Rodd Kelsey gazed out on the golden slopes of Point Reyes national seashore sweeping down to the rugged California coastline, pointing to the patches laden with invasive stalks of prickly thistle and browning sod. These are some of the hallmarks of the region’s recent history, he said – but they also showcase the opportunities for its future.
A new chapter is unfolding on the striking landscape located some 70 miles (113km) north of San Francisco. The unique patchwork of wild and pastoral ranges operated by the National Park Service (NPS) has spent decades mired in battles between local ranchers operating on the lands and environmentalists who see their presence as a blight.
As part of a settlement reached early this year, 12 organic dairies and cattle operations agreed to take a multimillion-dollar buyout – the financial details of which have been largely kept secret – and were given 15 months to move off the land.
The deal opened more than 16,000 acres (6,475 hectares) for conservation, left in the hands of the Nature Conservancy, the international conservation non-profit that financed and mediated the agreement. As the group’s California land program director, Kelsey is among those shepherding the enormous, five-year restoration effort.
Last week, California legislators awarded $2.7m in state funding to the plan, out of a $10m fund set aside for Point Reyes’s restoration.
But eight months after the settlement was signed, tensions are still raw in the picturesque communities tucked against the seashore.
Concerns about how California will replace the lost supply of organic dairy linger as multigenerational ranchers wind down more than a century of work. There are questions about the way the deal was brokered, and whether the Nature Conservancy’s plans will meet the critical environmental challenges that are only intensifying as the world warms.
It’s a future laced with both hope and heartbreak. But after what Kelsey called “a very painful transition”, he’s eager to focus on what lies ahead.
Point Reyes is still considered a biodiversity hotspot – one of 25 regions on earth most abundant with life with “the threat of loss most severe”, according to the NPS. From coastal sand dunes to tree-covered ridges, its dynamic terrain is a refuge for rare plants and animals, including more than 50 plants and 50 animals listed as threatened or endangered.
The landscapes have also undergone considerable change due to human disruption. There are more than 300 species of aggressive, non-native plants spreading in Point Reyes, roughly 10% of which are a direct threat to ecosystems.
But buried beneath a blanket of weeds lie layers of native seeds waiting for the chance to be resown. The goal – to create a resilient mosaic of vegetation and terrain that helps biodiversity thrive – depends on the right plants having space to reach for the sun.
To help them, Kelsey and a team of partners are planning to rely on what was once considered an environmental adversary: cows.
With a coalition of scientists, conservationists, tribal members and the NPS, the Nature Conservancy has begun outlining a restoration proposal where new herds will be brought in not for milk, but for targeted grazing – a crucial tool, they say, for removing invasive plants and making space for native ones to regrow.
Some spots will require heavy intervention. Others, a lighter touch. The team will also use mowing and prescribed burning to eradicate what the cows can’t chomp. The idea is ambitious, but it’s also been tested. The Nature Conservancy already manages roughly 400,000 former ranch lands across California and is incorporating research done at its other properties where coastal grasslands have been restored.
The stakes are high: if successful, this living laboratory could inform conservation efforts around the world and provide insights into how to sustain native ecosystems alongside livestock. What’s learned here could help this region and others soften the blow as the climate crisis unfolds.
“Three to four years from now, we will have learned a lot and we will be charting a course for the future,” Kelsey said. “That’s part of the experiment here.”
It’s a controversial approach with a set of steep challenges, but Kelsey is confident.
“Remarkably, these native plants that have mostly disappeared from coastal ecosystems just start popping back up,” he added. “It’s latent and sitting in there, waiting to respond.”
Restoring native plants for ‘cascading’ effects
On a warm August morning, sunshine pierced the fog that shrouds the seashore even in summer. Clusters of cows could be seen dotting the hillsides, the smell of manure hanging heavy on the salted ocean breeze. Nearby, a herd of tule elk, endemic to this region of California, gathered on the horizon, a large bull at the center bugling loudly to the delight of tourists battling the gusty winds to catch a glimpse.
This corner of west Marin county has long been a popular destination for nature lovers and foodies alike. Millions of visitors come each year for its wild beaches and trails with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean, as well as the organic produce, dairy and cheese. After the national seashore was designated in 1962 with a unique deal that secured dairies’ ties to their historic lands within the park, agriculture, natureand recreation co-existed, forming the fabric of the region.
But the bucolic scenes masked the battles brewing in the local communities over the beloved area that was also imperiled by intensive land use and the extreme conditions wrought by the climate crisis.
“A lot of the non-native grasses were introduced because they were good for forage or brought inadvertently,” Kelsey said of the plants now blanketing the hillsides. Manure spread over the pastures over the years changed the soils and encouraged their spread, while extensive water use drained moisture from already parched systems.
Fights also ignited over fencing put up by the ranches that limited the range of wildlife, including the tule elk. When California’s recent drought desiccated the region and left scores of animals cut off from water sources, the situation sparked fierce local protests.
Next year, many of the fences will come down. Instead, conservationists will rely on “virtual” fencing to more precisely manage grazing cows, an “emerging technology”, Kelsey said, that uses a GPS signal programmed to a collar and has been tested on the Nature Conservancy’s 14,000-acre (5,665-hectare) preserve to the south in San Luis Obispo county.
“It is really going to be a game-changer in managing cows carefully but opening up the landscape for things like elk so they can move around more freely,” he said.
The Nature Conservancy will work closely with local stakeholders and stewards, including the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and the NPS, who both declined to speak to the Guardian for this story.
While early phases of the plan are focused on invasive plant removal, groups of researchers are already preparing for step two: planting the prairies with a mix of natives that will encourage resilience and diversity.
“It’s kind of like the ocean,” Donna Faure, executive director of the Point Reyes National Seashore Association (PRNSA), said, walking through a sea of swaying yellow grasses. “It all looks kind of the same but it’s different underneath.” The PRNSA has worked closely with the NPS, and funded the first phase of native seed research being used to inform restoration plans.
The need feels urgent: California’s native grasslands have been decimated, with less than 1% remaining. Northern coastal prairie, considered one of the most diverse grasslands – and home to close to a third of the state’s threatened and endangered species – still grows wild in Point Reyes, and the PRNSA is working quickly to expand it.
Helping native plants thrive has a documented impact on other species. Plant communities support a range of insect populations that other creatures, including birds, feed on. The work will be done in close coordination with local communities, rooted in research and science with room to adjust based on monitored successes, according to Faure and Kelsey.
“Having a diverse mosaic sets the table for the whole cascading effects in the system,” Kelsey said. “It literally translates to more baby birds because there’s more food.”
A painful transition
As conservationists excitedly step into their new roles as stewards, others are lamenting what will be lost as part of Point Reyes’s new direction. The ranches now being dissembled were some of the few remaining producers of organic dairy in the region.
“Everything I have worked for is being threatened,” said Albert Straus, the founder of Straus Family Creamery, the first certified organic creamery in the US. He dedicated his life to securing and supporting sustainability-focused dairy operations and is working to secure carbon neutrality in his business and the 13 farms supplying it by 2030.
The settlement won’t mean the end of his business, but it will create more challenges for the creamery, said Straus, since many of his organic suppliers are now leaving the area and finding new ones will be tough.
Straus sees the settlement as the final straw following years of hardship, inflicted by perennial legal challenges, and the broader struggles of 21st-century dairy farming – another disastrous step toward a future that favors factory farms. Many of the milk cows that once graced the picturesque hillsides in Point Reyes have been sold for slaughter or to large-scale dairies far less dedicated to animal welfare and limiting their environmental footprint.
“There are ways of working to show local food production is really an asset and a benefit to society and to the community,” he said. “In a climate where we are importing a lot of our food, we are at risk.”
He feels that the agriculture industry and the community more broadly has been betrayed by the NPS, which was able to acquire the lands in the 1960s under an agreement that ranches would be able to remain there. He said the dairies opted in to the voluntary buyouts under duress, exhausted from years of legal defense and the inability to thrive financially or invest long-term into upgrading infrastructure. Straus has also been a strong advocate for the ranch workers displaced by the shutdown of the dairies, many of whom lived on the lands where they worked.
His concerns echo those of the wider dairy industry. Farmers are dealing with the climate crisis, drought, economic pressure and more. Young people are leaving the business or being deterred by the obstacles of getting started.
“We went from 4.6m dairy farms in the US in 1940 to about 24,000 today,” Straus said. “The average age of farmers is 60 years old. We don’t have a future generation.”
Straus is not giving up. He is working to pull together community resources that he hopes will revitalize area farms.
But even as some lawsuits over the settlement remain and the Republican-led House committee on natural resources has launched an investigation into how the agreement came about, most of the dairy operations have begun to move on.
“Our family, and our neighbors’ families, have loved and cared for this land for generations, and it has been a very difficult decision to leave,” said ranchers Kevin and Nancy Lunny in a statement issued with the settlement announcement. “While this transition will be painful, we believe it’s ultimately what is best for our family, given the difficult circumstances.”
The last of the ranches is expected to clear its cows by the end of September.
“Even though we have lost these dairies, I am hoping we can rebuild in the future,” Straus said. He’s garnered the interest of the Department of the Interior, which he says is looking at solutions that will help them move forward.
Lily Verdone, who heads the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, an organization working to secure the county’s agricultural legacy and support local farmers and ranchers, acknowledged how challenging the changes in Point Reyes have been to the community, but said they are also ready for a change.
“It feels very heavy because it’s been such a buildup over time and such a struggle,” she said. But the obstacles extend far past the seashore. From economic pressures to environmental ones, it’s been increasingly challenging to make ends meet.
“Agriculture, and especially dairies, have been losing ground in the region – across the country – for a long time,” she added. “We have to look at the future and say: how can we invest back in?”
The settlement didn’t secure a full eradication of agriculture from the park. The NPS is negotiating long-term leases for two ranching operations within Point Reyes. Nine others are spread across the national seashore and its sister park, the Golden Gate national recreation area.
Some environmentalist groups remain skeptical of the cows’ continued presence on the lands. But as both sides adapt to an uneasy truce, all eyes are on the project and whether it will make good on its promises.
“This is a problem a century in the making. None of this is going to happen super fast,” Kelsey said, adding that it won’t be possible to take the landscapes back to where they were centuries ago, before humans more deeply intervened. Something new is being created.
And healing Point Reyes means more than just healing the land – it’s also about healing the community’s divisions left over by the years-long battles.
“The whole reason there’s such a fight over this landscape is because people care deeply about this place,” Kelsey said. “We want to set the table but there’s a point in the future where [the Nature Conservancy] steps back and the community is doing the good work for the decades to come.”
They will need local support and dedication to see it through.
“What makes a resilient landscape? It’s the people who care,” said Tom Gardali, CEO of Audubon Canyon Ranch, one of the partners working with the Nature Conservancy. “It is going to take a community to care for this land, not just in terms of a near-term restoration, but for the long term.”