Questionable actions the staff of Point Reyes National Seashore has taken towards the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. have drawn the attention of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is launching an investigation into the fate of the oyster company.
"Since 2007, the NPS has been advocating that the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. cease operations at Point Reyes National Seashore because -- according to NPS -- the oyster farm is harming the local harbor seal population," the committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, wrote to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on October 20.
"Allegations that NPS knowingly relied on flawed science to support that conclusion as part of an effort to remove DBOC have come from a wide range of stakeholders and disinterested parties. If true, the NPS, a bureau of the Department of Interior, will have closed the doors on a family-owned small business without a valid scientific basis."
The battle over the future of the oyster company has been ongoing for a number of years. When the company's owner, Kevin Lunny, bought the operation from the Johnson Oyster Co. in 2005, it came with a 40-year lease that expires in November 2012. And since the oyster farm is located in an area of the seashore, Drakes Estero, that has been targeted for official wilderness designation, his ability to gain a lease extension has been impeded.
At issue is whether the oyster farm is adversely impacting Drakes Estero and its marinelife, particularly harbor seals. The estero long has been viewed for designation as official wilderness -- the 1976 legislation that set aside 25,370 acres of the seashore as wilderness cited another 8,003 acres that would be "essentially managed as wilderness, to the extent possible, with efforts to steadily continue to remove all obstacles to the eventual conversion of these lands and waters to wilderness status" -- and the oyster operation is seen as being incompatible with such a designation.
But the Park Service's handling of the oyster company's future has been both contentious and embarassing for the agency. While a Park Service report on the oyster operation concluded that it was impacting harbor seals, the report at times has withered under scrutiny. In 2009 the National Research Council said the NPS report was skewed, "selectively" manipulated in several areas, and inconclusive overall.
A year later, the Interior's Solicitor's Office conducted an investigation into whether the staff at Point Reyes had intentionally mishandled research data it collected to determine the oyster farm's impacts, if any, on harbor seals during pupping season. That probe cleared the staff of any criminal behavior or criminal misconduct in the matter, a finding that itself has drawn criticism.
Part of the investigation centered around charges that Park Service staff "suppressed" more than 250,000 photographs the Point Reyes staff captured with a secret camera from 2007 to 2010 to determine whether farm operations were disturbing harbor seals during the pupping season. Those photos, proponents of the oyster farm say, failed to show any disturbance of harbor seals by farm employees. Interviews conducted by the Solicitor's Office, however, indicated that on at least five occasions the farm's workers caused disturbances of seals during pupping season.
Now Rep. Issa, R-California, wants his committee to look into the matter, and has asked Secretary Salazar to order the Park Service to turn over reams of documents -- correspondence, reports, drafts of reports, emails -- and to make staff, including Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, available for "transcribed interviews" set to begin the week of November 7.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein intervened on behalf of Mr. Lunny, asking Interior Secretary Salazar to extend the oyster company's lease. That request led the seashore staff to prepare a draft environmental impact statement examining the oyster farm's impacts on the estero.
Earlier this fall the seashore released a draft environmental impact statement. It offered four alternatives -- a no action option, which would uphold the lease retirement next year, and three other options that would allow the oyster farm to remain, albeit at three different levels of operation. The document currently is open to public comment through November 29.
Rep. Issa's letter to Secretary Salazar is attached below.
Comments
I believe there is something in the founding mission statement about enjoyment. If not there should be. I do recollect something about celebrating "individual rights and freedom" in documents dating back to the late 1700's. Many in the protection business have drifted over the line a bit and continually mis-characterize private enterprise as a whole to further the agenda. The absence of a working relationship between the two factions has not served the country well, I don't believe. NPS underpinnings do not like private enterprise. They deal with it in their concessions (whether good or otherwise) but the Parks just aren't pure enough for them as long as they aren't the sole operator it would seem. An effort to truly engage and get to know these individuals and their work would go far in having a fair and workable relationship than the constant battles with agenda turf wars that does not serve the "enjoyment of the public."
As a reply to the comment that the Park service allow for public enjoyment.
Perhaps Wilderness doesn't appeal to you; that is ok. Wilderness appeals to many others. There are (at least) two oyster companies within a 10 miles as the crow flies. This operation had a lease that is scheduled to expire next year. I see this as duplicating (and competing with) services already available within the vicinity. Why has this business been allowed to derail the Wilderness planning when the lease and intentions of the NPS were well articulated? Seems pretty clear to me. And I believe the NPS "agenda" is consistent with the lease Mr. Lunny signed. The park service "agenda" that I've witnessed over the years has been articulated since the '70's/80's (and prior to Mr. Lunny's purchase of the cheap lease he was well informed). They have a website that has reams of information, apparently the Foia'ed documents, the EIS etc, for us to see. With the money the government has had to dedicate to this, it seems only fair that the litigants be asked to show their accounting, list of contributors, and who is funding Mr. Lunny's operation. Their insistence on telling the NPS that despite their planning, they must change their 30 years of planning, and respond to attack after attack - sounds all too familiar in this political climate. I for one consider it to be toxic.
In response, perhaps because I have accepted both worlds and spend pretty much equal amounts of time in both and respect what it takes for individuals to face the constant assault on the type of character needed to be a "producer" by some. The culture change so evident likes to demonize in judgmental ways that always seems to portray the excesses or perceived bias's in a battle ground that does not serve the public and the future. Some of the arguments don't even allow for someone to actually work connected to the resource while importing everything from Pinon Nuts to American Flags. Paradigm change is needed to make the Parks and the economy better. Just saying...
So many comments from Anonymous, all claiming to know the truth. Personally I find it more credible when someone is willing to use his or her real name.
The first Anonymous has many facts wrong. For example:
"This in not some poor local farmer versus big government – this is an army of corporate lobbyist, lawyers, monied interests and ... politicians (Feinstein is in bed with right-wing Darrell Issa on this issue) working to oppose the public interest and privatize public lands."
Actually, all of the lobbyists are on the side of the Park Service and its cronies, NPCA and EAC. NPCA spends roughly $30 million a year lobbying. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but these activists are the only "monied interests" here. The Lunnys spend exactly zero dollars lobbying. The only "army" working for the Lunnys is the army of informed, interested citizens who care about the truth and are willing to put their own time into this. (Whereas the NPCA, the EAC, and the NPS are all paid. That is one of the outrages here--the Lunnys must spend their own time and money defending themselves from false charges while the Park Service gets paid for making those charges. The Park Service doesn't have to pay for its lawyers or its studies--the taxpayers pay. Tell me again about how this is not about a local farmer versus big government?)
Nobody is trying to "privatize public lands." The oyster farm was there long before this was a National Seashore. There is no rational reason to remove it.
Senator Feinstein got involved in this issue at the request of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, and is properly standing up for what is right. That was years ago, when the Park Service first started spreading misinformation. She is simply doing her job.
"Three federal investigations by the Inspector General and Department of Interior have cleared the Park Service of any wrongdoing and rejected the ... accusations of Goodman."
This is completely untrue, as has been reported right here on NP Traveler. All of the investigations, including the scientific review by the National Academy of Sciences, have found the Park Service guilty of misrepresenting the facts. No investigation--yet--has found them guilty of *scientific misconduct* (a specific legal term) but *no* investigation has cleared them of wrongdoing. Look it up.
As to the accusation that Dr. Goodman is "politically motivated," that is a falsehood that doesn't even make sense.
"The National Park Service has relied on peer-reviewed science; the very standard Goodman and Gleick professes to want, to show significant impacts from the oyster farm on wildlife and how it spreads invasive species."
Peer-review is not the key issue. What matters is whether the facts are true or false. There is no valid data showing harm to wildlife from the oyster farm. The only peer-reviewed data about harm to wildlife from the oyster farm in Drakes Bay is the Becker 2009 paper which was indeed thoroughly debunked both by Dr. Goodman and by the National Academy of Sciences (look it up--the link to that report is elsewhere in these pages), and the Becker 2011 paper which is the same poor science in new bottles. Becker 2011 was published in some very obscure British journal; its data set does not even stand up to informal review, much less serious scrutiny. "Peer review" is a red herring here.
"It is a lie to say the Park Service science has been “debunked.” It has been attacked by those with no data, science or logic on their side to serve the cause of profit over public interest and wilderness protection."
This is not true. The science in the "Sheltered Wilderness" paper has been debunked over and over again. Read the NAS report, you will find that the Park Service science is definitely debunked (although being the National Academy, it is a very polite debunking). Read anything you can find online by Dr. Corey Goodman, an esteemed scientist whose only interest here is in the truth. Or contact him directly, he'll send you the data and the analysis. Dr. Goodman has all of the data on his side. I challenge Anonymous to cite something that shows otherwise.
This is not about profit vs public interest or wilderness protection. Pete McCloskey is one of the people who wrote the Wilderness Act in question, and he has gone public recently with his support for the oyster farm, which was always meant to stay.
As recently as 1998, the Park Service itself was interested in expanding the oyster farm's onshore operations, and issued a Finding of No Significant Impact for that major construction project (which didn't happen, beyond the necessary cleanup of the septic system, because then-owners the Johnson family ran out of money). It is not logical to imagine that a bunch of new special-status species have emerged in the past 13 years, or that wildlife has all of a sudden started being harmed, or that the wilderness legislation means something different now.
The Park Service and its activist enablers have done an excellent job with the PR effort making it sound as if they are in the right, but that narrative is simply not true.
The oyster farm helps the environment by cleaning the water. That's what the NAS found, and that's what all of the serious science has found.
There is no harm to seals or any other wildlife. The Park Service has photographic evidence of that--they took photos of the oyster-farm boats every minute of every day and found zero disturbances of seals by oyster-farm workers (but quite a few by misguided kayakers). These photographs were kept out of the draft EIS on the flimsy excuse that they were not collected according to protocol. But the data is clear: no harm.
A big paved road, Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, goes through the Seashore and runs right across the tip of Drakes Estero. This is not a place that will ever be wilderness. It gets over three million visitors per year.
The oyster farm is entirely compatible with a wilderness-like experience. It is the main place people park to go on kayaking tours of Drakes Bay, and it is also a major site for serious birding. If the oyster farm were driving away wildlife, this would not be the case. There has been an oyster farm here for decades. If the wildlife were diminishing, I'm sure the paddlers and birders would have let someone know. It doesn't take peer-reviewed science to notice a problem like that. Instead, the opposite is the case--more and more seals, more and more birds.
There is no rational reason we can't continue to have the best of both worlds in Drakes Bay: a thriving oyster farm that aids the environment and the local economy, and a thriving National Seashore that provides a near-wilderness experience.
It would be irresponsible to shut down the oyster farm to provide the illusion of wilderness.
I've read the DOI report. It never cleared PRNS staff of wrongdoing. In fact it seems almost scathing to some degree about the conduct by PRNS staff.
What it did say was essentially that they wouldn't recommend criminal charges be pursued and wouldn't recommend that staff be fired for their misconduct. That's a far cry from being cleared.
It's just not anything new to contrive a case against or make it impossible for something like Drake's Bay Oyster Co. or any number of historic inholdings that somehow after a 100 years (in some cases) seems incompatible with modern NPS culture and the pseudo environmental industries alliances. In many cases (DBOC excepted) the in-holders were led to believe that their positions were secure. With legal or administrative actions it's common to reduce the ability to continue being profitable as an avenue to acquire what was once a thriving, compatible operation. Much is good, a great deal is good about NPS but this shady side does not compliment that good. So you can focus on the legalities but it's the underlying motivations that are really the issue.