A lawyer representing farm residents in the Point Reyes National Seashore has filed a new lawsuit to block their eviction.
The federal lawsuit is the latest fallout from a deal announced last month between the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy. The agreement, reached in confidential negotiations, calls for six dairies and six ranches operating in the Point Reyes National Seashore to cease operations in 15 months.
The Nature Conservancy said the farm operators would be compensated, but declined to disclose the amount. The National Park Service said that the people living on the farms must leave.
More than 90 people live on the properties. Most are Latino residents, and some are undocumented. Some have been living there for decades, and not all of them are farmworkers.
“Our approach is to force the National Park Service to restore ranching, because if there’s ranching the park service says we can have housing,” said Andrew Giacomini, the lawyer representing the residents.
Giacomini — whose father Gary Giacomini, a former county supervisor, played a key role in protecting West Marin from development in the 1970s — said he might appeal directly to the U.S. interior secretary to intervene.
“He could undo this with the stroke of a pen,” he said.
Giacomini said that if the National Park Service had waited until the Trump administration took office, “this would never have happened.” If necessary, Giacomini said, he might seek the help of President Donald Trump.
“There’s some people in West Marin who have direct contact with him,” he said.
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Giacomini filed his complaint this month with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. It alleges that “the National Park Service, Acting Director, and Regional Director conspired with the Conservancy to pay off the departing ranchers in exchange for the ranchers relinquishing their rights to 20-year leases and instead leasing the ranchers’ property to the Conservancy.”
“The National Park Service is deeply engaged in the scheme to circumvent the National Environmental Policy Act and force the ranchers out of Point Reyes,” says the complaint, which also names the Department of the Interior as a defendant.
In 2022, the Resource Renewal Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project sued the National Park Service to prevent it from implementing an amendment to its general management plan. It had been approved the prior year following exhaustive public hearings.
The new plan was to allow the parks agency to issue 20-year agricultural leases to 24 ranch families for continued operations. The leases permitted residential use of park lands on 14 ranches while restricting occupancy to family members and workers. It also required that the housing meet minimal standards.
The environmental groups sued to stop the National Park Service from approving the 20-year leases and instead require it to expand elk herds in the area. The Point Reyes Seashore Ranchers Association intervened in the suit.
Later in 2022, the Nature Conservancy became involved in the negotiations between the parties, which were kept confidential. A motion by Giacomini to have the farm residents included in the negotiations was opposed by the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy.
In his new suit, Giacomini lists several “overt actions” that the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy took in furtherance of their “conspiracy.”
First, he states, the federal agency failed to implement the revised version of the general management plan that called for the 20-year leases, even though it remained valid under the law.
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The suit notes that when the agency revised the general management plan in 2021, it considered the option of shutting down the diaries and ranches and rejected the idea. An environmental impact statement issued at the time found that such a move could adversely affect wildlife and plant habitat, including some threatened and endangered species, and increase fuel loading and thus fire risk.
Nevertheless, the suit states, “the National Park Service secretly sided with the plaintiff environmental groups and together with the Conservancy contrived a plan to avoid issuing the 20-year leases.”
“The scheme involved creating uncertainty for the ranchers,” the suit says, “and a time crisis by issuing only very short term leases that expired in January 2025, as well as having the Conservancy pay the just compensation that the National Park Service owed the ranchers as a result of the federal government taking their private property for a public use.”
The suit says “the Conservancy agreed with the National Park Service to conduct the people’s business in secrecy with a gag order. Keeping everything a secret until after the decisions were made was an essential element of the scheme.”
Furthermore, Giacomini said that attorneys representing the dairies and farmers told him that under the settlement agreement, their clients will receive less compensation if any of the residents on their premises remain after operations cease.
“The way that it works is that they take a haircut if there are still people living on their ranches when they leave,” Giacomini said. “They get less money in the final payment.”
Giacomini said the ranchers and farmers have pledged not to evict any of the people, regardless. He noted, however, that after the ranches shut down, no one will be paying for the electricity that powers wells supplying water to the residences.
Both the National Park Service and the Department of Interior declined to comment on Giacomini’s complaint.
“The settling ranchers voluntarily chose to accept the resolution, and they are not being ordered to leave or displace residents,” said Heather Gately, a spokesperson for the Nature Conservancy.
Gately added that the organization is collaborating with community groups on a support plan for residents who will be displaced.
Chance Cutrano, director of programs at the Resource Renewal Institute, said, “While we understand the desire to help ranch workers, Mr. Giacomini’s litigation unfortunately gives false hope by pursuing permanent housing solutions that aren’t legally possible within Point Reyes National Seashore.”
“We remain committed to working with all willing parties to support ranch worker and tenant transitions to safer, more stable housing opportunities outside the park,” Cutrano added, “as we’ve been doing for months.“