Help Save This Ranching Family

At the end of the month, the National Park Service at Point Reyes National Seashore will close down Drakes Bay Oyster Farm which has operated in Drakes Bay for almost 100 years.  This comes in spite of the fact that 85% of the community wants to keep the farm and that all of the claims that the farm is harming the bay have been proven false. Ranchers operating on the Seashore fear that the closure of the farm signals the beginning of the end for them as well, and from what I've seen, their fears are not baseless. Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, California was created in the 1960s by ranchers who believed that this was the best way to protect a beautiful place from developers.  They worked with their elected officials and the Sierra Club to create a working landscape where the ranches and dairies that had been there since Spanish colonial times would continue to function alongside the wildlife and scenery that make the place so special.  That history, and the intent of those who helped create the park is now being rewritten and the ranchers and a way of life are in jeopardy. I met the Lunnys in 2005 shortly after they had purchased Drake's Bay Oyster Farm. I was in Marin County, CA to help John Wick and Peggy Rathmann teach cows to eat weeds and the Lunnys loaned their cattle for the project. The Lunny family has been raising grassed beef at G Ranch on Point Reyes Seashore since the 1940s. I've spent a lot of time with them and they are the most hones