photo credit: National Parks Service/Ted Barone
Historic D Ranch house in present condition within the Pt. Reyes National Seashore.

A deal to close many of the ranching leases in Pt. Reyes has already been signed, but the struggle over the future of ranching in the National Seashore isn't over.

In March, Nicolette Hahn Niman, and her husband William Niman - founders and former owners of Niman Ranch - filed a lawsuit against the National Parks Service challenging the deal.

Earlier this month, Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee opened an investigation into the settlement.

But, the ranchers who signed onto the deal, voluntarily closing their operations, want to see the agreement through.

So said Tony Raimondo, an attorney representing the Kehoe Dairy.

"A number of different people have been trying to speak for the ranchers instead of listening to what they have to say for themselves," Raimondo said.

Congressional representatives say they're concerned about a lack of transparency in the agreement, and the role played by the Nature Conservancy.

Raimondo said two different agreements in place add to the confusion.

"There's a settlement agreement in the lawsuit, which is a matter of public record, but there's also a private transaction with the Nature Conservancy," Raimondo noted. "We would like the privacy of those transactions to be respected, and we would like it understood that the ranchers do support this deal, and made this agreement voluntarily based on their own set of decisions and factors."

Raimondo's letter to the head of the Natural Resources Committee, on behalf of the Kehoe, McClure, and Nunes families, noted the increasingly challenging economic and legal climate for dairies in the state.

It also says, "none of the challenges farmers face in the park were created by the Nature Conservancy...[they] simply provided resources that made the buyout an option."

The owners of Double M, McClelland, and Spaletta dairies, along with Gallagher, Grossi, Lunny and Home and N ranches; in a separate letter to the leader of Congress's Natural Resources Committee, urge not to jeopardize the deal, but instead use lessons learned to protect ranching in other federal lands.

Representative Jared Huffman, whose district covers the ranches and the national seashore, has called for opponents to "stop politicizing" the deal.