12 Years Ago, Channel Islands Superintendent Warned Point Reyes Ranchers the National Park Service was Coming for Them: "NPS Has No Soul."
"They have a playbook."
In 1998, former Channel Islands superintendent Tim Setnicka witnessed the National Park Service (NPS) drive Vail & Vickers ranch off Santa Rosa Island in their militant and ultimately successful effort to transform the five islands into a national park and expel all ranchers and “non-native species”—including cattle, horses, deer, and elk—in the process.
In 2014, Setnicka warned the ranchers of Point Reyes National Seashore: You’re next.
Last week, his prophetic message was realized as 12 families on Point Reyes announced they would be leaving the peninsula forever.
Santa Rosa Island is one of California’s five Channel Islands. This spit of wilderness in the Pacific Ocean had been the center of years of controversy between the Vail family and the Park Service. At last, the government achieved what Setnicka believed they always wanted: forcing the working ranch families off the island forever.
“They have a playbook,” a source with knowledge tells me.
After initially working hand-in-hand with NPS to evict ranchers, Setnicka seemed to undergo a change in perspective. He went rogue, telling anyone who listened: “The National Park Service has no soul.”
Back in 2014, Setnicka told the ranchers on Point Reyes National Seashore their days were numbered. In a three-hour event at West Marin School, he told the crowd what NPS had done on Santa Rosa Island. A reporter for Point Reyes Light covered the event.
“Mr. Setnicka framed the park service as a clandestine government agency that ignores data and is hostile to ranching, though some attendees were taken aback by a story that sometimes sounded like a conspiracy.”
Setnicka insisted, based on what he witnessed at Santa Rosa Island, the ranchers on Point Reyes were in danger. He told them to contact their congressional representatives, get the media involved, stay alert. “If you don’t stand up, you will be run over.”
“According to Mr. Setnicka, much of the inter-agency work was more or less orchestrated to help bring about the end of ranching.”
He told the crowd, “There’s no book coming, there’s no movie, there’s no videotapes for sale…but it’s just not right.”
Setnicka told his audience the Park Service’s claim that ranch cattle caused damage to elk habitat were bogus; the animals coexisted well on the island and there was no shortage of feed.