The Big Politics of a Small Oyster Farm

Oyster Shell

In 1976 the Point Reyes Wilderness Act protected more than 33,000 acres of California forest, grassland and shoreline - including Drakes Estuary. A small, struggling oyster farm in the region had been operating for more than eighty years, and it was accused to doing environmental harm. The National Parks Service refused to renew the company's lease, and soon a legal battle ensued that went all the way to the Department of Interior. As the battle wound its ways through the courts, the stakes got much higher than a small oyster farm. Summer Brennan discusses her new book chronicling this case, The Oyster War.