USPS address is West Marin Citizen, PO Box 158, Pt Reyes Station, CA 94956.

---

The Columbia Journalism Review published an article about West Marin newspapers. Click here to read.

---

 

Tomales High School football game under the new permanent lights. Photo by John Tornes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Click here to view some of the Kids of Toby's Chair

---

Editorial

Special Issue – Environmentalism 2.0

By Jim Kravets

January 3, 2008 -------- It’s plain as day what’s going on here: Point Reyes National Seashore Superintendent Don Neubacher is out for blood – oyster blood – and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants, even if it means fabricating data and employing sleight-of-hand science. And everybody knows he’s climbing the governmental ladder; he’s not even trying to hide it. Neubacher in 2005 underwent 18 months of training for the Senior Executive Service, the highest government rank below a presidential appointee.

Perhaps the only thing as transparent as Neubacher’s agenda is Lunny’s agenda to demonize the park superintendent. “Steward of the Land.” Who wouldn’t be a steward of the land if that land – or in this case, sea – were providing annual revenues of over $2 million. And to generate support, the owner of Drakes Bay Oyster Company has wrapped himself in the hemp flag of sustainable agriculture, while down in the estero’s Home Bay, seals perish and eel grass withers, or does whatever eel grass does when it doesn’t do well. Sure, an oyster may filter 50 gallons of water a day, but how much of that is poop from the company’s 20 million oysters? Give Lunny an inch and he’ll take a nautical mile. Proposed wilderness, designated wilderness – let's not get hung up over prefixes. It’s pretty clear that the intended fate was for oyster removal, not oysters Rockefeller.

Or is it foolish to remain faithful to bylaws established by those unable to envision our present circumstances? Do we honestly believe that – while creating the Point Reyes Wilderness Act – members of congress in 1976 were considering issues of local food, food diversity, food security, food safety, local jobs, local economy, affordable housing, history, culture, food miles and the overall carbon footprint caused by removing a century-old oyster farm that produces 400 tons of sustainably raised affordable seafood per year, all locally marketed, thereby reducing harvest pressure on wild fisheries in peril, with benign environmental effects on Drakes Estero?

Benign? But didn’t park scientists observe Lunny’s workers on April 26 and again on May 8 disturbing harbor seals and their pups? What kind of steward does this in the largest and arguably most important seal colony on the coast?

But Lunny says he has timecards that show his workers had gone home when the scientists supposedly observed them disturbing seals on May 8. What’s more, the offending “white boat” park officials observed was out of service that day, and Lunny says he has records to prove it.

The Department of the Interior Inspector General's office is now investigating complaints of scientific misconduct committed by the park.

But an independent panel of 11 marine ecology scientists this fall reviewed and endorsed a National Park Service report that concludes, “The preponderance of evidence demonstrates that [Drakes Bay Oyster Company presents] serious potential and real negative effects within Drakes Estero.”

Head spinning? How does anyone know who is right and who is wrong?

Environmentalism 2.0

Morality used to be so easy. In West Marin, we simply supported “the environmentalists,” or failing that, “the conservationists.” We united in opposition to “the developers,” which was basically another spelling of “exploiters.” But what do we do when the exploiter wants to build a sustainable agriculture business that enriches the land and the community? And what about the developer that wants to build affordable homes that might keep workers from moving away, thereby preserving our region’s character?

When things got more complicated, we aligned ourselves with organizations like the Sierra Club, Marin Agricultural Land Trust, Humane Society, or Environmental Action Committee of West Marin. But now there is increasing dissent within these organizations, and some say the positions taken by these groups’ leadership no longer accurately represent the sensibilities of their members. In fact, Dogtown resident Richard Kirschman in a letter printed last week offered $500 to several groups to poll their membership on the matter of the park’s exotic deer.

Welcome to Environmentalism 2.0, where answers are not so easy, and the lines of righteousness are redrawn with every news report. The burden now falls heavily on the individual to ferret out the truth. While it is much more difficult if not altogether impossible to identify who is right, the person claiming all the answers is likely wrong.

In matters like Drakes Bay Oyster Farm, Lawson’s Landing, the exotic deer, conservation easements, Bolinas Lagoon and cellular antennas, among others, the only chance we have of making progress is to keep an open mind and be on the side of knowledge.

If we are unsatisfied with our level of understanding and demand to learn more, we will raise the level of discourse. The fact is, the level of discourse rises until the very moment we make a decision, and there it stops. This is not a plea to forever remain undecided but to leave open the possibility for further illumination. These issues are not so clear as the principal characters make them out to be, and we no longer have the luxury of ruling from the bench.

The Citizen’s resolution for 2008: Keep playing the role of West Marin’s honesty brokers, and work to move these and all other issues forward by enlightening our readers, not steering them.

Oyster antagonist recast

Point Reyes National Seashore Senior Science Advisor Sarah Allen and her staff have been assailed for misrepresenting studies, or relying on insufficient data to support the claim that Kevin Lunny’s oyster operation is harming Drakes Estero. Controversy still surrounds Allen’s testimony in May before the Board of Supervisors that oyster farming is endangering marine life at the Seashore.

Those claims, among others, were made in the park’s report titled “Drakes Estero: A Sheltered Wilderness Estuary,” which has since been pulled from the seashore website. An independent review of the sheltered wilderness report is still pending.

But as described in the Oct. 4 West Marin Citizen, a peer reviewed report titled “National Park Service Clarification of Law, Policy, and Science on Drakes Estero,” upholds the park’s concern about the oyster farm while also defending the scientific integrity of research projects conducted by park staff.

The portrait in this issue of a deferential and passionate scientist, written by Citizen contributor Sherry Stanton, reveals facets of Dr. Allen not commonly portrayed by the media in their rush to cast her as an Oyster Antagonist.

Stanton, who lives in Inverness Park and edits the Environmental Forum of Marin ENews, says about her subject: “To me, Dr. Allen is the very essence of dedication, working for science and for wilderness, fostering the aims of Point Reyes National Seashore. We are lucky to have her.”

See one, do one, teach one

In her statements, Allen herself makes reference to a facet of the park largely unknown to the public, the Pacific Coast Science and Learning Center, where nearly 100 research groups are using the park’s natural laboratories to unlock some of the mysteries of ecology, geology, genetics and evolution. Researchers there have even discovered a rare lichen in the park and a green crustacean in Tomales Bay that is altogether new to science.

In the companion article titled “Science behind the scenes,” the center’s communication intern Kelly Reeves and Director Ben Becker offer privileged insight into the field station. Together the pair crack the code and translate into English several recent research projects there, including “Evidence for Paleotsunamis in Lake Sediments,” “Ectomycorrhizal Tree Islands – Does Size Really Matter?” and “Population Viability of Tidestrom’s Lupine.”

Reeves, who during her internship lived in the park residence beside the lighthouse, previously wrote the Nov. 28 essay, “To the Lighthouse,” and she wrote about the 5th annual Fourth of July butterfly count at the Seashore in her article, “Camaraderie in butterflying on Inverness Ridge,” for the July 12 West Marin Citizen.

The consequences of our environmental missteps will largely fall on coming generations, so it’s a good idea to start preparing young people now. The staff and volunteers at Audubon Canyon Ranch instill the principles of Environmentalism 2.0 during a steady procession of school groups to the preserve overlooking Bolinas Lagoon. In this issue we join a young crop of potential conservationists and developers as they begin to learn to recognize what’s worth saving.

We also join another young group in Point Reyes Station who helped construct the new Community Food Forest there. Led by a collaboration of West Marin Commons and Permaculture Marin, the students learned the strategies of “sheet mulching.” Somehow still considered radical, this technique was first proposed by Ruth Stout, the grande dame of sheet mulching, in her classic book, Gardening without Work: For the Aging, the Busy and the Indolent, in 1961. If dissemination of enlightenment can take 46 years, we can’t afford to delay.

Enlighten us: Use the email form below to send a letter to the editor.

---

 

Oil spill economics

Doldrums for crab fishermen, oyster farm

By Ian Fein

While West Marin beaches reopened and clean-up efforts improved this week, indirect effects from the Cosco Busan oil spill continued to wreak havoc on Bolinas fishermen and the Drakes Bay Oyster Farm.

As of Monday afternoon, both groups were awaiting test results to determine when they would reopen their harvest. And though it does not appear that oil from San Francisco Bay ever reached the oyster racks or commercial crabbing grounds, both groups found themselves tied up in regulatory tangles and concerned about whether a market demand still exists for their products.

The spill also came at a particularly inopportune time — falling only days before the start of the commercial crabbing season and shutting off incomes just before the Thanksgiving holiday, typically one of the busiest weeks of the year for both industries.

“It’s killing us, when it comes to the business,” said Drakes Bay Oyster Farm owner Kevin Lunny. “Our income has completely stopped.”

Bolinas commercial fisherman Josh Churchman said the economic impact of the oil spill was borderline devastating.

“The only thing really putting money in people’s pockets was crab,” Churchman said of the small West Marin fishing fleet. “It was the last thread.”

 

A portion of the Vol. 1, Number 21 (November 21, 2007) cover story.

---