By Albert Straus and Sue Conley
For decades, we have enjoyed a productive agricultural landscape and farming model for the rest of the country, amid wild open space at Point Reyes National Seashore.
As a community and as a culture, we have the responsibility to follow through with the original vision for this place as an example of environmentalists, community members and farmers working together to honor the environment and to protect our local food sources.
The park is in a unique position to demonstrate the value of sustainable agriculture as part of the ecosystem of rangelands and forests at the seashore.
Cattle can be hard on the land (as can elk), but when managed with intention, grazing animals can help repair the soil and revitalize the grasslands. A 2013 scientific study by the Marin Carbon Project showed that managed grasslands can pull carbon from the atmosphere in the same way forests can, and that this is one of the most effective tools we can use to mitigate climate change.
