It was a two year struggle but the end finally came and the results weren’t good. Drakes Bay Oyster Company located near Oakland, California announced this past Monday that it would close. The oyster provider had been in existence for over eighty years and the types of shellfish Drakes Bay harvested are considered a delicacy and the company itself produces lost half of the oysters consumed in California.

Despite the urgings by prominent California politicians like Dianne Feinstein in 2012 to extend the lease of the farm to continue operating at Point Reyes National Seashore, then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar decided not to and gave the company 90 days to vacate their location. A local environmentalist group named the West Marin Environmental Action Committee apparently has been fighting Drakes Bay Oyster Company for years. Drakes Bay was able to farm oysters and shell fish at it’s location at Point Reyes National Sea Shore (which is a federal park) as part of a lease agreement the company had with the Interior Department. But due to environmentalists wanting to kick Drakes Bay out claiming that the company’s harvesting efforts posed a danger to endangered species like harbor seals. I would not put it past them if environmentalists lobbied Salazar to sack the oyster company’s lease.

The National Academy of Sciences argued that the Interior Department sought to get rid of Drakes Oyster Company by exaggerating it’s negative impacts on the area’s environment. Not surprisingly the group opposed to Drakes Bay lied about the company and it’s operation’s effects on the area’s environment too. Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed profound disappointment on her website at Salazar’s decision, literally decrying it as a travesty of justice:

The National Park Service’s review process has been flawed from the beginning with false and misleading science. (This) effectively puts this historic California oyster farm out of business. As a result, the farm will be forced to cease operations and 30 Californians will lose their jobs.

The statement made by Feinstein is only a part of the results of this. A Washington bureaucrat and a group of environmentalists decided that they knew what was best for the usage of the land Drakes Bay utilized in order to operate and what kind of seafood people consume. The impact of the company closing isn’t just the employees losing their jobs but also the restaurants and people who bought the products Drakes Bay Oyster Company provided will, most likely, suffer and have to settle for lower quality products. The moral outrage with this incident is that a group of environmentalists saw to it to force their views not just on a business owner but also on the people who consumed the products it provides.