Saving Point Reyes

Download or read book Saving Point Reyes written by Gerald Felix Warburg and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Point Reyes National Seashore is not only a notable piece of land-the first large national park created from all private lands and the first large park adjacent a large metropolitan center-but the fight in the 1960s to save this fragile ecosystem was a key turning point in the environmental movement and helped transform the political landscape of California. Most accounts of this story focus only on the 1962 bill that created the Point Reyes National Seashore (PRNS) on 53,000 acres of private lands just north of San Francisco. But that was only the first act in the saga. The passing of the bill only established the park in theory, and the government only controlled 123 acres at Point Reyes. In the months following the signing ceremony, all three of the champions of the bill died, leaving the PRNS without the leadership necessary to secure funding to purchase the rest of the land. What followed was an epic public policy battle to save Point Reyes. Local grassroots lobbying organizations arose to advance the cause of PRNS and other environmental causes, and their victory in 1970 laid the foundation for future environmental activism. With the new funding, the PRNS expanded to over 71,000 acres, which grew to 87,000 acres with the 1972 creation of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Saving Point Reyes is an environmental policy history that draws on archival materials, oral histories, and new interviews with veteran federal policymakers to understand how legislative bargaining and grassroots politics succeeded in achieving this victory for environmental protection"--