Lunny documented how the NPS repeatedly misrepresented the scientific record to depict the farm as environmentally harmful. These concerns were later vindicated by the Department of the Interior Inspector General, which found the NPS “misrepresented research.” Further, a review of the NPS’s activities by theNational Academy of Sciences found that one report “gave an interpretation of the science that exaggerated the negative and overlooked the beneficial effects of the oyster culture operation,” adding that the Service’s conduct “cast doubt on the agency’s credibility and motivation.”
Despite these developments, on December 31, 2014, the National Park Service forced the iconic eighty-year-old oyster farm to shut down.
“Let me be clear, we did not fail as a business. This was not bad luck. Rather, the Park Service engaged in a taxpayer-funded enterprise of corruption to run our small business out of Point Reyes. Our family experienced the worst of what a motivated federal agency can do to a small business,” Lunny testified. “From the beginning of our stewardship of the farm, false science has been used as the primary tool to divide our community, intimidate government officials, and ostracize our family. Our family run oyster farm became ground zero for scientific misconduct in the United States.”
