Live compassionately
Compassion is...
...standing in solidarity with all life, arising from a wish for mutual happiness and growth.
...creating an atmosphere of care and empathy.
...not exclusive to simply humans, but all life.
...sanctuary.
Our Mission
The mission of Rancho Compasión is to provide a loving, lifelong home for rescued farmed animals, and to change public perception about animals typically viewed as “food”. Our Sanctuary promotes a compassionate and sustainable lifestyle for the sake of non-human animals, our planet, social justice, and our wellbeing.
Our story
Rancho Compasión was founded in 2015 in the beautiful hills of west Marin to provide a forever home to rescued farmed animals. What started with the Schinner family adopting two goats became a community effort, blossoming into a non-profit sanctuary that provides a safe haven and forever home for over 100 non-human residents of 12 different species today.
Rancho Compasión is a diverse hub that models interspecies care and invites community to consider a compassionate lifestyle. The sanctuary provides food, shelter, medical and veterinary care, and enrichment for its over one hundred animal residents, and is supported by tours, volunteering, online outreach, events, and humane education programs to all ages of the public. In recent years, it has evolved to include a robust Friends & Food program, where youth plant and play in the Compassion Garden and forage on the property to learn about plant-based foodways and connect with the ecosystem.
Rancho Compasión is made up of a highly-involved and passionate team of staff, volunteers, and Board of Directors. It is sustained by the generous contributions of individual donors like you. Consider making a donation today.
The Land
Telling the truth about historical relationships that took place on this land is important to how we form more just and compassionate relationships today. For over 300 years, the land we are situated on has been altered by the effects of settler colonialism and ranching, and we carry that challenge with us as we work to re-envision our relationship to other-than-human beings and spaces.
The ancestral home of the Tamal Coast Miwok, Nicasio—or Etcha-tamal—was once a thriving village connected to a larger band of indigenous peoples. The huukuiko were dispossessed from their lands in the 1800s by European missionaries and rancheros to make way for ranching. While many history books tout these historical processes as necessary and progressive, in reality, it was a violent process that killed tens of thousands of people and enslaved many more. The area was turned into an 80,000-acre ranch called Rancho Nicasio that exploited both indigenous peoples and animals like cows, chickens, and pigs, providing wealth to the colonizers while plunging the dispossessed into wretchedness. Ecosystems changed drastically over this period, with the introduction of European flora and fauna which, today, create ecological challenges with fire-prone European grain grasses and toxic run-off and erosion from ranching operations.
When we were figuring out what to call our little budding sanctuary, we looked to local ranch names as a starting point. The name Rancho Compasión, Spanish for "compassion ranch," is an oxymoronic wink to these local traditions. We aim to flip the script of what it means to be a “ranch” for farmed animals—without farming or harming them, but, rather, nurturing compassion toward them.
Our Vision
We envision a world where non-human animals are no longer seen as here for human use. We, like other sanctuaries, have set forth a model where animals are not food, property, or products—they can simply just be. In our vision of a farmed animal sanctuary, the animals we typically associate with a barnyard setting, production of byproducts and flesh, or consider dirty, dumb, or less-than, are treated with respect, dignity, and care. They become advocates for their kind.
We wish to see a world where systems of oppression and exploitation of all beings are dismantled and rebuilt upon a foundation of compassion.
We are vegan because we believe in reducing harm to our fellow earthlings. We believe in a vegan future.