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Because of lawsuits and as a result of a settlement, a group of ranchers at Point Reyes National Park are getting pushed out and leaving. As a result of it, their workers are losing all of their jobs and housing. Our guest today is Andrew Giacomini, who's a lawyer that has taken on the case for the workers of the ranchers as pro bono. He's here to tell us what's going on in the Point Reyes National Park and what's behind the settlements. You can move the needle in the direction of environmental protections without ending the agricultural operations. But instead, they went from a report that said ranching should continue to eliminating it entirely and take it a step further, evict everybody who lives there, and they have no place to go. This is not, for me, what our government ought to be doing. After the taping of this interview, we got news that the federal government is investigating what's going on at Point Reyes National Park with the ranchers. I'm Tiamat Korami. Welcome to California Insider. Andrew, it's great to have you on. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. We want to talk to you about a phenomenon that's happening in Marin County and Point Reyes National Park. There's a group of ranchers that are kind of getting pushed out as a result of a settlement. And you represent some of the workers that live there and work in these ranches. That's right. Tell us what's happening there. So it's kind of a long saga that goes back to when the national park was first established in 1962. At that time, the ranchers were already there and had been for 100 years ranching, both beef ranches and dairy ranches. And then later, in the 60s, the federal government took the fee title, condemned the park, but the ranchers kept their land. All the land around them was owned by the federal government, but the ranchers owned their land. And they kept on going farming like they had before. In the 70s, the federal government wanted to buy their land, but they didn't have enough money. So they raised enough money to buy the land, but then give the ranchers back long-term leases. And the ranchers continued operating under long-term leases for a long time. And then more recently, in the 70s, the National Park Service thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce the tool elk to that park. They weren't there anymore, but they had been a long time ago, and they had either been hunted out or left. They brought these elk back. And the elk turns out to be kind of an environmental tipping point for some environmentalists because the elk herd grew so that it was too large to be sustained. The elk started to die because they didn't have enough food and water. And the elk had a fence keeping them in a certain area. And on the other side of the fence was the ranchers. And so that set up a debate, kind of a ferocious debate between environmentalists and the ranchers with the environmentalists saying, we've got to get rid of those ranchers because these tool elk are dying. And it was sort of a cows versus elk situation. This went on for a while. And the environmental groups filed a lawsuit in 2016, I think, or around then to end ranching and point raise. And that lawsuit was settled. And the settlement said the federal government was required to go study the environmental impacts of ranching and through an environmental impact statement, determine what should happen in this area where the ranches exist. And that statement commissioned by the federal government, which had tens of thousands of comments from environmental groups and everybody, just like any other environmental study. At the end of it, the federal government determined that ranching should continue and that they should issue new 20-year leases to the ranchers. That was published in 2021. So at that time, the ranchers were going to finally get their long-term leases that had been withheld from them because of these environmental lawsuits. But then the environmental groups sued again, three of them. And this time around, even though the federal government had done a study which showed ranching should continue and was the best use for the property, even though that had happened, and even though the federal government could have defeated the lawsuits filed by the environmentalists had they tried to. So the environmentalists sued the federal government again. Yes, and the ranchers intervened in the lawsuit. The environmentalists weren't happy with the results, so they sued to prevent it from being implemented. Now, at that point, the federal government has a choice. It's like it always does. And you know, they have more lawyers than anybody. They can fight anybody. Fighting the federal government is very, very tough. If they had wanted to, they could have fought the environmental groups and they would have won because they had done a very careful environmental study that supported their decision to restore ranching. But they didn't do that. Instead of doing that secretly, they sided up with the environmental groups that sued against the ranchers and brought in another environmental organization called the Nature Conservancy. And then over a three-year period of time, with the ranchers under substantial pressure, they raised money from the Nature Conservancy to buy the ranchers leases out. Now, those ranchers are leaving and they voluntarily agreed to leave. I haven't talked. I don't know any of the details of those settlement agreements because they're secret. So they're not been published. But I know many of these ranchers, they didn't want to leave. And had they had a real option to stay with the National Park Service sort of being a true partner, they would have stayed. But their experience had been such that they felt like this was going to be ongoing litigation, one after another by environmental groups. And there was enough money being offered where those families decided they should take the money and leave. And those decisions were made. I wasn't involved in that process. I didn't represent those parties, although I know most of the ranchers personally. I got involved because those parties had a secret settlement and they forgot to consider my clients. And those are the people who live on the ranches. So there are people who live there who work there. There are people who live there whose parents or grandparents work there. I represent 60 such people, 40 of them are children. There are at least double that. There's some estimates of maybe 150 people who live on these ranches that are about to be evicted because of the settlement. When I found out that was going to happen, I got involved to represent those people, those underrepresented people. These are not wealthy people. They're working people to try to protect their homes. And at first, I intervened on their behalf in the lawsuit that had been filed by the environmental groups where this secret negotiation was going on. And I went to one of these. I was invited to the table to try to help negotiate a resolution that included my clients, but the National Park Service was adamant. They would never let people stay in their houses. That wasn't an option. The only thing they were ever willing to do was to pay some money so that my clients and others would leave. I didn't think that was acceptable. And even though I'm against the ranching ending, and we can talk about that because it's very bad for Marin County, it's a devastating impact to lose this agriculture in this small community. I was really just focused on housing because there's a housing shortage, of course, all across California. And in particular in West Marin, there's no housing. So if these people get evicted, they don't have any place to go. They'll have to leave the county. So they'll lose their homes and their jobs because the farms are closing and they'll have to move to another location. And so we are now suing the federal government and the Nature Conservancy. And in our lawsuit, we allege that they conspired to break several laws and at the expense of our clients and that our clients should be allowed to stay. Before we get into how the parties work together behind the scenes, can you tell us what's the settlement? We hadn't filed our lawsuit because our lawsuit gives our clients potentially other remedies. But under the settlement, the ranchers forfeiting their leases and moving, and they have to do that by October 2026. In order to make that deadline, though, they need to close their ranches this year, especially the dairies. Because in addition to leaving, they have obligations, as I understand it, to do certain things on their ranches that the National Park wants done, like maybe remove a barn or take down a structure or remove all the milking equipment. Or maybe there's a pond that they use to catch runoff from the barn. I don't know because this part of the settlement is secret. It's not been shown to the public. But there are a series of agreements on a ranch by ranch basis where the ranchers have to accomplish a list of things and then they have to leave and forfeit their lease and agree that they can never ranch again in that location. In exchange for that, they're getting paid money. I don't know how much money. It's secret. But I do know the money is coming from the Nature Conservancy. I also know that there's an incentive. And I only know what I'm about to tell you because one of the lawyers for the ranchers told me this. There's an incentive in the settlement agreement that if the ranchers deliver the property with no tenants living there anymore, so if my clients are moved off, they get more money. If my clients are still there when the ranchers leave, they take a haircut on the payment. I don't know how much. But they're incentivized economically, the ranchers are, to encourage my clients to leave. So that's the settlement. Money was paid by the Nature Conservancy to the ranchers. The ranchers agreed to forfeit their leases. Then in a separate settlement agreement that included the National Park Service, which is public, and you can see it on their website, there's a bunch of agreements between the ranchers, the Nature Conservancy, and the Park Service about what's supposed to happen with the land. And one thing that could happen is the Nature Conservancy has an option to lease all the land and then ostensibly steward that land. Because once you stop grazing land that's once been grazed, the grasses will grow. That's not a good thing in a fire-prone California. Everybody agrees that if there's no ranching, you still have to graze the land. So somebody's going to have to do that. The settlement agreement contemplates hiring ranchers to come in with cows and graze the land. Just fewer cows than are there now is my understanding. So they want to keep the cows there, and they're going to have some number of people come there to take care of the dairy. My understanding, and a lot of these things are secret, but from what I've been able to read, the number of cows that they think are necessary to keep the grasses down are substantially fewer cows than the current ranching operations, which are commercial, have on the land. So the Nature Conservancy or the National Park thinks that they can manage the grasslands, the rangelands, with fewer cows and therefore less of an environmental impact than they believe is happening right now because of the ranchers' current operations. Some of you may be wondering, why are we talking about Shen Yun on California Insider? It's a dance about China, but ancient China. I'm a big fan of Shen Yun. I've been to it 14 times. Every year I go. The first time I went to Shen Yun, it was so amazing. It was so uplifting. The colors, the energy, they put you into scenes of thousands of years ago and you feel like how the ancient people lived and you get to appreciate the history of humanity. There's a lot more to this show. It's going to be here in Southern California and I want to make sure you guys go see it. You don't want to miss this show. You have to see it at least once and make sure to tell us what you think afterwards. It was spectacular. So beautiful. I thought I was going to heaven. It was electric. I'm getting chills talking about it. It gets a 10 from me, that's for sure. It was that good. Absolutely marvelous. Hands down the best show I've ever seen. We have had our reporters in the field working on this. One of the things they brought up to us is that these farms, the organic farms that are there, have an impact on your community. Can you tell us what's the impact of these farms? If you're from Marin County, especially if you're from West Marin like I am, there's lots of points of pride. But one of the points of pride for Marin County is it's kind of the epicenter of organic milk in the entire country. And it's also the epicenter of carbon neutral farming. I don't know if you know what that is, where they farm in such a way actually to capture carbon in the air and sequester it into the ground. There's been a lot of very innovative, important advancements in agriculture in these small farms in West Marin. And that milk and also the beef cows, and there's other animals in West Marin. There's goats and there's pigs. There's all the animals, chickens exist. But the cows are the most dominant of the animals in that agricultural area. So we have a little food shed. So all that food is consumed locally. I'm kind of a big believer in organic products for my family. But I'm more of a believer in organic to have local products. So you don't have to truck them all over the world. You can get your food from right near where you live. Just to put this, and I'll give you an idea. The number of dairies that once existed in Marin, 40, 50, maybe hundreds back in the day. But I think as of recently, there were as many as 25. And now we're down to 11 dairies. And there were six dairies in the park. One had voluntarily shut down, and five are going to shut down now as I understand it. I was talking to a person who runs a creamery. It's actually located in Petaluma, Sonoma County, but it's called the Strauss Creamery. So Strauss is one of the, Albert Strauss and his family are one of the founders of the organic movement in this country. I don't know if you know their milk, but it comes in a glass bottle. And they're very big believers in a light touch on everything that they do. And one of the leaders in, I think, the leader in the organic movement. So that creamery, my understanding is, produces 25,000 gallons of milk per day for the whole creamery, the Strauss Creamery. 15,000 gallons of milk were produced per day on these ranches that are closing. Just to give you an amount of the scale of the loss of milk. Now, not all that milk was going to Strauss because some went to Clover or maybe some of the other industries. But just on the dairy alone, on the milk, an enormous, it's like a bomb that drops. And when you have a dairy operation, you need veterinarians to come and take care of the animals. You need people to work there. And it's the industry that's supported. You need to buy lumber from the local lumber yard. You need to buy hay. There's all kinds of things that support those operations that are dependent on those operations being there that will be impacted. At a human level, like I mentioned before, I represent 60 people and 40 of them are kids who go to school in Point Rea Station at the grammar school there. They won't be able to stay in the community. They'll have to leave. So that school loses 40 kids. Some might be able to stay, but there's a serious housing shortage in that area. And if you can get a house, it's very expensive. The housing that's on these ranches is low-income housing. It's not easy to find that anywhere, right? In California, let alone in Marin County. You have the loss of the agriculture. There's also loss of beef cows. And then you have the loss of the impact on people and the community, the whole community. That's why I've said, I call what's happened in Point Rea is environmental terrorism because these environmentalists, most of whom and most of the money is coming from outside the area because of the tool elk that I mentioned before who are dying and they have a nice picture of a dead elk. And then the environmentalists get all worked up and say, we've got to go save those elk. They raise all this money out of state and they come in and make a secret deal. Now, when I say secret, that means they didn't work with the county. They didn't work with the local community. There's a bunch of nonprofits in the area. Nobody was asked. They excluded the workers, all done secretly. And this is the government, which had done a very public study of what should happen. And so in a secret backroom deal, all this is wiped out. 150 years of history, an environmental study, very detailed that says ranching should continue. The expectation of all these people that ranching would continue because of these environmental interests. And to me, that should never have happened. And it's going to have a devastating impact on West Marin agricultural community. I don't even know what it will be, but nobody thought about any of those things. It's all an afterthought. And I remember I said to one of their lawyers one time, you understand this is like a bomb that you're dropping in West Marin. She said to me, you're right. It is like that because they know. But it's happening anyway. And for me, what I, okay, if I could, if I had magic pixie dust, I would keep ranching happening out there. I think it should continue. But my clients, I just want the housing to stay. So go ahead and close down all the ranches like you've done. You think that's a good thing to do? I don't. Well, you've made this decision. Why would you then take it a step farther and evict all these people when the houses exist? The national park, you know, by one count has already boarded up 150 houses in its other areas. They're just boarded up. Nobody's there. And why would the national park evict these people? It seems like such a small mitigation for the overall impact to save these homes. Just at a policy level, it seems completely unnecessary and punitive to these families who've lived there for a very long time and don't have any place to go. So that's how I see it. The new administration in Washington would not have allowed this deal to happen. And I know this because, you know, nobody knew what was going to happen last November when there was an election. But as soon as the election was decided and Mr. Trump was, had prevailed, they accelerated the timeline for the settlement to get it done before he was sworn in. And they did that because they knew that that administration would not have picked elk over people, would not have picked these environmental causes over historic dairy operations and would have found a way. And this is the thing that could have been. The record of decision I mentioned before after the environmental study, which was published in 2021, said ranching should continue, but it should get better. And the ranchers should do certain things in a different way to reduce the impact on the environment. And that's a good idea. And the ranchers were supportive of that idea. You can move the needle in the direction of environmental protections without ending the agricultural operations. But instead they went from a report that said ranching should continue to eliminating it entirely and take a step further, evict everybody who lives there and they have no place to go. This is not for me what our government ought to be doing. Now, if those settlement process goes through, what's the timeline for people to have to be evicted? The Nature Conservancy has created a fund that makes money available to my clients and other people who live on the ranches. If they agree to leave, they'll give them money. And it's 18 months of rent. So that's a lot of money. The more people who live in your household, the more money you qualify for. So these are significant amounts of money that are being made available through the settlement by the Nature Conservancy to pay people to leave. And I think many people are going to take that money. Why? Because they're scared. They're worried about things like this. A rancher had a meeting on his ranch where my clients live and announced that they were going to close the ranch in September of this year. He told them, it's fine with me if you stay. He wasn't putting pressure on them to leave, even though he would financially benefit from it if they left. But he did say, but when I close the ranch, then I'm not going to be paying the PG&E bill anymore. So there'll be no power. And because there's no power, there's no water because the water comes from a well and a pump. So he was just letting them know that he'll be gone and they're going to have to figure out how to get water and power. Well, that can be scary because people who I represent say, you know, you can stay there. And they're like, well, I can't stay there if I don't have electricity or water. So then they come to me and say, well, what are we going to do about this? And so my answer is, we're going to find a way to keep the power and water on through the courts or through agreement by the National Park. I don't think anybody's going to turn off the power and water when people are living there. That would be... The National Park is trying to put, you know what I'd say, lipstick on a pig. Yeah, we got this money for these poor people. Look at all this money we're giving them. They're trying to turn this into... And the Nature Conservancy has put out these bright, shiny pamphlets about how generous they're being for my clients and others out there. They don't want to evict anybody. And they won't. They're not going to allow a situation where the water and power gets turned off to poor people in West Marin. I don't think that's ever going to happen. But still, my clients, they don't know who to believe or who to trust. You know, they only met me like six months ago. And even though I meet with them once a month or so, and I talk to them, I don't speak Spanish. Everybody on my team does. So there's communication issues. And, you know, then there's all this money over here. And people are like, that's a lot of money. I never had that much money in my life. And it's a real choice. And so we've told our clients, if you would like to access this money, we'll help you. Like, if you do that, you have to leave our lawsuit. But that's your choice. You know, we're just trying to, we'll represent anybody who wants to stay. We've also raised money from another philanthropist that will match the money that's being made available by The Nature Conservancy. So for our clients, if they choose to stay, let's say The Nature Conservancy offers one of my clients $75,000 to me, which is, you know, one of the amounts that's being suggested. Then I say, okay, we'll match that if you stay. But they don't get the $75,000 to stay. They get to stay in their house. But if they ever have to leave... Then you give them the $75,000. Then I give them the $75,000. So then they haven't lost anything. And it gives them a peace of mind. Okay, not only do I have a free lawyer, but I'm backstopped. And I don't have to, you know, have a Hobson's choice of saying no to this money. So that's kind of how we've set it up. And then even if they just decide to voluntarily leave because they get a job and they decide to move six months from now, they still get the money. It's not just if we lose the lawsuit. So we're trying to create, you know, level the playing field so that people can make a real choice for themselves, not have this kind of tip scale where there's... And it's still... And we've told everybody, we will help you whatever you want to do. You know, we're not trying to tell you what's right for your family. You know, some of the people, like a guy works in a dairy and the dairy closes. All he knows how to do is milk cows. That's what he's been doing for 20 years. He did it before, you know, before he came to the United States. So he's going to go try and find a job in a dairy. There aren't very many dairy jobs in Marin County. Maybe he'll end up in Sonoma County or Humboldt County or someplace else. So if that happens, well, they're going to move because there's no job for them, even though their housing might be available. You know, how can you pay for your housing or live if you don't have a job? So it's very complex. And these people that I represent are under tremendous pressure, economic pressure. They're worried that they're going to disappoint the ranchers in some ways. They don't want to, you know, they're worried, you know, about what might happen to them. And it's like, that's why I say they're being terrorized by what's happened. And the fact that there's this money there for them is not enough. It's like such an afterthought, completely demeaning to making any real choice for these people. It's disrespectful to them as human beings. And it's just, it's so wrongheaded because what harm does it do to allow these 20 or 40 houses to stay that are already there and get improved? The cows are gone, or most of them. You can take down the fence so the tool elk can go wherever, you know, in the national park. By the way, those tool elk are going to be everywhere in 10 years if they take the fence down because those animals swim. So they'll just hop in Tomales Bay and swim to the other side and they'll go wherever, you know, they're migratory animals. So you don't just say to the elk, well, why don't you guys stay over here? You know, they're going to roam and their population will continue to grow. And nobody's thinking about any of that. By the way, I like elk. Like, I think they're beautiful animals and I, you know, I'm not an enemy of them, but it just goes to show they reintroduced the elk in a situation where they didn't think the thing all the way through. And then all of a sudden, it's a big dilemma with the ranchers. Well, it was a dilemma created by the national park. You're saying that the government actually worked with the environmentalists to kind of push the ranchers out. Is that- 100% they did and they deny this. So they pretend, you know, when I understand, I didn't read the transcript, but I understand the national park reported this settlement to Congress I think to the National Resources Committee. And in that report said, well, there's the ranchers have made a settlement with the Nature Conservancy and they've given up their rights to lease. We weren't a party to that. But now that the ranchers are leaving, we don't think we should continue ranching in the park as though they were bystanders. And leaving aside what I said before, that since their own environmental studies said ranching should continue, they had like an obligation to stick with the ranchers by their own study. Leaving aside, they abandoned that obligation to side with the environmental groups. Then to later pretend like they were just bystanders in all this is not honest. They were not just bystanders. They were full-on participants. We've been trying to get these records through Freedom of Information Act requests. And so far they've refused to give us those records. We'll get them eventually. But I think I sent you the one news article where a reporter has already started to get some of the emails that prove what I just said. They were taking a victory lapse, the National Park Service, for this outcome. They celebrated it as a great achievement that they had helped make happen. So we know that they were full-on participants. Let's pull this up. You actually brought them with you. Let's pull them up and take a look. I didn't find this, but the reporter did and posted it in his news story. But this is a pretty, you know, this is a deputy solicitor for Parks and Wildlife in the Department of Interior, Sarah Krakow. And her email says, woo-hoo! And I think there's 10 exclamation points. A big win for NPS, POR, and Conservation. Nice one to go out on, y'all. They're leaving, right? This is the way we're going out. Trump's coming in. We have this big environmental win. I think that shows what was really happening. And the thing is, in this country, the government is allowed to take from us our property. So the ranchers had these 20-year leases that were promised to them. And the National Park could have said, you know what? Even though we've done this environmental study, we've decided the best thing is that we want to take the leases back from you. But then they would have to pay for them. That's called just compensation. That's eminent domain. Condemnation. And that is a very common way that the government takes property and puts it to use for the public good. But when that happens, the government has to pay for it. It's not allowed that the government has a third party come in and pay the just compensation. So in this case, there was environmental groups that actually paid for it. One of them. So they weren't the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs were these environmental groups. A third party came in, the Nature Conservancy, and paid the ranchers to leave. And I don't know how much. It's said to be 30 or 40 million between all of them, which is a fair amount of money. But that's not allowed under the law. You can't enter into a partnership with a third party, pay money that's owed by the federal government. We also contend that my client's Fifth Amendment rights are violated by all this because nobody ever considered their situation. They're going to lose their housing along with their jobs. And there's also employment claims that we're bringing and fair housing claims. So that part though, that conspiracy between them and the secrecy of it, and they're going to fight hard to keep it secret. Like those settlement agreements are private agreements between the Nature Conservancy and the ranchers. They're not going to give those to us without a court ordering them to do it. You're making a case that that's probably not legal, right? The fact that they didn't settle with... And that's what your lawsuit is kind of about, right? Yes. These people are clever, right? They understand how hard of a road they've made for us to prove all this because they keep it secret. They put it under a mediation privilege. That means you can't use it in court. They've covered their tracks, carefully covered their tracks. But some of these things come through. And that's the thing about just recently, all these secret documents about JFK's assassination have been produced. And then within those, there's all these other things that should have been produced. And all of a sudden, there's all this information available that we find out things that we didn't know. In our country, we're supposed to find that stuff out. This stuff that's happening in the national park is not like a national security issue, which is sometimes how you keep things secret if you're the federal government. There's no basis for them to keep it secret under that kind of a thinking. They're going to have to produce it. They'll have to make it available to all the public through a Public Records Act request. But they're going to fight very hard to prevent that because they know that if people see more of these woohoo emails, they'll know that they've been caught up. They've been caught in this scheme. So essentially in this scenario, from what you're saying, the national park did the study and they should have, based on the study, they said it's fine for ranchers to be there. So they should have kept the ranches there but in the meantime, they had the environmentalists sue them. Do you think they work together? That's my theory, that they work together. And you know, the author who I forwarded that article to you believes that this is a pattern that started some time ago under a former administration where it was kind of inviting people to sue and then enter into secret settlement agreements and accomplish things in those lawsuits that you could not accomplish. Because it would not be popular. Not just not popular. It would not be legal. Not legal. You can't change the National Park Service was precluded under the law from doing anything different than what their record of decision said should be done. That's the law. They've done the opposite of what their record of decision said. And they published a new record of decision that wiped out the old one and said, we don't need to have ranching anymore. And to me, that doesn't pass the straight face test. That's not how we're supposed to do things around here. Leave aside they never asked anybody. They did this environmental study. They asked everybody, what do you think? That's what you're supposed to do when there's an environmental study. You put it out there. You publish it. Everybody gets to have their say. They collect everybody's comments. They read them all. They talk about them in this environmental study. It's a huge open tent inclusive of everybody who has something to say. And in this situation, they walled the whole thing off in a secret negotiation, didn't ask anybody what they thought, made a decision that went against what they determined after they asked everybody, after they did the environmental study and did the exact opposite. That just can't happen under the law. But that's exactly what they did. And they want to pretend like that's not. So the way since they have this set up with separate settlement agreements over here that the National Park Service is not a party to, they're not a party to the... To their payout, right? They're not a party to those agreements. So they're clever. Oh, we don't know about those. We don't even know what's in those settlement agreements. That's between these parties. We, you know, we don't know. We don't want to know because if we knew, then we'd be in trouble. Then it could be illegal, right? It's illegal anyway. But that's what it's just such a... It's so contrived, this whole thing. It's such a contrived situation for them to later try to claim that they were just standing around one day, somebody knocked on their door and said, hey, you know, the ranchers are leaving. What do you want to do now? Which is exactly what... That's their narrative there. They want people to believe. It's dishonest. And that's all going to come out. I mean, it's starting to come out already. And those kinds of emails, like the one I showed you a minute ago, and there's others, are going to be devastating evidence against the National Park Service. And I think I mentioned this to you, but if I didn't, you know, this hasn't gone unnoticed in Washington. I'm actually not active right now in Washington trying to get a change in policy myself. But I'm preparing to do that, to go back to the Secretary of Interior and say, you should change this outcome so that my clients don't get evicted. And that's my real interest, right? Other people are trying to go to Washington and say, you should restore agriculture out here. And people are listening because this administration is pro-agriculture and they're not so pro-environmental, which is why they rushed that settlement before Mr. Trump took office, because it would never have been approved by the new Department of Interior ever. Now there's a new Department of Interior. They can change the whole thing with a stroke of a pen. And a very interesting thing happened recently. Mr. Burgum, who's the new Secretary of the Interior, he announced a partnership with the Secretary of HUD that they're going to make public lands owned by the federal government across the entire country available for affordable housing construction. That's a lot of land. That's actually a really good idea because there's all this land and one of the big obstacles to creating affordable housing is the land cost. I mean, so is the construction- Especially in California. Yeah, but everywhere. The federal government has announced this new policy. We're going to make land available. The governor in California did this four years ago or six years ago. He went and identified all state surplus land and started to make it available for low-income housing. That was a great idea. There's all this extra land. So that just got announced three weeks ago. Well, here I have housing that already exists on federal land and they propose to tear it all down and evict everybody. I think the Department of Interior is going to say, hold on a minute. There's all this housing there right now. We should leave that housing. We shouldn't tear it down. I actually think from a policy standpoint, now that they've announced this desire to create housing on federal land, that we have a very good policy argument that lines up with what the Secretary of Interior is trying to do with HUD. And we have money from state sources and from philanthropists that will actually improve all the housing with no cost to the federal government. And the people will benefit from the housing. We have a nonprofit who would come in and manage the housing for the National Park so they don't have to be a landlord. And another thing, the National Park says they don't want to do. I think that we have a chance. We have the lawsuit where we could win that there's a violation of law. And then we have the opportunity in Washington to get the attention of policymakers to say, these are bad decisions and they should be changed. Do you think if you win the lawsuit or there's a positive outcome, do you think the renters will stay? The ranchers can't stay who took the money. They have to leave. So there's no chance that the Kehoe family, who I know, for example, who settled, or the McClure family, Mendoza family, the Lunney family. These are some of the families that agreed to take a certain amount of money to give up their lease. Those families have to go because they signed agreements and they were represented by lawyers and they made a commercial transaction. And they signed those agreements with the National Park, right? No, they signed the agreements with the Nature Conservancy. Then they signed a subsequent agreement with the National Park to give up their leases, that they would restore certain parts of the land in certain ways. But other ranchers could come in and ranch there. But these families, at least the ones that got paid, you know, maybe their kids or their grandkids could do it. But there's another lawsuit that's a companion to ours. Well, companion. It's been consolidated into ours. That's been filed by a ranching family, the Nyman family, to get a determination from the court that the 2021 record of decision I mentioned before should be restored. And that lawsuit is trying to restore ranching in the park. And if that lawsuit is successful, the National Park will have to open up the ranches, some kind of an RFP process and invite people to come in and put up proposals to start ranching again with new operations. Some people didn't leave. There's some ranchers who didn't take the money. I think they'd be ready to move in and restart ranching. But if there's a policy that ranching will continue, there's plenty of people who are willing to- To go there and do it. Go and do it, either with beef cows or dairy cows or both. And I think there's a good chance that will happen too. That's just a policy change. Because all this happened in a- really a policy decision by the Biden administration and the then head of the Department of Interior that ending ranching was what they wanted, even though it was different than what the environmental study they commissioned showed should happen. They didn't want the ranching to stay. So they sided with the environmentalists and did this backroom deal. Now, Andrew, you are actually taking this on as pro bono. Can you tell us why? Well, I mean, our firm- I've done pro bono things my whole life and a lot of volunteering because I just believe in the importance of giving back. I've been blessed in my life. I've had a lot of success. And throughout that time, I really tried to find opportunities where I could help. In this situation, I got a call from the leader of a nonprofit organization who kind of clued me in. I hadn't thought about it, that this was happening. I thought this would be a good case for our firm to take on. And I went to my firm's management committee. I used to be the managing partner of my law firm. But now I'm not. So I had to ask the new managing partner, will you support this? Her name's Christina Lawson. And she said, absolutely. And the firm said, we should get involved in this. This is really important. We agreed to take the case pro bono. And that's what we're doing. It's not the only case. You know, we've done lots of things on a pro bono basis. And it's part of the culture of our law firm, especially when you can represent unrepresented people. Absent pro bono lawyers, these people wouldn't have had a legal remedy. They can't afford to hire lawyers. There's no legal aid organization that takes on issues like this. So they would have no shot of fighting back and legally to stay there. Without a lawyer agreeing to do it. They can't afford to pay a lawyer, you know, for what we're doing. I think we have seven lawyers on the team working on this. It's been very active at times. It's about to get much more active because the National Park and the Nature Conservancy are gearing up to attack our lawsuit. It'll be, you know, like bare knuckle litigation for sure. It's going to be a big fight. Unless we solve it in Washington. I might not even need to solve it. It might get solved by other people. The Department of Interior. Yes. Or, you know, the Natural Resources Committee, who I understand is already looking into this and is concerned. I don't think they're going to get away with it. One way or the other, either a judge is going to say, you can't do that, or the new administration is going to change its policy and say, we're going back on it. We're not doing this anymore. Andrew, when the non-profit leader reached out to you and told you about the case, what was going through your mind? Why did you decide to take it? First of all, two years before, one of the ranchers asked me to represent him in the case. And I considered it, but I was really busy. I'm a trial lawyer. I had all these trials I was involved in. And the rancher, my firm would have thought that was more of a commercial transaction than a pro bono transaction. It wasn't the same on the equity side. I wasn't sure the firm would accept the pro bono engagement for the ranchers at the time. So for those reasons, I told the guy, I'm like, he already had a lawyer. I said, I don't have time. I waited on the sideline. During that time I was on, I've had to step away recently. I'm on a leave of absence on a non-profit board in West Marin called the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. And I've been on that for eight years. And that organization buys easements on land called conservation easements from the ranchers. And in that way has preserved forever 50,000 acres of agricultural land in West Marin forever. And also giving the ranchers some money. That organization is supported by the people because there's a proposition called Measure A. So there's tax dollars that go into it. And then there's a lot of money that gets raised by donors. Well, because I was on that board, the situation that was going on in Point Reyes was front and center for us from a policy standpoint. That organization's vision is a thriving agricultural community. So closing the ranches in Point Reyes was a serious threat to our vision for West Marin. So we were talking about it all the time. And I was, before this, I was engaged in a working group to try to establish more housing for agricultural workers. This has nothing to do with the settlement. There already wasn't enough housing and some of the housing that existed wasn't good enough. So we were working to try to figure out solutions. And that's how I met the head of this organization. So she became aware that the people who lived on the ranches were going to be thrown off. And she called me because she knew me from these other roles and knew that I cared about this stuff. And she was right. I decided I had to get involved. And so I've, now we're very happily involved in it. It's a very good fight. It's a good fight. It's important. Why? It's important like on many levels. First of all, these are people who are in our community. There are community members who have been stranded. They've been abandoned by the government. And there's nobody to stand with them. And that's wrong. Like in a community, you're supposed to stand with your neighbors. So just at a community level, that's really important. And I think we all ought to do what we can to help people in our community. And this is my immediate community where I live. I feel even some of the things I've gotten involved for in pro bono are bigger than that. But this one is right in my backyard for those people. That's very important. For the community beyond this, you know, just if you think about just like the school or the ecosystem in Point Reyes for the village, it's really important because the loss of these people that they're going to leave is a big loss for the community. They're their friends, their neighbors. They work in the various businesses in town. They go to the school. It's a significant number of people who just would be swept out of a community essentially involuntarily. And that's really bad for the community besides the people. At another level, when you see something like this happen by the government, because without the hand of the government controlling all of this, this would never happen. When the government loses track of what's right and what's wrong, we have to call that out and stand up to it, especially lawyers, because the lawyers are in a unique position to do something about it. So I'm a lawyer. When I took my oath, I swore that I would take on important causes like this as part of being a lawyer in the state of California. And that's a meaningful, to me, when I signed that thing and gave my oath, I believe in that, especially when the government's involved in ways that I consider to be the opposite of what they ought to be doing for the citizens. Andrew Giacomini, partner at the law firm Hanson Bridget and a community member at West Marine. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thank you so much for being interested in this case. We really appreciate it. Let us know what you think about ranching in Point Reyes National Park. Do you agree with the environmentalists or do you think the ranching should continue? You can always email me at ciamacacaliforniainsiderer.com or comment. We read all of your comments. We'll see you next time. And this is Ciamak Koramie with California Insider.