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Is Senator Feinstein Speaking Out of Both Sides of Her Mouth on National Park Matters?

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Sen. Feinstein: What's good for Joshua Tree National Park isn't necessarily good for Point Reyes National Seashore.

National parks very well may be one of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein's loves, but oysters seemingly trump her view of national park values.

Case in point: Commercial oyster farming was well under way in Drakes Estero in 1976 when Congress designated the estuary that lies within Point Reyes National Seashore as potential wilderness. Interior Department officials, noting that the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. operation would run counter to official wilderness designation, directed the National Park Service to push for that designation in 2012 when the oyster farm's lease expires.

To that point, the Interior Department's Office of the Solicitor rendered an opinion that the oyster farm must be removed from Drakes Estero because it would be a "non-conforming use" under the Wilderness Act.

But that doesn't sit well with Sen. Feinstein, who earlier this year wrote Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to urge him to see that oyster company's lease be extended. Apparently concerned that the secretary wouldn't honor her request, Sen. Feinstein on Tuesday took a legislative shortcut to extend the company's lease for a decade by attaching a rider to that effect to a spending bill.

"The 10-year extension of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company's lease will preserve 30 jobs at the last remaining oyster farm cannery on the West Coast while making sure that the ecology of the estuary is protected," the senator said in a written statement obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "This is a family-owned oyster farm that has been in operation for more than 70 years, and it is a facility that predates the creation of Point Reyes National Seashore in 1960. This is an area with 15 historic dairy farms and cattle ranches, along with many roads running through it. It is not a remote wilderness."

Now, compare that tone to another letter the senator from California wrote to Secretary Salazar earlier this year. In it the Democrat urged the secretary not to approve a lease of "former railroad lands in the eastern Mojave Desert by the Bureau of land Management" for renewable energy projects.

"While I strongly support renewable energy, it is critical that these projects move forward on public and private lands well suited for that purpose," wrote Sen. Feinstein. "Unfortunately, many of the sites now being considered for leases are completely inappropriate and will lead to the wholesale destruction of some of the most pristine areas in the desert."

The senator went on to describe efforts to protect the lands in question, noting that "beyond protecting national parks (Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park) from development, the conservation of these lands has helped to ensure the sustainability of the entire desert ecosystem by preserving the vital wildlife corridors."

So, on one hand Sen. Feinstein has no qualms about flouting a proposed wilderness designation in an area of Point Reyes National Seashore deemed to possess wilderness qualities, and yet on the other hand she would block renewable energy projects from being based on "former railroad lands" to prevent "the wholesale destruction of some of the most pristine areas in the desert."

Comments

ypw -- I believe the issue regarding time may turn on when the lease runs out for the Oyster farm? Is that your understanding?

A national park superintendent would be operating inconsistently with both the Act of 1916 establishing the NPS, as well as the potential wilderness and publically-reviewed GMP decisions, wouldn't she/he, if they were actually to RENEW a lease?

Isn't a renewal of a lease in effect a decision by the NPS that the use IS conforming, and consistent with the purposes of the National Park System?? Generally I believe the NPS in law and policy only can enter into commercial agreements that are consistent with the purposes of the park system?

There are many places in the US where parks are established, while protecting "valid existing rights," I believe. If the right, such as with this lease, has a sunset date, then that date would mean the prior use would be terminated. Parks have been established with cattle grazing rights, as well, left over from their days under the BLM management, and those grazing permits generally are permitted to be continued as a valid existing right, or bought out if too damaging even to be grandfathered in.

My guess is part of the problem with NPS management of this Oyster lease is the way the NPS is coming around to dealing with "impairment" under policies developed in the 1990's. NPS was responsible to make sure there would be no 'impairment' from its activities or those it permitted to the park. So, if a superintendent wanted to build a visitor center in sensitive habitat, he would be challenged by Higher Ups, such as in the case of eagle habitat in the Upper Delaware, with a study demonstrating that the development was inappropriate, and stopped. But doing a study to determine if an Oyster farm is an impairment has the question completely backward. A commercial activity in any national park is not to be permitted at all -- much less in designated wilderness -- unless the commercial activity is needed to further PARK PURPOSES. The oyster farm was never made a park purpose by congress, just like most pre-existing commercial operations in parks are not designated as necessary for the park to be a successful park. But the superintendent or the NPS at Point Reyes got stupified in applying the idea of the study of impairment to an activity that in no way is consistent with a park. So, when the permit ends, it cannot be extended if we expect the park to be a park.

By doing the study, it did give the impression that if no 'impairment' were found, then the oyster farm would be OK, and seemed to hinge everything on a study that was looking at the wrong thing. And, clearly, the guy at the National Academy of Science, in just studying the relative health of an oyster farm as an oyster farm -- not as a matter of congressional policy -- way missed the point.

-- Finally, on Richard's point on Point Reyes being so well mapped it is not really wilderness, of course all wilderness study areas, even the ones in the most remote parts of Alaska, were already well mapped and well traveled when proposed as wilderness and designated by congress. What wilderness in a national park is really for is protecting the land from the National Park Service. Most other uses, including an oyster farm, would be a violation of the Act of 1916 (the NPS organic act). This is not so true with other public land agencies that permit oil and gas development or road development, but it is with a park. In a park, the danger of development almost always is because the NPS authorizes or initiates a development that compromises the integrity of the park.

That is why Congress created wilderness in parks even in the East Coast -- like at Fire Island National Seashore -- that had been intensively used over the years. At Katmai wilderness in Alaska, the NPS was going to build a suspension bridge over a tiny stream that the tour bus would drive through to take tourists to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes, because very occasionally a flash flood meant the gravel road the forded the stream was unpassable.

The point congress is making is to direct the NPS to MANAGE the area as a roadless, untrammeled area. Wilderness designation is a LAW, not a primeval romantic, pre-human, condition. The congressional history of Point Reyes seems to indicate that congress expected the NPS to eliminate inconsistent developments over time, and the phased implementation of wilderness seems to have been a compromise way to achieve that direction to the NPS from Congress.

Otherwise, congress would have congressionally designated the oyster farm as a primary purpose of the park.


"The point congress is making is to direct the NPS to MANAGE the area as a roadless, untrammeled area. Wilderness designation is a LAW, not a primeval romantic, pre-human, condition. The congressional history of Point Reyes seems to indicate that congress expected the NPS to eliminate inconsistent developments over time, and the phased implementation of wilderness seems to have been a compromise way to achieve that direction to the NPS from Congress."

If you asked any of those people who made comments about wilderness whether they knew the difference between a poem and a deed, they would have said yes.

But over and over they clearly confuse the term that "wilderness" means in their head with the Congressional act of designating a Wilderness.

While I think much of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have poetic flow and epic narration, they make things less ambiguous and give a clearer structure for rights and discussion.

This is the same with the 1976 Wilderness laws http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/documents/publiclaws/PDF/94-544.pdf , http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/documents/publiclaws/PDF/94-567.pdf , http://www.wilderness.net/NWPS/documents/publiclaws/PDF/99-68.pdf. Unfortunately the supporting documents like maps and tables are missing.

Y_P_W's comments make no sense. If the PRNS superintendent really shouldered the choice alone, then the choice he should make is clearly directed to NOT approve a new reservation of use with Drakes Bay Oyster Company, that his choice is clear and the Oyster company should make plans for shutting down that include actions other than complaining and deceiving the public.

If the choice is all the superintendent's, then Kevin Lunny should have paid closer attention to the fact that before he bought the remaining reservation of use from Johnson Don Neubacher personally informed him that the park under his direction will not create a new permit of use (the term "new" reservation of use is important to distinguish here because the idea of an "extension" is a charade. One way is like a promotion, the other is like having to re-apply for filling a position of employment that your are filling temporarily. Feinstein's way is like giving the position to her favorite nephew in spite of the fact that the company knows it would benefit from cutting the job altogether.)

Lunny decided he could talk out of both sides of his mouth.

He decided that it wasn't Don's decision that it was the California Department of Fish and Game's decision, so he boldly ignored Don and made the purchase with full intention of subverting the goals of the park and of the people who designated the area as potential wilderness.

When he found that he and his legal adviser's advice about the DFG were wrong, he was caught in his own deceit.

Everything since then has been sideshows and charades to distract the public from that fact.

Because only Diane Feinstein's action can undo the public will of the Wilderness Act and the park designation, this is the route that was pursued.

Diane Feinstein is not only acting in the interest of a private businessman's interest (constantly confused with the term "family farmer" ) to subvert the Wilderness Act intention without public process and in contradiction to existing agreements, she is also doing it out of revenge-spite because a NPS staff member dared to challenge her ultra-diva, power-skewed opinion.

So we have Feinstein and Lunny behaving badly, breaking contracts with the public with premeditation and pettiness and screaming bloody murder how the NPS are bad and deceitful.

The park is saying that with the Park's designation and the Wilderness act, the oyster farm --recognizing the special place that it has in people's hearts -- has had its operation's extended for forty years.
It is now being consistent in saying that as those decisions were written up, the oyster farm --no matter how wonderful the product or how nice Kevin Lunny is -- is a non-conforming use as described and should end as soon as possible, with 2012 being a good date.

Why should the park be excited about making a promise to a person who basically flaunts their inability to honor a contract and good advice?
Why should one man be give special exemption from park management?

This rider basically rewards Lunny for crossing his fingers behind his back and then --in a slap to all our faces-- tells the NPS they have no right to make rules or policies that benefit the protection of the land they were mandated by Congressional act to protect?

Feinstein should butt out of this issue and we should not re-elect her.

Lunny should continue to benefit from the cattle ranching and farming on Point Reyes National Seashore lands and be a better spokesman of how the park has protected his livelihood.


Cape Hatteras!??? I could never figure out why anyone would NEED to drive on the beach when a couple hundred yards away there's a beautiful black topped road that takes you to all the same places. Go figure?


You'd be surprised what's in the enabling legislation. Part of it allows for hunting at the discretion of "the Secretary" (of the Interior?). I personally think that would be a non-starter to allow anything more than the current non-native deer culls, but that's actually in the legislation.

The fact is, there is an existing extension clause in the currently effective reservation of use. It's been pretty well known that it exists.

I personally think it wouldn't be inconsistent for the NPS to allow this use to continue. Whether or not this area is or is not considered "wilderness" - good management will have far more to do with the health of the ecosystem rather than some artificial designation. Human impacts will not be reduced to zero, as there's a road right on the edge of the estero and kayakers and boaters will still be allowed inside and hikers will still be allowed on the Estero and Bull Point Trails.

Feinstein has spent a lot of time on this issue. She's personally sat in on meetings with Lunny, Neubacher, and (I think) Jarvis. She's spent time discussion this with the media and even appearing on a radio call-in program on this subject. I think this is personal to her.


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