“We had some small discrepancies and those have been corrected,” said Lisa Bush, consultant and range management specialist for the county who noted that she fact checked the entire report. “Our intention is to strengthen agriculture in the Seashore and look at the underlying issues of how to do that.”

Productive agricultural lands are declining both nationally and locally. “The point is, that nationally, in California and in Marin, agricultural land has been lost,” Lewis said. “Even in areas zoned for agriculture. This needs to be stopped.”

Lewis said the document’s recommendations will serve as a guide for the upcoming General Management Plan for the Seashore yet to be released.

At issue for Superintendent Neubacher was the original report’s premise that the National Seashore has historically and intentionally chipped away at agriculture inside the Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The first report said that since the park’s inception they have reduced ranching acreage by 18,000 acres and have taken thousands more from the PRNS “Pastoral Zone.” Park officials said that figure confused them.

“It’s true that over 18,000 acres has been taken out of ranching,” Bush said. “The Seashore, according to the Park Service website, is 65,092 acres in size. Essentially all of that was ranchland before it was a park. It wasn’t all grazed grassland, but ranchland.”

The changes made to the report have more to do with numbers and language explaining acreage of productive lands than the actual tone of the document.

While there has been more than 18,000 acres of loss in agricultural lands, Bush explained, the language in the new document is more specific.

“Beyond the initial loss of ranchland due to conversion to parkland, the lands specifically designated for agricultural use have been reduced by approximately 2,500 acres due to PRNS management decisions,” the authors state in the updated report. They also say that another 3,880 acres of PRNS lands have been removed from ranching, beyond the initial losses due to formation of the park without a formal review.

“There are thousands of acres that have been removed from agricultural use in the combined land area of the park’s Pastoral Zone and GGNRA lands zoned for ”Pastoral Landscape Management,” Bush said. “Because this is so confusing and hard to follow, we just removed a couple of sentences, consistently and accurately referred to these different ‘sets’ of pastoral lands with their appropriate labels, and tried to simplify language to make the report easier to understand.”

Other changes include correcting numbers for pounds of shellfish instead of tons of shellfish. Also, phrases like “an attitude of separation” between ranchers and park officials are replaced by “ongoing tensions” - these are some examples of minor changes in the language.

The report also states that over the past 30 years, the Seashore has portrayed ranching and farming more as an aesthetic component rather than a true environmental one and an integral part of the ecosystem. The authors would like the concept of ecological services to be adopted into the paradigm of agriculture within the Seashore and the general management plan yet to be released.

Comment sought from park officials about the corrected report were not received before press time.

The report can be viewed at:

http://groups.ucanr.org/GIM/files/66950.pdf.

The preliminary equestrian plan does not address tenant issues surrounding the Banducci family or the other tenants who live at the site. But park officials say that evicting the family is not part of the plan. “There is room for all activities at the site,” said GGNRA spokesperson Chris Powell. “One thing we like to have is a residence at all the horse sites.” Banducci would like to farm the area again as he did in the past.

Maureen Pinto, spokesperson for the group Ocean Riders which has used and managed the stables and barn at Golden Gate Dairy for their 15 horses, said she would be happy with all alternatives except alternative C.

“That alternative blindsided us,” said Pinto who has worked with the park service for 11 years and said her group has exceeded all demands made by NPS. “The alternative would eliminate Ocean Riders as a mission.”

Pinto said moving site to lower Redwood Creek is one option for Ocean Riders if the move does not affect the Banducci family. “We do not want to displace anyone in the community,” Pinto said. “Amadeo Banducci is very concerned about his fate. We do not want to displace him.”

Relocating the stables to the Banducci site is known as the “dispersed and expand” option. Three horses would remain at Golden Gate Dairy while the rest would go to the new Banducci site. 

The thinking behind alternative C is to consolidate the four stables in question and move the horses to the Baker Beach and Tennessee Valley stables, increasing the number of horses in these stables but not increasing the total number of horses.

The plan, Powell said, is just at the beginning stages. Powell said the purpose of the meeting is to see what the community would like and how they envision the future.  “When you develop a draft plan, the public might see things that we don’t see,” said Powell. “ That’s why this is the beginning of the conversation.”

An alternative will be selected by the Fall 2010 and a final document won’t be out until 2011.

Public comment until Public comments will be accepted until March 5, 2010.

http://parkplanning.nps.gov/goga;

E-mail:goga_planning@nps.gov

US Mail: Superintendent

Attn: Marin Equestrian Plan

Golden Gate National Recreation Area

Building 201

Fort Mason, Building 201

San Francisco, CA 94123