Drakes Bay oyster farm closes doors
after long wilderness struggle
Frank
DuBois, past NM Sec. of Agriculture, former legislative assistant to a
U.S. Senator, and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior.
It’s the end of the line for Drake’s Bay Oyster Co. On Dec.
31, after a long battle with the National Park Service, the California
Coastal Commission, the Department of the Interior and wilderness advocates,
owner Kevin Lunny and his family will vacate the starkly beautiful Drake’s
Estero, a 2,500-acre estuary where some of the tastiest oysters on the West
Coast have been farmed for more than half a century.
A 40-year lease agreement between the feds and the oyster
farm’s original owners has expired. Former Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar could have extended the lease for a decade, which was allowed by 2009
legislation that Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein sponsored. But
in 2011, Salazar — fearing a policy precedent — decided that wilderness and
oyster farming were mutually exclusive. Lunny, 56, whose family runs the
first organic-certified beef ranch in California, lost a fight between
forces usually on the same side: sustainable farming enthusiasts and
environmentalists.
Lunny thought he had a fair shot to renew the lease because
ranchers in other parts of the protected seashore were successful in doing
so. To Lunny supporters, the bad guy was the government, scheming to take
away a precious local mariculture resource.
To the farm’s opponents, the Lunnys became the villains.
Founding members of Marin County’s sustainable food movement, they were
trashed as recalcitrant, water-polluting moochers who would exploit (and
ruin) one of Marin County’s most beautiful seascapes.
In some ways, Drake’s Bay Oyster Co. is a casualty of hardening
attitudes about human intrusion into wilderness. In 1962, Congress created
Point Reyes National Seashore, a wind-swept coastline that feels remote
despite its location an hour north of San Francisco. Fourteen years later,
President Ford signed the Point Reyes Wilderness Act, encompassing Drake’s
Estero, which was designated as a “potential wilderness” because it contained
a commercial enterprise.
But was the oyster company really meant to disappear at
the end of its lease? In 2011, retired legislators who helped establish the
Point Reyes National Seashore told Interior Secretary Salazar that they had
always intended for the oyster farm to stay in business. “The issue of what
to do with the oyster farm wasn’t even under contention,” former Rep. John
Burton told the Marin Independent Journal. “Several things were grandfathered
in, and aquaculture — oyster culture — was one of them.”…more
Notice the method used:
First designate a National Seashore and then come in later with a Wilderness
designation. A similar model is now in place for the arid
West: First designate a National Monument and then when the time is
ripe hit us with Wilderness.
In the case above they denied the permit because of the “policy precedent” it would set. It would have allowed a commercial enterprise, i.e. people, to continue existing. Once the permit is denied and the oyster farm is gone, it will no longer be “potential wilderness” but will become Wilderness, which was the goal all along.
In the case above they denied the permit because of the “policy precedent” it would set. It would have allowed a commercial enterprise, i.e. people, to continue existing. Once the permit is denied and the oyster farm is gone, it will no longer be “potential wilderness” but will become Wilderness, which was the goal all along.
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Source:http://agenda21news.com/2014/12/drakes-bay-oyster-farm-closes-doors-long-wilderness-struggle/#more-4196
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