May 4, 2001

Secretary Gale Norton
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20240

RE: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Study of
Proposed Marin Baylands National Wildlife Refuge

Dear Secretary Norton,

Our family has operated and owned Silveira Ranches in Marin County, Calif., for 101 years. We need your help.

By way of a USFWS invitation to attend a public workshop last November, we learned that our private property had been included within the study area of a proposed wildlife refuge.

According to the USFWS, inclusion of our property within the study area and the final proposed refuge does not compromise our property rights, rather it readies the stage for land purchase/acquisition should we willingly decide to sell our property to the federal agency.

It’s impossible for us to trust those assurances, however, considering how poorly this process has treated the property owner thus far. We were left out of the early discussions that resulted in the delineation of the study area. Once finally consulted, we emphatically stated that we are not willing sellers. Yet the USFWS continues to answer our “no thank you” with a boilerplate response that the process will proceed, with a decision made in January 2002.

Nearly eighty-five percent of Marin County is undeveloped and will remain so because of a countywide plan adopted in the 1970s. That plan, heralded then and now, divides the county into three corridors: the coastal recreation corridor, the inland rural corridor and the city-centered corridor.

The plan was devised to conserve land in the coastal and inland corridors while concentrating development in the urban corridor. Because our property is situated in the area established as the urban corridor and is considered developable, the county cancelled our Williamson Act contract, thereby subjecting us to exorbitant property taxes based on market value/development potential.

In the early 1990s, “environmental” activists decided to try and force us to keep our land open in perpetuity. They pushed a referendum for downzoning our property to agricultural use only. They did not succeed; the measure did not pass.

In the mid-1990s, a local sanitary district attempted to take one-fourth of our property through eminent domain. Environmental activists supported the district’s decision.

After five years of litigation, the district abandoned their action, once faced with a jury’s verdict for fair valuation and severance damages.

Now we enter the new century with yet another intrusion and disruption in our lives.

Please help us persuade the USFWS to immediately remove our two ranchland properties from the study area designation for the proposed Marin Baylands National Wildlife Refuge. Your intercession is so greatly needed.

With sincerity,

Renee Silveira

Renée Silveira

On behalf of the Silveira Family

Attachment: Feb. 5 letter to USFWS