Point Reyes fallout: Schools shrinking, farmers market dying, "we're losing our community"

All but two of the ranching families bought out by The Nature Conservancy have now left Point Reyes National Seashore.

Shipwreck near Point Reyes. Photo: Source

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.”

Looking across Tomales Bay toward an abandoned Point Reyes.

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.”

For the first time in over a century, eleven farm and ranch families will soon be gone from Point Reyes. Photos: Billie Thibodeau, Albert Strauss

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

-Albert Straus

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.

Karen Budd-Falen (center), associate deputy secretary of the DOI, met with community members including Albert Straus (far left) to discuss the future of Point Reyes. Photo: Albert Straus

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.

The family ranches of Point Reyes. Illustration: Bill Russell

“Seeing the abandoned buildings left to crumble, our yards overrun by uncontrolled vegetation, brought on feelings of shock that I was not prepared for.”

Patrick Lunny

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.”

View of Point Reyes from a plane departing San Francisco International Airport. Photo: Source

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