.”

Read more on Point Reyes:

Josepha Littlewolf Thunderheart Basurto, age 31, was found shot to death in a pickup truck near the Round Valley Indian Reservation northwest of Covelo, California. Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall believes her murder is connected to “transnational drug organizations and illegal marijuana cultivation.”

Her death comes amid longstanding concerns over violence, illegal cannabis cultivation, and cartel presence in Northern California's rural and tribal communities.

Basurto was found July 9 in a Toyota Tacoma off Rifle Range Road near what the sheriff’s office described as a large marijuana cultivation site.

Deputies received a 911 call at approximately 8:58 pm from a woman who reported finding her family member dead in a vehicle at the 22000 block of Rifle Range Road after an hours-long search for her. Deputies observed multiple gunshots to the vehicle. Basurto was confirmed dead of a gunshot wound to the torso at 9:17 pm.

Basurto leaves behind a husband and four children aged 4 to 13, according to her mother Sharlisa Mountainlion Unca Sam. Family members remember Basurto as a horse trainer and powwow dancer who loved her children and was deeply connected to her Native traditions and community.

The following day, three individuals were arrested at the grow site where Basurto’s body was found. Jesus Hernandez Sosa, Franklin Ironbear Oliver, and Laura Gabriela Menta were booked on cannabis cultivation-related charges; police have not said whether their arrests are connected to the murder.

“Dark underbelly”

For years, residents of Round Valley have raised concerns about illegal marijuana cultivation sites operating on and around tribal lands. Community members and local law enforcement say the issue has brought violence, environmental damage, human trafficking, and drug trafficking to the area.

A report by the Yurok Tribal Court and Sovereign Bodies Institute documented 105 missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Northern California alone between 1900 and 2020. Round Valley, Hoopa Valley, and Yurok tribes were among the most represented. Advocates say violence associated with drug trafficking and the isolation of rural tribal communities can make investigations difficult.

“We continue to see just massive amounts of violence including illegal weapons, human trafficking, anything you can think of that is connected to that dark underbelly, that is what we’re seeing in Northern California right now,” says Kendall. “It’s all associated with illegal grows.”

One Round Valley resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said violence on the reservation is escalating.

“The cartels have brought us increased violence and increased murder. There’s always been some homicide here but in the past number of years there’s been way more.”

Cartels exploit the lack of law enforcement on tribal lands, the resident says.

“There’s people missing and we know they were tied to grows. There’s kids being trafficked who show up at the high school. There’s increased access to illicit drugs especially fentanyl. There’s a lot of burglary. There’s mountains and mountains and mountains of garbage and junk. It’s all connected to the cartels.”

Sheriff asks federal government to step in

Kendall has called for the Trump administration’s help to combat illegal marijuana operations and associated violent crime in rural Northern California, arguing local agencies lack the manpower and funding necessary to address the problem.

“I have been beating on the door of the federal government, because what we’re seeing here seems to fall right in line with what the president and Kash Patel say they want dealt with. Seems like urban areas are getting attention but rural areas are not. And if you think about it, the resources necessary to deal with these problems are sure as hell not in rural communities.”

He claims Governor Gavin Newsom has not returned his calls for assistance regarding cartel entrenchment and violence in the region.

“It’s become very clear to all of us in Northern California that the current leadership in Sacramento does not want to hear that there are any problems with their legislation,” Kendall says. “If they speak to us, they will have to admit that there are problems and they don’t want that.”

Tribal Council sued sheriffs over cannabis raids

The sheriff’s office claims to receive hundreds of calls a month from the Round Valley Indian Reservation. After ramping up enforcement and cannabis raids at the request of residents, Kendall was among local law enforcement sued by the Tribe for “violating tribal sovereignty.” The lawsuit reflects longstanding tensions between county law enforcement and tribal officials over the scope of police authority on tribal lands and how cannabis enforcement should be conducted.

“They’re trying to make this about race when it was Native people calling me, asking for help,” Kendall says. “I was hammering on the problem until the tribe began suing me.”

In January 2026, a federal judge largely sided with Kendall, ruling that federal law permits California to enforce criminal drug laws on tribal land. The Tribe amended its complaint, and in June 2026 the court let the suit proceed on the narrower claim that the raids enforced regulatory rules rather than criminal law. The case is ongoing.

Kendall adds that, though there are a “disproportionate amount” of missing and murdered people on reservations, county sheriffs do not receive federal funding for their work on tribal lands.

For Kendall, Basurto's death is the direct result of Sacramento’s ambivalence toward transnational drug trafficking and black market cannabis cultivation in rural California.

“If we don’t deal with the people committing these crimes, we’re walking away from the victims.”

The Mendocino Major Crimes Task Force is investigating Basurto’s death along with the DA’s office. Anyone with information should contact the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center at 707-463-4086 (option 1). Information can also be provided anonymously by calling the non-emergency tip-line at 707-234-2100.

Read More:

Steve Hilton is running to restore California’s unique spirit. The Republican nominee for governor says his campaign isn’t partisan; he believes government should get the basics right—roads, schools, public safety, water—then leave people alone.

He calls it the rebel spirit: the soul of a state built by people who did things their own way, now smothered by a bureaucracy that tells Californians what to drive, how to build, makes their lives unbearably expensive, and destroys the infrastructure that built the state.

Hilton was born in London to parents who escaped communist Hungary, ran domestic policy from 10 Downing Street, then chose California, and American citizenship. He’s campaigned across the state, and wrote the book on its decline (Califailure).

In this conversation, Steve Hilton goes deep on the issues impacting rural California:

Water. Trump’s “giant spigot” is real; he’s seen it. Hilton discusses how bureaucrats decide what flows through the Delta pumps, and why he says he can raise deliveries almost immediately, no new construction required. Plus his on-record commitment to protecting the Potter Valley dams and supporting a buyer.

Power. Behested payments, “legalized corruption,” breaking up PG&E, $3 gas, and why working people are subsidizing Teslas they’ll never drive.

Land. Wolves attacking cattle while ranchers face arrest; why predator decisions should be returned to counties. Cartels in the forests and a governor who has never once met with the state’s sheriffs. Bringing back the timber industry; six billion board feet a year, now down to about a billion and a half, while lumber is trucked in from Canada and overgrown forests burn.

Winning. He talks about what happened to Spencer Pratt in L.A., the ground game Charlie Kirk helped him plan, and the math: (6 million votes takes the state, and Trump got 6.1 million here in 2024).

Hilton makes his pitch to the ranchers and hippies, farmers and libertarians, loggers and back-to-the-landers of California’s forgotten half, united mostly by being governed by people who have never set foot in their counties. Whatever your politics, if you live on this side of California, this conversation is about your water, your power bill, your forests, your future.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Referenced in this episode:

• Steve Hilton for Governor: stevehiltonforgovernor.com

• Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State by Steve Hilton

• Golden Together — Achieving Water Abundance, the water blueprint co-authored with Edward Ring, and the Modern Forest Management paper: goldentogether.com

• High Country Murder — Keely’s documentary on the unsolved killing of Mendocino County rancher Dick Drewry in the Emerald Triangle: americaunwon.com/p/film

• UNWON’s Potter Valley coverage: Rollins and Burgum convene meeting between PG&E and potential dam buyers · Secretary Rollins fires back at Huffman · Who would want the Potter Valley dams? Meet Darcy Burke of Elsinore Valley Municipal Water District

• UNWON: UC Davis study finds beef is the main food source for California wolves

• Victor Davis Hanson — Is California Reaching Critical Mass?

On Friday, the Trump administration announced the single most significant Endangered Species Act (ESA) reform in decades: the federal government will no longer interpret habitat modification as “harm” to endangered species.

It marks a seismic change in the way the ESA is enforced that could reshape everything from ranching and logging to commercial fishing, homebuilding, water management, and energy development. Supporters say the move will end decades of overreach and a habitat mitigation micro-economy built around regulatory compliance.

The Trump administration says this restores the original meaning of the ESA, in compliance with the Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference—the legal precedent that once allowed unelected officials to develop rules based on their interpretations of laws passed by Congress.

The heart of the dispute

The debate centers around the meaning of the word “harm” in the text of the ESA. The ESA, passed in 1973, outlaws “take” of endangered plants and animals. It defines “take” as to “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”

In 1981, government agencies expanded on the word “harm” to include any meaningful impact to a listed species’ habitat. This allowed the government enormous power over any industry and land uses they deemed impactful to those habitats.

Trump’s Commerce and Interior Departments now say this interpretation is too broad—“harm” only means affirmative acts that do direct damage to a listed plant or animal.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the old interpretation was weaponized against industries and private property rights.

“For years, federal agencies abused the ESA to obstruct lawful land use and burden American families and businesses,” said Burgum in a news release. “This action restores common sense, respects private property, provides much-needed certainty for landowners and follows the statute Congress actually passed.”

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) first proposed getting rid of the old definition in April 2025, opening a public comment period that drew thousands of responses from environmental organizations, industry groups, states, and private citizens. On Friday, the agencies finalized that rule, largely as proposed, clearing the way for it to take effect after publication in the Federal Register unless blocked by a court. Rather than write a narrower definition of “harm,” the agencies are deleting the 1981 regulatory definition altogether—letting the original statute stand alone.

Analysts estimate annual savings up to $521 million

This reform is in keeping with Trump’s larger vision for deregulation and cutting red tape.

Officials say the move will not just unshackle industry and restore private property rights, it will cut costs. An entire cottage industry has grown around the 1981 definition of harm: a roughly $10 billion habitat-restoration economy supporting more than 53,000 jobs.

Until now, private landowners, developers, timber operators, and other producers needed an incidental take permit (ITP) before initiating activities that could impact a protected species. To obtain such a permit, they had to submit a formal plan for mitigating habitat impact, called a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

By ending the era of broad habitat protection under the ESA, officials estimate annual savings of between $361.3 million and $521 million.

Environmental groups like Earthjustice are already vowing to sue.

“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” said Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles. “Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump administration’s rule—no scientific support, no legal support, no public support. We will see the Trump administration in court.”

But property rights and industry advocates see this as freeing citizens from subjective enforcement and overregulation.

During the comment period, as the Trump administration considered this regulation change, a coalition of more than 40 agriculture and property groups including the California Farm Bureau, Family Farm Alliance, National Milk Producers Federation, and Western Growers Association, filed a formal letter urging officials to drop the old definition.

They argued federal agencies had used it to impose regulatory burdens based on “subjective preferences for the ecosystem rather than known consequences to individual members of a species.”

“To be clear, we live and work in the West, and we embrace our natural heritage. However, species recovery and economic prosperity do not have to be mutually exclusive,” the coalition wrote.

They argue the change will make ESA enforcement more predictable and effective by tying liability to direct injury of protected species instead of subjective judgments about potential habitat impacts.

Impacts to ranching, logging, and energy production

Supporters of the new rule point to decades of high-profile disputes they say illustrate how the broad interpretation of “harm” reached far beyond direct injury to protected animals, influencing many aspects of American life.

Ordinary ranching operations such as grazing, water development, fencing, and brush clearing that modified habitat could count as a prohibited “take” and a violation of federal law. Many ranchers have been forced to obtain ITPs just to continue managing their herds, building expensive HCPs that often involved paying for mitigation or altering long-established grazing practices.

Restrictions around habitat for the lesser-prairie chicken restricted ranching operations and energy projects across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado for years.

The dunes sagebrush lizard, listed in 2024, blocked energy projects in the Permian Basin.

The spotted owl listing devastated logging across the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, reducing timber employment in those regions by between 16,000 and 32,000 jobs according to one 2021 estimate.

Developers have also argued that habitat-based permitting requirements delayed residential construction and infrastructure projects in areas where listed species were present, even when no individual animal was harmed.

Officials cite end of Chevron deference

The 2024 Supreme Court case Loper Bright v. Raimondo brought about the end of so-called “Chevron deference”—a 1984 precedent that allowed government agencies to use best judgement in interpreting ambiguous laws. Post-Loper Bright, courts are no longer required to defer to agency interpretations.

Without Chevron, the Trump administration says the wide-reaching application of “harm” in the ESA is no longer acceptable.

In 1995, the Supreme Court upheld the broad definition of “harm” in Babbitt v. Sweet Home, finding it permissible under Chevron, though not compelled. A legal question remains: Does this decision hold in a post-Chevron landscape?

That question is likely to become central as environmental organizations challenge the Trump administration in federal court.

The new rule is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register Tuesday, July 14, and is subject to a standard 60-day delay.

Ranchers in California’s rural north say wolves pose an existential threat to their cattle. New research from U.C. Davis backs them up: Cattle made up the majority of wolves’ diets in Northern California in 2022 and 2023.

For those two summers, scientists collected wolf scat samples in Lassen and Plumas Counties. They found that on average, 72% of those samples contained beef. Mule deer, wolves’ usual prey, appeared in just 45%. Of the 20 individual wolves identified in the study, 17 had consumed cattle. The three that hadn’t were each represented by a single sample.

Lead author Tina Saitone concluded wolf populations are exploding in California because of livestock. They are living on cattle.

“Essentially, the cattle industry in California is really supporting the conservation success of wolves,” she said in an interview with The Sacramento Bee. “There are multiple problems that are creating a situation where wolves are highly dependent on cattle to save themselves.”

Beef accounted for more than half of the biomass in the wolves’ summer diet. It was 88% of wolves’ two main ungulate diet items in 2022 and 78% in 2023. By contrast, mule deer—wolves’ usual prey—contributed just 12%.

And that number is conservative. Researchers calculated it using the weight of a calf. Wolves in the study area were confirmed to have killed full-grown cattle as well; at that weight, cattle would account for more than 80% of what the wolves ate.

A second U.C. Davis study found wolves are harming California cattle herds by their presence alone. Published in Ecology and Evolution, the study measured cortisol levels in tail hair from cattle in Northern California. It found that herds living among wolves had 58% higher cortisol levels than their counterparts. Stress damages pregnancy and wean rates in cattle, hurting ranch income in ways the state's compensation program, which pays only for confirmed or probable kills, doesn't cover.

“Beyond direct predation, wolves impose additional costs,” Saitone said. “Cattle exposed to wolves show increased vigilance and avoidance behaviors that reduce weight gain and conception rates while increasing disease vulnerability. Producers face higher expenses from intensified monitoring, fence repairs, non-lethal deterrents, and depredation investigations.”

In California, gray wolves are protected by both state and federal law. It’s illegal to shoot at wolves to protect livestock or pets.

Ranchers cope with predator overload

The new data is especially concerning given ranchers say the threat has only escalated in the two years since the samples were collected.

“It's so awful because these are the animals that we are here to protect,” said Theodora Johnson, a Siskiyou County rancher, in UNWON’s 2025 story on wolf predation. “We're in charge of them, we care for them, they rely on us for their care, and we're allowing this to happen. And you can't do anything about it."

California is an extreme outlier. A North American review found domesticated animals made up about 8% of wolf diet. While ranchers in other states are also impacted by expanding wolf predation, in California it’s a true crisis. California's wolves are eating cattle at eight to nine times the national rate.

Patrick Griffin, Siskiyou County wolf liaison, has inspected 80 wolf kills in the decade wolves have been in Northern California.

“We’re seeing more depredations as a result of wolf kills than bears and mountain lions put together,” he said.

The “Beyem Seyo” pack in Sierra Valley killed or injured almost 100 cattle in a seven-month period in 2025, costing ranchers between $534,000 and $1.7 million in livestock depredations and the state at least $2 million in intervention costs. California Department of Fish & Wildlife (CDFW) deployed a “Summer Strike Team” for non-lethal hazing. 114 days and over 18,000 staff hours later, attacks kept rising. State wildlife officials eventually euthanized four wolves in the pack.

Some believe wolves are preying on cattle because there’s almost nothing else to eat. Mule deer populations have collapsed in this part of California due to severe wildlife mismanagement and failure to control increasing numbers of predators. Mule deer numbers fell from roughly 950,000 in northeastern California in 1990 to about 250,000 by the mid-1990s.

1990 was the year California banned mountain lion hunting. More recently, the state limited black bear hunts as well.

“If we’re going to have wolves, we have to manage the wild prey more successfully than we are,” Griffin said. “California tends to manage for revenue rather than benefit of wildlife. That needs to change.”

READ MORE:

The first episode of The Read, the new UNWON segment where I narrate my investigative reporting straight from the page, no cuts.

We open with “Pay to Play,” an investigation into REAL AZ Economic Development Group: a Navajo County, Arizona nonprofit run by sitting county officials, out of county offices, that took in more than a million dollars from the same wind and solar developers those officials were voting on.

It started with a multigenerational rancher named Casey Murph and a European solar company that turned up at his family’s grazing allotment. The question we set out to answer is the one that runs through the whole report: did that company just happen to find Casey Murph, or was he handed to them?

The Source Material:

This was my first work trip since having my baby in December, and I’m taking you along for this fitting kickoff to America’s 250th birthday week. It’s only right that the nation started its semiquincentennial celebration by honoring the men and women who feed it.

Rose Garden Dinner Honoring Farmers & Ranchers

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The flesh-eating parasite the U.S. wiped out 60 years ago is back across the border, and suddenly everyone has a PhD in parasitology.

This episode of Ranch Beat covers the facts: what New World Screwworm actually is, how it clawed its way back up through Central America and Mexico, steps the USDA is taking to address it, and why some of the loudest voices online are doing real damage with bad information.

Dr. Brazil, a large animal veterinarian of almost 40 years, walks ranchers through exactly what to watch for, how to treat it, and what really happens when APHIS shows up at the gate.

And they end where these stories always should: not with the grandstanders, but with the rancher who caught that very first case by paying close enough attention to a newborn calf. The quiet, daily care that the people who actually do this work never stop giving.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Today, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins directed the Forest Service to change how it interacts with ranchers. She made it clear: Grazing on public land is a priority for the Trump Administration.

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Weeks after fifth-generation Arizona rancher Casey Murph raised the alarm about a foreign solar company trying to access his family’s grazing allotment, he met with representatives from the Arizona State Land Department.

He had first heard from Orsted, the European company interested i…

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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has responded to a congressional investigation launched by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) into the USDA’s efforts to stop proposed dam removals in Northern California.

Last month, Rollins announced that a buyer

Read more

Nicolette Hahn Niman has one of the more unusual biographies in American public life: environmental lawyer, former vegetarian, cattle rancher, Nobel Week speaker, author of Defending Beef, Point Reyes Seashore resident, and now, a congressional candidate challenging seven-term incumbent Jared Huffman in California’s newly redrawn District 2.

She’s also one of two ranching families still standing at Point Reyes after 11 ranching families were forced out in a secretive Biden-era deal brokered by the Nature Conservancy and wrapped in non-disclosure agreements—a deal Huffman reportedly helped engineer and was bound by NDA himself. The Nimans did not participate in the negotiations. Then they sued to protect ranching on the peninsula.

What made her run wasn’t just Point Reyes. It was a pattern: the oyster farm that came first, the ranchers who came second, now the local fishermen targeted. It was watching Jared Huffman, who came out of the NRDC, operate for 13 years with what she calls an “absolutist environmentalism” that treats every fisherman, rancher, logger, and farmer in the district as a problem to be managed rather than a constituent to be served. And it was Proposition 50: a Newsom-backed gerrymander that added Shasta, Modoc, and Siskiyou Counties to Huffman’s district, making it, as Nicolette puts it, ground zero for America’s rural-urban divide.

Keely has been covering two of the biggest stories in Nicolette’s world: the Point Reyes forced departure and the Potter Valley Project, both of which fall inside Huffman’s district, both of which she weighs in on. They talk about the closed-door NDA process that resulted in the displacement of 200 people and 30 schoolchildren. They talk about what she’s heard on the campaign trail from Shasta to Siskiyou. They talk about the Klamath parallel, Secretary Rollins, and why she’d like to see the Potter Valley Dams stay. And they cover about what it would mean to have someone in Congress who literally wrote the book on defending the beef industry.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Gavin Newsom has never once met with California’s 58 sheriffs.

Not a sit-down. Not a representative sent on his behalf. Not a returned phone call. Every governor before him had a standing relationship with the men and women running law enforcement in the state. Newsom ended it the day he took office; rural California has been paying the price ever since.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is running for Governor of California. He’s not a politician, he describes his campaign as a citizen’s rebellion. But he has been elected to run the fourth largest sheriff’s office in the country for over seven years. He’s spent the last year driving the length of California talking to talking to the people who grow its food, fight its fires, and manage its land. He’s met with farmers, ranchers, loggers, and water district managers. He knows where the Scott Dam is. He knows what the Potter Valley Project means to 750,000 people. He’s tracked Chinese and Mexican cartels through California’s forests. He’s watched Gavin Newsom refuse to return a single call from California’s sheriffs.

In this conversation, he goes deep on the issues that actually affect working Californians, the ones Sacramento pretends don’t exist:

Water. Why the last major reservoir built in California was 1979 (we’ve doubled in population since then), why the state keeps routing water to the ocean instead of storing it, and what the Scott Dam removal would actually mean for the North State.

Fire. Why the Palisades Fire wiped out 20 years of California’s carbon reduction in a single event, why prescribed burns take two to three years to permit, and why bringing back the logging industry is essential.

Illegal cannabis and cartels. How legalization created a more dangerous black market, what Chinese, Russian, and Mexican criminal organizations are doing in California’s forests, and why Sacramento takes credit for enforcement it didn’t do.

Agriculture. Why California has lost nearly a quarter of its farms since 1982 and up to 900,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland may be taken out of production due to water policy, why small farmers are being regulated into selling to big ag, and what it would take to reverse this dismaying trend.

Law enforcement and Newsom. The standing relationship between governors and sheriffs that Newsom destroyed, and why Jerry Brown warned them on his way out: “You have no idea what’s coming.”

Predator policy. Wolves, mountain lions, grizzly reintroduction proposals, whether he’d delist the gray wolf, and what Fish & Game has gotten completely wrong

CCW and Second Amendment. Why access to concealed carry permits varies wildly by county and what that means for rural Californians who are 45 minutes from the nearest deputy.

Energy. CPUC corruption, why he says utility rates would be cut in half the day he takes office, and the case for nuclear.

Bianco grew up in a small coal mining and farming town in Utah, came to California at 21 because it was the most perfect place he’d ever seen, and has watched it be systematically dismantled in the time he’s been here. He’s not running because he woke up one day and wanted to be governor. He’s running because he looked at the field, looked at the state, and decided someone had to.

This conversation is for the farmers in the Central Valley watching their fields go dry. For the ranchers in Modoc choosing between their cattle and the law. For the loggers in Humboldt who watched their industry get regulated into extinction. For everyone who’s looked at a ballot and wondered if it’s even worth filling out anymore.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

UPDATE (1:00 PM Tuesday): Shifting winds are threatening the historic ranch buildings on the north part of the island. Tankers appear focused on protecting Park Service headquarters, campgrounds, and possibly the historic buildings. The ranch house is thought to b…

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Justin Pettit is a third-generation cattle rancher in Bakersfield, California, where the West has never quite been won. Nine years ago, he developed a novel premium beef product. His carrot-finished beef was soon in demand among customers seeking a prime-graded grass-finished option as well as high-end restaurants and culinary programs across the country.

After surviving COVID in Gavin Newsom’s California, Pettit says a massive meat processor based in Southern California cheated him and his customers by cutting his product with foreign beef. Once he caught the alleged fraud, he says he tried to catch up on orders, but it was too late. He lost customers and business, a 10,000-acre ranch lease, and soon his home. Now he’s embroiled in an unresolved lawsuit with a meat industry behemoth in a microcosm of the stakes ranchers and farmers face.

Between fighting wildland fires, founding a non-profit for kids with special needs, driving a horse trailer full of food through the L.A. fires to feed evacuees, smuggling beef to restaurants during COVID, dealing with train robbers and cartel neighbors, and trying to create a new product in an industry as old as the American frontier, Justin is living a modern cowboy adventure in the unwon West. His story offers insight into the stakes facing modern ranchers and reveals the cracks in a food system increasingly unfriendly to on-the-ground producers. Justin believes he’s fighting for the industry itself; if and when he wins, it will be a win for the industry, proving you can still create something new and find success in cowboy country.

Show Notes

Sponsored by Ranch Vision: www.ranchvision.io

Special thanks to Josh Woolwine for creating our intro. Follow Josh at www.instagram.com/hjwoolwine.

Links

Website: https://www.santacarotabeef.com

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-save-our-family-ranch-business

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/santacarotabeef/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SantaCarotaBeef

X: https://x.com/santacarotabeef

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