And that even though the oysters that were being farmed at Drakes Bay were non-native, they were supplementing an important natural ecosystem. I went into this having been told, for instance, that oysters were plentifully native to the Bay Area. You say at the end of the book, “The story I have written is not the story I thought I would find when I set out.” Explain that and the lessons you learned. They hoped they could get it to work out and it didn’t. But, much as I hate to say it, in the end I felt they were gamblers more than victims. I understand the emotion they went through. They also had so much public support and financial support. It’s sad for them, but fortunately they have other businesses.
I felt bad because it was clear they really believed in their cause. Their family first came out to West Marin in the 1940s as ranchers. I couldn’t help feeling rather sorry for the Lunny family, who owned the Drakes Bay Oyster Company. They were going around saying, “You’re a Koch Brothers supporter!” “No, YOU’RE a Koch Brothers supporter!” “How dare you say that to me!” -as though somebody was saying something uncharitable about your mother. The Koch Brothers have been funding these kinds of groups all over the country but they don’t want people to know that they are funding and staffing them with people they train in their own institute. It may have specifically been formed to help the oyster farm, because it happened at the same time, though I don’t have any proof of that. The group that got involved with the oyster farm was Cause For Action. They would very much like there to be no private land for environmental protection. To overturn a wilderness designation would be very useful to people like the Koch Brothers. In general, it’s easier to get outraged about a lot of issues than to get educated. But then they would see that Michael Pollan was writing about the other side. You had people who were Sierra Club members, who voted in line with their values. That’s why the factions were often referred to as “strange bedfellows.” It wasn’t a Republican versus Democrat story. This issue wasn’t an easy divide that was familiar to people. Is this a reflection of the increasingly shrill and partisan nature of public discourse in America? Is it wild because it’s far away? Or because it hasn’t been adulterated with outside forces? The legal definition of wilderness is very poetic, “ an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” But what does that mean? What does ‘remain’ mean? The battle over this small oyster farm divided a community, broke up friendships, and eventually drew in the Koch Brothers’ attorneys and D.C.
#POINT REYES NATIONAL SEASHORE JOBS FULL#
Many wild places in the United States don’t have intact ecosystems they’re full of non-native species, from larger animals to tiny plants. But it didn’t have to do with oysters themselves. You can disagree about whether that was the right thing to do. There was not meant to be any kind of commercial operation inside a wilderness area. The issue was that this farm was inside a designated wilderness area, grandfathered in because it pre-dated the wilderness area. There are other oyster farms in this area. The oysters themselves weren’t viewed negatively. Why were they viewed so negatively in northern California? In most places, like here on Long Island where I live, they are scrambling to reintroduce oysters. The farm consists of about one and a half acres of mobile homes for farm workers, a shop for the oysters, a processing plant, and a cannery in a converted shipping container. It had been family run, and in 2004 the family who owned sold it to a ranching family next door. The Drakes Bay Oyster Company was very modest-looking. It wasn’t exactly an aluminium smelting plant, was it? Give us a picture of the oyster farm at the heart of this battle.
0 kommentar(er)
