To the editor: As a native Angeleno, I have explored almost all 58 counties in California and that includes many visits to Marin’s Point Reyes National Seashore (“Treasured California dairies to close. Point Reyes locals say it’s conservation gone mad,” March 21). I have hiked from the from historical Pierce Ranch to where Tomales Bay meets the Pacific. I have delighted to see cows grazing in green fields laced with clover. I have relished the dairy products from these Point Reyes cows; their ice cream quality and flavor surpasses any I have ever tasted, anywhere!
The expulsion of these quaint dairy farms that go back 175 years, long before the re-introduction of tule elk in the 1970s, is grievous. Specious arguments about environmental impact, including “‘unpleasant odors’ from cows and their manure,” is farcical.
The drive from Point Reyes Station onto the peninsula is a breathtaking visual fantasy akin to leaving the Wawona Tunnel in Mariposa County and entering Inspiration Point in Yosemite. The cows and dairy farms are part and parcel of this dream. Don’t destroy it.
Paul Milberg, Oak Park
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To the editor: In this article, words like “historic dairies” and “legacy families” are used. Also “more than a century” and “more than 150 years.” Nothing is said of the legacy or the history of the people who inhabited this land for thousands of years, people like the Coast Miwok and other groups of Native Americans. Consider this sentence: “An entire community, many of them low income and Latino, are poised to lose their jobs and homes in one fell swoop.”
Consider for a moment the “fell swoops” that befell the Indigenous people of California, first at the hands of the Spanish missionaries who essentially conscripted the native people as slaves and tried to demolish their “heathen” culture, and then at the hands of federal and state government troops and militias that set about exterminating the Indigenous inhabitants.
How can there be any discussion of how this land is used that does not center on the land’s original inhabitants?
Catherine Crook, Camarillo
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To the editor: While I applaud the L.A. Times for coverage of the environmental challenges of intensive dairy farming in Point Reyes, there is one glaring omission in the article. There is little mention about the actual cows themselves, save for a fairy tale reference to “quiet herds of Devons, Guernseys and Jerseys happily munching in the flowing grasses …”
That’s the only happy part of their lives. A cow must be pregnant for humans to take her milk that is produced to grow a baby cow. Females are artificially inseminated. Not pleasant for them. Point Reyes dairies have done a brilliant job painting a sweet picture of their generational farms. Data do not lie about the fecal runoff, not to mention the damage a herd does to the land. While I am sympathetic to the workers, it’s time to say goodbye to a cruel and destructive tradition.
Tracy Keys, Laguna Beach
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To the editor: We visited Point Reyes National Seashore recently. The dairies are dilapidated, ugly, outdated blights on the otherwise beautiful vistas. The tons of resulting cow manure pollute the land and the surrounding waters. The endangered elk are penned up in a small area. All of this is absolutely the opposite of the mission of the U.S. Park Service to protect the land and the wildlife.
The local residents with interests in the dairy industry clearly have loud voices. If something more can be done to placate them, so much the better. But the degradation of the park-going experiences of hundreds of thousands of visitors, and the survival of endangered wildlife, must surely guide the Park Service. The legally binding settlement should be implemented immediately.
Noel Park, Rancho Palos Verdes
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