450,000-tree clearcut — SF Bay Area, CA

Oakland, CA – “Wildfire danger” and nativist “restoration” projects are only the latest ploys to keep logging & developing.

And thus heating the planet.

They’re ba…ack…  Would-be “nativist” deforesters once again hide in plain sight. Their plans to kill thousands of trees are buried in hundreds of pages of euphemistic bureaucratese about fire danger mitigation.  In short, its authors justify deforestation — felling thousands of trees over months and years — by claiming trees — trees in parklands, mind you — are dangerous. The effective scare tactic is to claim trees and forests beyond 100 ft. from structures create an imminent fire danger to houses.  This is not just nonsense, but wildfire non-science, too.  Read on.

The City of Oakland, California’s current “Draft Vegetation Management Plan” in “MEASURE FF” (on the Nov. 2018 ballot) uses public funds to cut down literally tens of thousands of healthy trees — labeling them fire “hazards.”  In reality, this is just the latest bureaucratic ploy to “manage” to death what minimal wild nature remains; we humans continue the onslaught of deforestation and poisoning (with toxic herbicides).

Killing healthy Bay Trees trees & poisoning them…

The plan also prescribes regular treatments with toxic herbicides (like the blue Dow Garlon,  pictured at left) which seep and drift into the environment — and into us. This environmental debacle of chainsaws and poisons used to be in Measure CC.  Now it’s in Measure FF with about 40% of its funds allocated for tree felling and poisoning.

Remember it’s “FF” with the fitting mnemonic, “Fragging Forests.”  Vote NO on the SF Bay Area’s Measure FF if you love trees and don’t love toxic pesticides (“toxic pesticides,” btw, is redundant).

To be clear, these targeted SF East Bay Area trees, including Monterey pine, Monterey cypress, acacia and of course frequently maligned Blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globules), like ALL trees of any species, REDUCE WILDFIRE RISK.  And deliver numerous and crucial ecological service.  READ WHAT TREES DO.  As if this massive planned tree massacre isn’t absurd enough in our era of human-created global warming, hundreds of gallons of toxic herbicides will then be applied and sprayed on their stumps, in public lands, ongoing for years, without alerting citizens of this (already routine) poisoning of our land, soil and waterways — and thus all of us.

WHAT Bay Area residents CAN DO:  Email the EBRPD (East Bay Parks) Board of Directors – ybarial@ebparks.org – tell them you will vote against Measure FF since it includes destroying trees and using herbicides for “native plant restoration” and fire hazard mitigation policies that actually increase fire danger. 

CUTTING DOWN A FOREST TO “SAVE” IT.

So-called forest “thinning” actually INCREASES fire danger.  AND destroys forest health.  Numerous hidden agendas propel the terrifyingly widespread policy of cutting down trees, advanced by falsely claiming cutting down 1/4-1/2 the trees in a forests “helps” it, or “reduces the fuel load” as a fire danger reduction measure.  It reduces forest moisture and increases winds which both encourage more fires.  READ MORE about WILDFIRE.

Here in the SF Bay Area, deforestation and forest-felling “maintenance” projects are largely driven by the doctrine of Invasion Biology, a frighteningly contagious pseudo-science that advocates wild killing plants and animals that “don’t belong here” — and therefore must be exterminated.  Its beliefs have spread more rapidly than the wildlife it seeks to destroy with bulldozers, chainsaws, and herbicides.  LEARN HOW Invasion Biology ideology spreads.

READ a detailed description from Colorado of another of the actual reasons for this increasingly popular forest-destroying practice: http://StopThinningForests.org

A CHILLING EXCERPT from the educational site, StopThinningForests.org:

The Forest Service, in partnership with the timber industry, uses propaganda to promote the idea that thinning helps lessen fire severity while improving forest health. The research on the benefits of forest thinning is financially backed by the timber industry, and congressional passing of bills that promote thinning are backed by the lobbying efforts of the industry. The main goal for thinning forests is to increase revenue by allowing the timber industry to get into forests that were previously protected by environmental laws.

Again, to re-state the obvious, all herbicides like Monsanto (soon to be  Bayer’s*) Roundup and Dow’s Garlon kill and injure plants, birds, mammals, soil, waterways, pets, and of course people who recreate in these supposedly wild(er) places where we harried humans seek refuge and peace and safety.  And all the chemical giants making poisons play a hide-the-poison marketing shell game, replacing banned chemicals with new toxic formulations, and new fun names like Roundup and Rodeo — have fun killing things!

*In the ultimate hide-under-the-shell game, Bayer just (2018) bought Monsanto for $66 billion — try to grok that colossal figure, which shows the huge profits in poisoning us all. The infamous Monsanto moniker may disappear from shelves and toxic bottles, leaving us with Bayer Roundup, e.g.  If only the toxins within, currently spread ’round the world, would so easily go away.  LEARN MORE

The TreeSpirit Project advocates ZERO use of herbicides, because they are poisonous, carcinogenic chemicals that kill.  READ MORE about herbicides.

VIDEO: Eucalyptus blowin’ in the wind: these beauties REDUCE fire danger, reduce winds, produce O2, sequester CO2 and mitigate climate change. Their dances and wind songs soothe our souls, too.

Trees and forests of ALL SPECIES are LESS flammable than more easily ignitable and faster-burning shrubs and grasses. Trees in wildlands REDUCE fire danger in almost all cases, reducing winds, and creating wetter environments.  Our houses can instead be protected from wildfire by making them “ignition resistant,” making them less flammable and by creating defensible space around them.  This especially means removing DEAD vegetation from the immediate area around a house, which is far more effective in reducing wildfire danger than cutting down living, green (water-filled) trees hundreds of feet, yards (or miles) away.  But cutting down thousands of trees is just what the City of Oakland plan calls for.

LEARN how to protect your home from wildfire without cutting down trees & forests: https://treespiritproject.com/wildfire

TreeSpirit disseminates wildfire science facts and information about trees and forests being precious environmental, ecological, and climatological allies.

LEARN WHY “thinning” forests increases wildfire danger, and some bait-and-switch motivations for advocating cutting down trees: http://stopthinningforests.org

Update about this environmental atrocity will be posted.  For now you can:

• Sign this petition a local environmental group, Save the East Bay Hills, has posted: https://www.change.org/p/city-of-oakland-save-our-forests (fyi, no need to donate $, but if you want to, note the automatic donation request is to Change.org, not Save The East Bay Hills. Donate to Save The East Bay Hills, HERE.

• Learn more about the City of Oakland’s deforestation plan from Save the East Bay Hills: https://www.saveeastbayhills.org/uploads/4/7/8/8/47884333/sebh_dvmp_comments.pdf

SF Bay Area ongoing DEFORESTATION

Would-be developers, habitat “restoration” and (so-called) “native” plant extremists, and even self-described “environmentalists” continue efforts to cut down thousands of healthy trees in the San Francisco Bay Area.  This, in our era of anthropogenic global warming. which is created, in part, by global deforestation.  Trees and forests of all species, by evolutionary design, sequester carbon, produce oxygen, stabilize soil, produce shade which cools the Earth, condense rainwater from the Bay Area’s famous coastal fog, provide wild animal habitat, and more.

Thousands of gallons of carcinogenic herbicides (a classification of pesticide) like Monsanto Roundup and Dow Garlon are today still routinely applied on public lands all over the supposedly environmentally educated Bay Area.  And likely in your nearby parks, and open space.  Hard to believe?  They aren’t illegal (yet).  You can find these poisonous chemicals in your neighborhood hardware store and Home Depots everywhere, sold like unregulated soda.  Chemical companies annually sell literally millions of gallons of these toxins and profits from these sales fund public relations campaigns to convince you they aren’t as harmful as numerous studies demonstrate them to be.  LEARN MORE.

Thousands of healthy Bay Area (CA) trees under ONGOING attach by bureaucrats, nativists—and chemical cos.

THERE ARE 4 PRIMARY DRIVERS OF THIS DEFORESTATION AND PESTICIDE USE:

1) Chemical companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on P.R. and advertising to convince you (and bribe Congress) that their poisons aren’t toxic to humans—but they are:  READ this website’s Roundup page.  They make  billions—not just millions—of dollars in profits from selling these poisons to cities and nations worldwide.

2) People have been misled to believe trees and forests pose a fire danger near residential neighborhoods—but the opposite is true.  Grasslands and brush are more ignitable and flammable than trees of any species.  READ about wildfire and how to protect your house without cutting down trees.

3) Misinformation is spread via “Invasion Biology,” the ideology—not a science—that promotes killing “Bad” “invading” plant (and animals) species to protect “Good” “native” species.  This Old Testament Good vs. Evil philosophy has been effectively promulgated for decades by the same multi-nationals selling their chemical “weapons” to kill the Bad plants and animals.  This is a de facto War on Nature and an unsuspecting public acquiesces to killing, poisoning, and denuding our dwindling wild places—and ourselves.  READ why Invasion Biology is not grounded in science and and how the multinational chemical companies like Dow, Dupont, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and Monsanto promote this ideology to sell their wares.

4) A sometimes complicit, sometimes unwitting, profit-driven mass media repeats and amplifies heresay and misinformation, spreading fear of nature, plants, and wildfire.  One infamous example (in California) is the eucalyptus tree. The plight of this fast-growing, beneficial tree, successfully established in California over 125 years ago, is told below.

FORESTS CAN SLOW FIRES DOWN.  Read editorial by Dave Maloney, the former Chief of Fire Prevention at the Oakland, CA, Army Base: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Trees-retard-don-t-spread-wildfire-11237684.php

EXCERPT:  All trees, no matter their species, reduce the risk of fire because their leaves collect moisture from the air and drip on the ground beneath. They provide shade that slow the sun’s heat from drying this moisture. They act as windbreaks, which slow down wind-whipped fire.

MAY 17, 2017 VICTORY!  A California state judge ruled against University of California (UC) Berkeley’s plan to cut down thousands of trees and spray pesticides. Then took the unusual additional step making a statement for the record: “…that petitioners [community environmental activist group Hills Conservation Network (HCN)] action resulted in enforcement of important public rights and conferred a significant benefit on the public.”

FEB. 2017 VICTORY!: 2nd win for SF Bay TREES, FIRE SAFETY & SANITY.  UC Berkeley withdraws its years-long plan to cut down thousands of trees; can’t cut down forests while complying with California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). 

Huge credit goes to a community of tree, nature, and wildlife lovers, and The Hills Conservation Network for leading the way with a successful lawsuit sucessfully challenging the numerous myths and falsehoods that cutting down forests is justified.

OVER 450,000 HEALTHY TREES WOULD HAVE BEEN CUT DOWN by tragically misguided people, including even self-described environmentalists, who believe destroying forests and letting grasslands and shrubs replace them will reduce wildfire danger — even though trees, compared to grasslands and chaparral, capture more fog, create more shade, and thus cool the land.  Trees also sequester more carbon, create windbreaks that drive fires, and are also home for thousands more animals and birds than grasslands.   And contrary to a popular misconception, grasses and shrubs started the devastating 1991 Oakland hills fire — not eucalyptus trees, which are routinely and erroneously blamed because of “nativist” disinformation campaigns.

Grasslands and chaparral, not trees, started and rapidly spread many of California’s big, fast-burning wildfires which made headlines in 2015 and 2016.

BUT DEFORESTATION TRAGICALLY CONTINUES, driven by “native plant” ideology, led by chemical companies that sell literally billions of dollars of poisons.  People are misled to back killing campaigns to eradicate entire species of trees and plants.  Your county likely is routinely spraying PESTICIDES to kill plants and trees — thus poisoning land, streams, lakes, animals, humans, pets, and your children.

READ April 2017 Save East Bay Hills newsletter:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

SEPT. 2016 UPDATE: Federal court denies $5.7 million in FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) funds to cut down eucalyptus trees [as alleged] “fire danger.”

The court’s decision is a de facto validation of the opinion that living eucalyptus forests are NOT a fire hazard as claimed by UC Berkeley, The City of Oakland, and East Bay Parks (EBRPD) which want to cut down hundreds of thousands of healthy trees and use the fear of wild fire to do it.  The court’s judgment denies Federal Emergency (FEMA) money for deforestation masquerading as “vegetation management” and “fire danger mitigation.”

READ: Huffington Post NEWS STORY
by Nathan Winograd, Sept. 28, 2016:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nathan-j-winograd/fema-pulls-funding-for-oakland-berkeley-clear-cutting_b_12144372.html

Over 2,000 acres of land in the San Francisco Bay Area will be de-forested; trees cut down and chopped up into logs and wood chips, then left on the ground.  Literally tons of dead wood will then dry out in the direct sun and BECOME a fire hazard — since cooling, moisture-capturing, shade-producing forest canopy will have been destroyed.

No replanting is included in the plan.  That’s hard to believe, but it’s true.  This is not “habitat restoration,” this is simply deforestation, turning thousands of acres of healthy forest into “grasslands with islands of shrubs,” a phrase used in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for this environmentally devastating plan.

CLICK TO ENLARGE & DOWNLOAD, SHARE, TWEET

Fire danger will also increase dramatically when fast-growing, opportunistic plants like poison oak, French broom and thistle will grow in place of these 120-year-old Bay Area forests.  Grasses and brushy plants are nature’s way of healing the massive soil damage done by bulldozers and tree fellings.  These smaller plants, growing closer to the ground than trees, act as fire ladders into all species of trees, and spread fire rapidly to houses.  Grasses and brush contain much less water than tree trunks, so they dry out in summer and autumn — creating fire season in California.  So this deforestation will increase the chance of  a devastating wildfire — like the Oct. 1991 Hills Fire that spread rapidly to houses from grasses and brush.  (More on that infamous fire below, including official reports not blaming trees.)

Photo © 2016 Noah Berger, NoahBerger.com

Massive, 70,000-acre grass and brush fires, NOT eucalyptus forest fires, are what burn out of control today, in the summer of 2016 (e.g., The Cold Fire in Yolo County, CA), and the autumn of 2015, making headlines in drought-stricken Northern and Southern California.  These more ignitable landscapes will be increased by the Bay Area deforestations advanced by “nativists” who target specific tree species for eradication.  READ MORE ABOUT WILDFIRE.

• READ: “Cutting Trees Won’t Help Us Live With Fire” by Marg Hall, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 13, 2016.  Hall adds to a growing chorus of critics of deforestation-as-fire-safety is both false and destructive: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Cutting-trees-won-t-help-us-live-with-fire-9969923.php

Thousands of gallons of poisonous herbicides — including Monsanto Roundup™ (glyphosate) and Dow Garlon™ (triclopyr) — will then be applied to the hundreds of thousands of tree stumps, twice each year, for ten years — or in perpetuity — to kill re-sprouting tree stumps.  READ REPORT by World Health Organization, classifying glyphosate (Roundup’s active ingredient) as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” CLICK HERE

• READ “The Case for Banning Glyphosate” by Dr. Jeff Ritterman, M.D.: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29244-will-richmond-reject-roundup-the-case-for-banning-glyphosate
• GO TO Monsanto Roundup™ PAGE

VIDEO: “The Forest and The Sea of Stumps” by Doug Prose.  See what these forests look like now – and AFTER they’re destroyed.

• READ: “Weed Whackers: Monsanto, glyphosate, and
The War on Invasive Species,” Harper’s Magazine, Sept. 2015, by Andrew Cockburn: http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/weed-whackers

EXCERPT:  The supposedly supercombustible eucalyptus, for example, survives fires that consume surrounding plant life — and rather than unfairly appropriating water, the tree actually irrigates soil by absorbing moisture from the coastal fogs through its leaves and funneling it out through its roots. (Though still cited as the prime culprit in the devastating 1991 Oakland firestorm, the eucalyptus was in fact cleared of responsibility in a FEMA report.) Monarch butterflies belie its reputation for repelling wildlife, the eucalyptus being their favored wintering abode in California.

• NBC-TV NEWS STORY, 7.31.15: “Residents Oppose Plan to Cut Down 400,000 Trees in East Bay Hills:” CLICK HERE

Environmentalists protest outside Sierra Club, Oakland, CA.

• News Story: East Bay Environmentalists at Odds Over Future of Eucalyptus Trees – July 5, 2016 – Two often likeminded, eco-friendly contingents debate whether or not to cut down forests. Local environmental groups call out The Sierra Club for supporting the large-scale deforestation and herbicides plan for Berkeley and Oakland public lands.

STORY, photo by Alex Barreira: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/enviros-vs-enviros/Content?oid=4881548

“Eucalyptus Stand” EXCERPT. CLICK for FULL IMAGE

IN THE NEWS: July 18, 2015, TreeSpirit rally & photo to educate the public of 450,000-tree clearcut:

• KQED News story 7.19.15: CLICK HERE

• CBS News story 7.19.15:
CLICK HERE

• NBC News story 7.20.15: CLICK HERE

• The Daily Caller news story 7.20.15: CLICK HERE


• Berkeleyside news story 7.18.15: CLICK HERE

• Campus Reform news story 7.22.15: CLICK HERE

CLICK HERE to read more about the making of “Eucalyptus Stand”

Three different agencies are promoting this massive deforestation plan, using euphemisms like “vegetation management,”and “tree thinning” and even “habitat restoration” to describe cutting down hundreds of thousands of trees over 2,000 acres of public land.

A lawsuit by the Berkeley, CA based The Hills Conservation Network, a neighborhood environmental group, has successfully challenged the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) and halted the deforestation so far.  But UC Berkeley and The City of Oakland are determined to cut down thousands of trees any way they can, driven by the “nativist” agenda of species eradication.  UC Berkeley has in the past flouted environmental reviews to cut down forests (e.g., on Frowning Ridge off Grizzly Peak Blvd in Berkeley).  Public opposition can alter the political landscape: citizens have been misled and misinformed by the spokespeople for these 3 agencies, and also by the media, downplaying the huge scale of the clearcuts, and what fire science says poses fire danger.

If they, if you, become educated and get involved, these precious public forests can be saved, fire danger and summer’s heat can be reduced, and thousands of gallons of herbicides can be kept out of the environment, and  diminishing animal habitat preserved

DISINFORMATION DETAILED

Recent (2015, 2016) efforts by community environmental and activist groups (including TreeSpirit) have successfully publicized the clearcut plan’s giant scale — revealing what these agencies want hidden: that hundreds of thousands of trees will be cut down and treated with thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides.  One of the agencies involved, East Bay Regional Parks (EBRPD), has responded to growing public outrage by denying the official numbers on their own official FEMA grant application:

READ LETTER detailing East Bay Parks’ OBSFUSCATION from community group, SaveEastBayHills.org, written to The Society of American Foresters, NorCal Chapter: CLICK HERE.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

SEE DETAILED FEMA MAP OF AREAS where trees will be cut down, including in these beloved Regional parklands:

• Tilden Park – 325 acres of trees cut
• Chabot Park – 200 acres of trees cut
• Sibley Volcanic Preserve – 166 acres
• Claremont Canyon Preserve – 152 acres
• Redwood Regional Preserve – 151 acres of trees cut
• Wildcat Canyon Park – 112 acres of trees cut down

WHY DEFORESTATION? 

The 3 agencies promoting clearcutting East Bay forests are:
1) East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD);
2) The City of Oakland;
3) The University of Calif. (“UC”) Berkeley

All three want to eradicate so-called “non-native” trees — but found no public support for cutting down hundreds of thousands of healthy trees — until they joined other “nativists” repeating the ridiculous claim that the trees they dislike are “flammable.”  (Ask an Australian if he thinks eucalyptus trees, native to his country, are “dangerously flammable” as is now regularly claimed by nativists.)  LEARN ABOUT “INVASION BIOLOGY”

“Nativists” also now repeatedly claim that only so-called “non-natives” — like the “non-native” Monterey Pine that is “native” only 115 miles away in Monterey, CA! — were responsible for the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.  This, despite official reports to the contrary (see FEMA report directly below).  No scientific studies exist to back their claims.  But a lie repeated often enough, preying on people’s fear of fire and trauma from the ’91 fire, have become, for many, the perceived truth. 

Tragically, cutting down hundreds of thousands of trees will actually INCREASE fire danger. 

Read FEMA’s “Lessons Learned” summary page for reducing fire danger after the 1991 Oakland hills fire — which does NOT advocate cutting down trees of any kind.  CLICK HERE.

Fire science has repeatedly demonstrated that clearcutting forests, regardless of tree species, INCREASES fire danger because grasses and shrubs replace them and are thinner and drier — retain less water, gather much less fog drip — than trees do.  Reversing that, trees, regardless of species are more fire-resistant than grasses and shrubs because they contain more water, are larger and have thicker trunks than small plants like thistle, broom, and “native” coyote brush.  (Ever try to burn a green log in a fireplace?)

The deforestation coming to thousands of acres of East Bay hills.

And with this deforestation plan, the trees won’t be removed from the land, but only become dead logs and wood chips left on the ground, to become what firefighters call “ground fuels” in any future wildfire.

Additionally, shade-making, fog collecting forest canopy will be destroyed, the Oakland and Berkeley hillsides will become overall hotter and drier with thousands of acres of forest gone, again increasing fire danger.

CRITICAL POINT WORTH REPEATING: The 1991 Oakland hills fire began in grasses and shrubs, and then ignited houses.  Eucalyptus trees were NOT responsible for its start— although today they are routinely blamed/scapegoated.  Eucalyptus, like redwoods, bays and oaks all burned of course, but human error had much more to do with that fire catastrophic result — and all this is detailed in several official reports on that fire. (READ MORE about all this below, under “1st FALSE ALARM: FIRE DANGER”)

The U.S. Forest Service explained why cutting down the eucalyptus forests will INCREASE fire danger in its Sept. 27, 2013 assessment of the deforestation plan:

“Removal of the eucalyptus overstory would reduce the amount of shading on surface fuels, increase the wind speeds to the forest floor, reduce the relative humidity at the forest floor, increase the fuel temperature, and reduce fuel moisture.  These factors may increase the probability of ignition over current conditions.“  [Emphasis added – Ed.]

CLICK TO ENLARGE…FEAR.

SPREADING FEAR…of TREES?!  Step back for a moment to a more objective distance and ask yourself: since when are forests trees of any kind something to be afraid of, to feel endangered by? 

This is an entirely new phenomenon, stirred by repeated — and largely or even completely unfounded — claims that some trees are “invasive,” and worse, especially flammable (!), or fall over more easily, or crowd out other trees, or don’t support wildlife — myriad and increasingly bizarre claims without scientific substantiation.  Simultaneously, the myriad benefits of the “dangerous” trees, like ALL trees offer, are ignored, like O2 production, shade, moisture collection, soil retention, carbon sequesteration, and so on.  This is the result of “Invasion Biology” which puts some species of plants (and animals) into simplified, overly broad categories of Good and Bad.  No scientific studies support  these arguments, just hearsay, false generalized information — and years of repetition.  READ MORE ABOUT INVASION BIOLOGY

AND IF EUCALYPTUS TREES in California WERE AS FLAMMABLE as claimed — so-called “gasoline trees” — why has there not been one major eucalyptus fire in 100 years?  (The only fire, in fact, sometimes blamed on eucalyptus trees is the 1991 Oakland hills fire, which, as has been oft-repeated on this website, has been officially documented as NOT the fault of eucalyptus trees.)

HOW FEAR CAN OVERRIDE REASON:  An April 2015 study by California’s Chapman University, surveying 1,514 random American adults, found 8.5% have kenetimortophobia — a fear of zombies!

Since the likelihood of these people encountering a zombie is, uh, incredibly low, zombie fear exists for reasons for an imagined danger, not an actual one.  Presumably from watching pop culture movies and TV shows of attacking zombies.  So to, people who fear being killed in a eucalyptus-specific forest fire — or being harmed by so-called “invasive” plants or animals — are programmed by repetition of alarmist words and images (like of forest fires).  READ THE Chapman University STUDY ON FEAR.

Fear trees invasions? Fear zombie invasions? (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

READ Jack’s blog, “Of eucalyptus trees and the zombie apocalypse”

HOW WAS THE 450,000 TREES NUMBER DETERMINED?  Significantly, you won’t find an estimate online nor in any printed materials from East Bay Parks, The City of Oakland, or UC Berkeley on the number of trees they will cut down.  They only mention acreage, or numbers obliquely and their public statements vague or misleading (e.g., “just trees on ridgelines”).  Numbers are not available to the public, because if people learned the scale of the planned deforestation — hundreds of thousands of healthy trees — they would be outraged and take action.

But a community environmental website has done what done what the would-be tree cutters will not, providing a thorough estimation system to arrive at the 450,000-trees number, based on the only actual documentation, the Environmental Impact Statement.  READ THE ESTIMATE: http://milliontrees.me/2013/05/09/nearly-a-half-million-trees-will-be-destroyed-if-these-east-bay-projects-are-approved-revised

LOGGING INCREASES FIRE DANGER, shows fire science. Read “The Maloney Report,” by David Maloney, the former Chief of Fire Prevention at The Oakland Army Base.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) considers all living trees, no matter the species, more resistant to fire than grasses, shrubs, and dead, woody materials on the ground.  The NFPA does not draw distinctions between “native” and “non-native” species.  Learn how forests act to SUPPRESS fires in many ways.  READ REPORT.

TO PROTECT YOUR HOUSE FROM WILDFIRE — NO NEED TO CUT DOWN FORESTS. 

READ how logging damages an ecosystem, by George Wuerthner: http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2016/01/13/how-much-ice-is-right-collaboratives-and-forest-ecosystems

Forests do not need to be “fixed” or “restored” as they are perfectly capable of “restoring” themselves, if indeed, one even agrees that they “need” restoration—an assumption I would question in most instances.         — George Wuerthner

George Wuerthner is an author, activist, photographer who has published more than 30 books on America’s wild places, including Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy

This flammable mess is the plan for over 2,000 acres of healthy forest. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

IN BRIEF  The plan to cut down over 450,000 healthy trees is an environmental disaster and creates multiple safety hazards.  It will not achieve its stated objective of fire danger mitigation because:

1) the hillsides will be made MORE likely to catch fire when living trees are cut down into dead, drying wood LEFT ON THE GROUND as logs and wood chips, not removed from the hills.

2) fast-growing, flammable plants like thistle, broom and poison oak will flourish post-clearcuts, dry out in summer/autumn, becoming their own fire hazard;

3) thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides Monsanto Roundup™ and Dow Garlon™ herbicide will be applied twice/year in perpetuity, leaching into soil, groundwater, mammals, birds, plants, and humans;

4) hundreds of acres of 2-foot-deep piles of wood chips (20% of the 2,000+ acres of “treatment” area) will be left on the ground.  Forests will be turned into ground fuels, capable even of spontaneous combustion.

5) no replanting of any kind is planned, “native” or otherwise.  (Not that saplings could replace large, mature trees anyway.)  This is large-scale deforestation, not habitat restoration.

Tragically, the SF Bay Area chapter of the magnificent Sierra Club, which should know better and perhaps soon will, officially supports this environmentally devastating plan to cut down 450,000 trees AND then apply thousands of gallons of Dow Garlon™ and Monsanto Roundup to the stumps of felled trees.  These known carcinogens migrate to land, water, birds, mammals — and humans — on these public lands.

Although many chapter members question the “nativist” ideology propelling massive deforestation and herbicides applications, the leadership has yet to reverse their entrenched position which has the venerable environmental group acting as a de facto apologist and booster for — and customer of — the chemical industry, advocating for the widespread use of Dow Garlon™ and Monsanto Roundup™.

Conservation biologist David Theodoropoulus, author of the ground-breaking, “Invasion Biology; Critique of a Pseudoscience” observed this:

• READ “Sierra Club Denies the Facts” on SF Forest Alliance site.

• SIGN THE PETITION to encourage The SF Bay Area Sierra Club chapter to withdraw support of this deforestation and herbicide use plan, HERE.

• LEARN ABOUT THE TOXICITY of the proposed Dow Garlon and Monsanto Roundup™ applications.

Sadly, many environmental groups now use, excuse and promote pesticides use.

THE WHOLE, DISTURBING STORY

As unlikely as this may seem to you at first, there is a completely different agenda driving the clearcuts, by people who ignore decades of established fire science.  Have you ever heard of cutting down entire forests because they are fire hazards?  Of course not.  Which is why the U.S. Forest Service, the California EPA, and FEMA itself (1992 report on the 1991 Oakland hills fire), and firefighters don’t support this plan, which is driven instead by ideology and politics.

This other agenda is that of “native plant” advocates who for decades have wanted to eradicate all Monterey Pine, acacia — and especially all eucalyptus trees — in the state of California.  They want to eradicate plant (and tree and animal) species they say don’t “belong,” even if this means cutting down hundreds of thousands of healthy, mature trees, 150-year-old forests, and introducing thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides to the environment.  This devastation is often called “habitat restoration.”  It is known to its increasing number of scientific, biologist, and lay critics as, Invasion Biology.  READ ALL ABOUT IT.

Invasion Biology proponents have found stirring fear of wildfire is an effective method of accomplish their aesthetic agenda of species eradication.

Living forests of ALL species — including the routinely maligned eucalyptus tree — are actually bulwarks AGAINST wildfire because:
1) trees retain huge amounts of water in their trunks and are fire-resistant — much more than houses;
2) trees capture fog which drips to the ground, each year creating 10″ of “rain” in the East Bay hills;
3) trees create cooling shade which keeps the ground and plants moist; cutting down forest canopy makes the hills get hotter and drier, and;
4) raises temperatures in the Bay Arera — by cutting down 1/2-million trees of forest canopy and releasing huge amounts of sequestered carbon

Experts in the field of fire science (as opposed to “vegetation management” personnel who lack firefighting training) know living trees are not a major fire danger.  Dead woody materials, dry brush and grasses ARE because they ignite more easily.  READ A FIRE EXPERT’S REPORT.

WE LIVE IN AN ERA OF HUMAN-CAUSED CLIMATE CHANGE.  97% of the world’s climate scientists agree on this critical conclusion, as does the overwhelming majority of scientific literature.  See the overwhelming evidence on NASA’s Global Climate Change consortium: http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

CLIMATE CHANGE IS CAUSED IN LARGE PART BY DEFORESTATION, so we desperately need more trees, not fewer, everywhere, not just in tropical rainforests.  Trees cool the earth by creating shade, sequester atmospheric carbon, produce oxygen, and also stabilize the East Bay’s steep hillsides and create precious wildlife habitat. Yet about one-half million vital, healthy trees are about to be destroyed.  And in the past few years, tens of thousands of healthy SF Bay Area trees have already been killed in similar, smaller clearcuts.  WHY?

FRIENDS, NOT FOES: Since when did beautiful, living forests become the enemy? CLICK TO ENLARGE

1st FALSE ALARM: “FIRE DANGER”

The flammability of specific species of trees has been systemically fabricated and exaggerated, for years.  You may have heard some of this, and even assumed it must be at least partially true.  But it isn’t.  This is simply, and terrifyingly, extremists in the “native plant” movement’s most effective tool to get media attention, and frighten and influence the public, and policy.

Think of this: there are literally millions of eucalyptus trees in the state of California.  They have been here well over 100 years (some over 150 years).  If this many trees are so “dangerously flammable,” why has there not been one single big eucalyptus tree fire?

The only fire now often, erroneously, blamed on eucalyptus trees was the 1991 Oakland hills fire — but numerous official reports debunk this claim.  They detail how that was a grasses and brush fire that ignited houses and then trees of all species.  So of course eucalyptus trees burned and threw embers — as did redwoods and pines and all trees.    All trees burn in a big fire, and any trees with resins and oils (pines, redwoods, bays) can “explode.”  Houses, which are drier and burn hotter than any trees, threw more and larger embers — and, for example, burning 2x4s — into the air to spread that catastrophic fire.

FEMA’s own 1991 report, 120 pages long, and 2) the Oakland and Berkeley Mayor’s Task Force report, and 3) a report by the former Oakland Army Base’s Chief of Fire Prevention who was so outraged by “nativists” scapegoating trees to achieve aesthetic eradication efforts, he issued “The Maloney Report.”

READ the official Oct. 1991 FEMA report’s recommendations to reduce fire danger in its “LESSONS LEARNED” page (69) summary: CLICK HERE

The U.S. Forest Service says the plan to cut down eucalyptus trees will INCREASE fire danger in East Bay Hills!  The Sept. 27, 2013 report, explains:

“First, the removal of the overstory, is likely to result in rapid establishment of native and non-native herbaceous and brush communities, bringing an increase in available surface fuels.  Secondly, removal of the overstory will result in changes to environmental factors which are known to cause increases in fire behavior.“ [Emphasis added – Ed.]

The report continues:

“Removal of the eucalyptus overstory would reduce the amount of shading on surface fuels, increase the wind speeds to the forest floor, reduce the relative humidity at the forest floor, increase the fuel temperature, and reduce fuel moisture.  These factors may increase the probability of ignition over current conditions.  [Emphasis added – Ed.]

CLICK TO ENLARGE “A War on Trees”

In fact, so-called “native” plant advocates have cut down TENS OF THOUSANDS of healthy, mature trees of several species over the past decades — ultimately en route to killing MILLIONS of healthy trees. This ignores climate science and the significance of the huge amounts of carbon all species of trees sequester. To ignore science and common sense and convince the public massive deforestation is necessary, “nativists” must find a reasons compelling than species preference and romantic visions of a long ago landscape.

Yelling “Fire!” loudly and often works, and can, over time, convince people they are in danger…from Monterey Pine, acacia and especially eucalyptus trees.  Perhaps you’ve heard or read, “somewhere,” that “eucalyptus are highly flammable?… Which leads to The 450,000-tree Question…

ARE EUCALYPTUS TREES, IN FACT, HIGHLY FLAMMABLE?

So-called “gasoline trees” — that fire didn’t ignite.

The photo above shows eucalyptus trees are not the “highly flammable“ threat “nativists” repeatedly claim they are in order to spread fear and advance a species-eradication agenda.  In 2003, a large fire consumed much of Scripps Ranch in San Diego — but left many eucalyptus trees unburned.  If eucalyptus were as flammable as reputed, how can this be?

Scripps Ranch is just one of many such examples.  Why is the onus on those defending an entire species of oxygen-producing, carbon-sequestering, shade-making, globally cooling tree, anyway?  Why don’t people demand proof from those demonizing literally MILLIONS of trees scientific proof of danger instead of only heresay that any living, green, water-filled tree is “flammable” and “hazardous” and as claimed?

The question must be asked repeatedly, until more people delve into both the question and the answer, “How did ANY tree become an enemy, something to fear and to kill?”  The short answer is: “Invasion Biology” – CLICK TO LEARN WHY.

Cut down tall trees…(CLICK)

• Angel Island’s (SF Bay) biggest recorded fire occurs only AFTER cutting down eucalyptus tree canopies.  This fire science textbook-worthy example of how trees of all species provide cooling shade, suppressing the growth of low-growing, more flammable “native” grasses and brush occured in Oct. 2008 after years of systematic forest destruction. 

Eucalyptus trees’ thick, water-filled, fire-resistant trunks resist burning in grass and shrub fires like this one.  Of course, nativists, unceasingly determined to eradicate certain species of trees they don’t like, ignoring contradictory evidence, argue that trees would have burned too — even though the fire stopped at the base of the few eucalyptus trees not cut down.
READ MORE: HCN blog

• “A fast-moving brush fire atop Angel Island shot flames high into the air…”: SF Chronicle 10.13.08

• READ MORE EXAMPLES of eucalyptus trees NOT burning in fires: http://milliontrees.me/2010/11/14/trees-withstand-the-firestorm

“Native” bay leaves…(CLICK)

Did you know that “native” California Bay Laurel trees contain twice as much volatile oil as “non-native” eucalyptus trees?  (Hence the characteristic pungent odor of a torn bay leaf.)  And because bay trees grow closer to the ground than blue gum eucalyptus, bay trees are more likely than eucalypts to be ignited by grassland and shrub fires typical in the East Bay hills.  This fact is ignored by “nativists” who fan the flames of fire fear in the public in order  to advance their agenda of “non-native” species eradication.

Did you know that the fire science guiding firefighters — note distinction from “vegetation management” workers — does not distinguish between species of trees, and considers all living trees, because of their high moisture content, are considered resistant to fire?

CLICK TO VIEW, DOWNLOAD

• READ the former Chief of Fire Prevention at Oakland Air Force Base, David Maloney’s, blistering critique of the clearcut plan (East Bay Regional Parks District’s portion).  Maloney also served on the Task Force on Emergency Preparedness & Community Restoration formed to investigate causes of the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills Fire — and prevent its recurrence.  CLICK HERE TO READ REPORT.

EXCERPTS:

Some people have it backwards.  They want to give a high fire hazard rating to green (living) trees and cut them down, because they did not originate in California, when it has been shown over and over again that green trees, regardless of where they originated, are a bulwark against wildfire because of the moisture they contribute to the ground fuels and because they act as windbreaks.

Nowhere in the twenty editions and tens of thousands of pages of the Fire Protection Handbook is there a mention of the leaves or bark of the Eucalyptus trees.  The only aerial fuel singled out for mention because of its high flammability and volatility are the needles of coniferous trees.  The oils and resins of Eucalyptus leaves and barks are not mentioned because they are not as flammable as the oils and resins of the needles of coniferous trees.  [The Fire Protection Handbook is published by the National Fire Protection Association – Editor]

If the leaves and bark of Eucalyptus trees were more of a fire hazard than the thousands of other species of trees that are in California it would be noted in the Fire Protection Handbook.

• CLICK TO READ FULL “Maloney Report,” HERE.

READ FIRE ARTICLES, LEARN FIRE SCIENCE

• READ New York Times Op-Ed, “More Logging Won’t Stop Wildfires,” by ecologists Chad Hanson, Ph.D. and Dominick A.  Dellasala, Ph.D, another opinion and explanation, perhaps counter-intuitively for you, why cutting down forests doesn’t make us safer from wildfire: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/opinion/more-logging-wont-stop-wildfires.html?_r=1

EXCERPT:

Just as they did in 2013, supporters of this legislation are using the public’s fear of forest fires to advance their agenda. They argue that overgrown and “unhealthy” forests raise the risk of wildfires, and that the government has been hampered by litigation and environmental reviews from allowing timber companies to thin forests to reduce the risk of fire.

Chad Hanson VIDEO: Chad Hanson explains why NOT to log after a forest fire — it increases future fires and does ecological harm, including to wildlife.  (It’s often driven by timber industry profits, as well as U.S. Forest Service profit, as the USFS derives its operating budget from so-called “salvage” logging to timber industry, a systemic conflict of interest.)

READ “The War Against Wildire,” by George Wuerthner: http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/the_war_against_wildfire

EXCERPTS:

…for nearly a century now, the US Forest Service has been waging a war against wildfires in the West, spending billions of dollars to put out fires on public lands and supporting commercial logging projects to thin out forests in order to prevent fires from spreading and “destroying” the forestlands. …despite the overwhelming body of new research that points to its futility as a fire retardant as well as to the immense ecological harm it causes…

Rather than reduce a wildfire’s reach, thinning can sometimes actually increase a fires spread by putting more fine fuels like needles and cones on the ground and opening up the forest canopy, which in turn dries out these fuels and allows greater wind penetration. It is fuels like needles, grasses, and shrubs that sustain blazes.

• READ “Reducing the Wildland Fire Threat to Homes,” by Jack Cohen: CLICK HERE
Jack D. Cohen is a Research Physical Fire Scientist with the USDA Forest Service Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, MT.  Cohen is the pre-eminent researcher on wildfire and home ignitions, and a founder of the Firewise Communities/USA recognition program.  Jack crystallized the concept and coined the phrase “Home Ignition Zone” which is how we can protect houses and structure without cutting down forests out of misplaced fears.

• VIDEO: Jack Cohen, Research Physical Scientist, U.S. Forest Service FIRE SCIENCES LAB, Missoula, MT:

• READ “Study finds logging increased intensity of Black Saturday fires” (of Australia, Feb, 2009), CLICK HERE.

EXCERPTS:

In a landmark two-year study of the Kilmore East and Murrindindi Mill fires, which destroyed Marysville and ­severely damaged Kinglake, scientists from Melbourne University and the ANU examined satellite images of hundreds of thousands of trees burnt on Black Saturday.  The scientists say the study showed conclusively that logging in the decades prior to Black Saturday made the deadly blaze much more ­extreme.

The scientists believe the increased fire risk in logged areas is due to several factors.  Regrowth forests have more trees packed more closely together and contain large amounts of flash fuels allowing fire to build in severity, the study found.  Old-growth forests usually have wet rainforest under­storey canopies, which do not burn as well as the drier understory canopies of regrowth forests.

• READ NFPA (Nat’l Fire Protection Association) tips for Wildfire Preparedness.  This is done without cutting down forests, which only increases fire danger by destroying forest wind breaks and cooling canopies and moisture-collecting properties: http://firewise.org/wildfire-preparedness.aspx

• READ George Wuerthner, wildlife biologist, botanist on protecting houses from wildfire by making them fire resistant and creating defensible areas around them, NOT thinning forests:

• READ George Wuerthner: “Why Thinning Forests is a Poor Wildfire Strategy”

AND

• READ “Fire Fighting Wastes Money”

http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2015/08/17/fire-fighting-wastes-money

The solution is not to give more money for fire fighting–it will just be wasted on useless attempts to control fires. By far the best solution is to zone people from building in fire plains and to create defensible spaces around homes.

• READ George Wuerthner’s, “Wilderness Advocates Must Address Wildfire Misinformation”: http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2015/12/03/wilderness-advocates-must-address-wildfire-misinformation

And unfortunately conservation organizations have not invested enough time and energy in countering the misinformation and educating the public about what constitutes a healthy forest ecosystem (hint: a healthy forest ecosystem has lots of bugs, disease and fire) and why common prescriptions like thinning are unlikely to preclude large fires.

Goats, folks, are one answer! CLICK TO SEE

• USE GOATS (!) TO TRIM GRASSES and reduce fire danger.  Grasses and brush and shrubs are far more ignition-prone than than ANY tree species.  All fire experts and fire science (see articles above and more below) explain this.  Grasses should be kept trimmed to reduce fire danger.  Grasses are what started and rapidly spread the 1991 Hills fire, not eucalyptus trees.

Herds of goats are less expensive and far less toxic than herbicides the clearcutting plan (and the Sierra Club!) endorses, and far less dangerous than prescribed burns. And they’ve already been used in the East Bay hills for exactly this purpose!  Why are they not now being recommended for fire danger mitigation work?  Is it because there is more profit in using Monsanto and Dow Chemical company products?  Is it because those who wish to eradicate eucalyptus trees want to keep the focus on them, and not other, more effective and reasonable treatments?

READ ABOUT GOATS: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/07/22/goats-back-berkeley-act-eco-friendly-lawn-mowers

CHECK OUT family-owned business “Goats R Us”: http://www.goatsrus.com

2nd FALSE ALARM: “INVASIVENESS” or… KILL THE INVADERS, KILL THEM ALL – Invasion Biology

CLICK TO ENLARGE THE…

Tragically, some “native” plant proponents perpetuate and popularize myths, misconceptions and monster stories about certain species of living, moist, fog-capturing trees, especially demonizing eucalyptus trees.  These tall tales, repeated for years, become popularized, like Donald Trump’s picking on Mexicans and Muslims, and become justifications to enforce the aesthetic biases — and then advocating…cutting them all down.   (Like tossing out entire ethnic, cultural or religious groups out of the U.S. because “we all know they’re bad, dangerous, you-name-it.”

And since cutting down hundreds of thousands of trees for ANY reason would alarm reasonable people, especially in the environmentally-minded SF Bay Area, the clearcutting agencies methodically downplay the huge numbers involved, eschew estimates, say, “we’re not cutting them all down” and, more recently as the public is informed and asks questions, simply lies about the numbers in the Environmental Impact Statement which is, fortunately, public record.

Without public outcry, there is little or no analysis of the myths and fallacies behind these deforestation or species eradication efforts.

You may have heard that eucalyptus, brought here from Australia about 150 years ago are considered “non-native” (as if that label alone is reason enough to kill them all), but did you know that Monterey Pine and often Monterey Cypress are labeled and killed for being “non-native” too?  Apparently even traveling a few hundreds miles north within the state of CA justifies killing thousands of mature, healthy trees.

As with the term “weed,” there is no scientific basis for the nativist terminology, starting with the key labels, “native,” “non-native,” and “invasive”.  At what date does “native” end, and “non-native” begin?  With European introduction to American shores, as many say?  Why then?  Seeds, spores, plants, and trees have traveled vast distances before and since then, with and without human help.  Birds, e.g., have for thousands of years carried seeds across oceans.  Hence the quotations used around their terminology on this website.

Increasingly, scientists, researchers and environmental journalists are challenging the nativist perspective, labeling it Invasion Biology since it assigns simplistic, non-scientific values of good & bad, right & wrong, and of course “native” and “non-native” to the world’s continual, endlessly mixing flora and fauna.

Value judgements are projected onto the plant and animal kingdoms, e.g., innocent native plants and animals being assaulted by destructive, even evil, invading species.  These subjective evaluations are made even though species migrations have always occurred, long before humans and human technology.

Read why Invasion Biology — the so-called “native” plant agenda to wipe out arbitrarily labeled “non-native” organisms by branding them “invasive” — is increasingly being debunked in both scientific literature and mainstream reviews:

CLICK to ENLARGE

•READ new, mind-opening book, “The New Wild,” by respected environmental journalist Fred Pearce.

Amazon REVIEW: “…dares to tackle the “science” behind some of the popular quotes which get tossed around with minimal scrutiny and perhaps most telling of all…gives the reader a glance into the absolute atrocities perpetuated on nature in the name of wiping out invasives.  All in all, a very well written book that is both accessible and informative.

• READ essay: NATIVES vs. EXOTICS: THE MYTH OF THE MENACE: Non-Native Species as Allies of Diversity by J.L. Hudson: http://www.jlhudsonseeds.net/NativesVsExotics.htm

• READ REVIEWS and BUY “The New Wild” on Amazon.com.

EXCERPT: “There is an idea, popular in some circles, that ‘non-native’ species are somehow harmful, that ‘aggressive exotics’ can invade ecosystems and destroy ‘native species’.  It surprises me to see the public and biologists alike uncritically accept this absurd notion.”

• READ Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s critique of “native” plants concept: “An Evolutionary Perspective on Strengths, Fallacies, and Confusions in the Concept of Native Plants.”

EXCERPT: …this notion [of “native plants”] encompasses a remarkable mixture of sound biology, invalid ideas, false extensions, ethical implications, and political usages both intended and unanticipated.

Human fear of foreigners projected onto the plant world.

MYTH #1: the targeted species, like eucalyptus, is especially “invasive,” that it doesn’t co-exist with other species — yet they do.  And some “native” species like our beloved redwoods also create their own unique environment.  It’s not nearly so simplistic as “native good, non-native bad.” Even the California Invasive Plant Council revised its invasiveness assessment of blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) from “moderate” to “limited” in March, 2015.

MYTH #2: the “invaders,” especially eucalyptus, are more flammable than native species — but they are NOT.  “Native” bay laurel trees contain as much volatile oil (hence their pungent smelling leaves), and burn as “easily,” arguably MORE easily because they grow closer to the ground — but are not targeted for so-called “hazardous fuels reduction” because nativists like them aesthetically.

“Native” grasses and coyote brush are ALSO more flammable than eucalyptus AND play larger roles in Bay Area wildfires but, contradicting fire science, are ignored in the clearcut plan. NOTE: the clearcut plan will leave hundreds of acres of flammable downed trees and wood chips on the ground where they can be ignited by common grass fires.  (See BEFORE & AFTER photo below.)

Clearcutting hundreds of thousands of mature, shade-producing, fog-drip rain-making trees, ignores basic fire science and established fire mitigation practices which show living trees of ALL species DECREASE fire danger by blocking winds, storing water, and moistening ground fuels beneath their canopies.

YELL “Fire!” IN A CROWDED FOREST TO SPUR CLEARCUTS

Living forests, including eucalyptus forests, are LESS likely to burn than the East Bay hill’s grasses and dry chaparral shrubs like coyote brush that “nativists” prefer and would cut down forests in an attempt to recreate.  These smaller plants ARE extremely flammable in the dry season compared to large eucalyptus trunks that hold far more water and are thus comparatively fire resistant.  NOTE: The infamous 1991 Oakland Hills fire was ignited by grasses and brush — not trees — then spread to houses, which burn hotter than any trees.  Only then did trees of ALL species ignite.

READ “Trees Withstand the Firestorm”: http://milliontrees.me/2010/11/14/trees-withstand-the-firestorm

The clearcutting plan will make the hillsides MORE flammable. CLICK TO ENLARGE

READ MORE: http://sutroforest.com/eucalyptus-myths/native-plants-are-more-fire-prone-than-eucalyptus In contrast with dry chaparral, East Bay eucalyptus forests create cooling shade, and annually produce 10″ of fog drip rainfall, especially in the hot, otherwise dry summer months.

Stripping away tens and hundreds of thousands of trees will leave the land hotter, drier, and MORE prone to fires of existing grasses and low vegetation.  Eucalyptus trees are often condemned for having volatile oils in their leaves (they don’t have oils in their stout, fire-resistant trunks).  The “nativists” won’t mention other Bay Area (“native”) species, like California bay laurel and coyote brush that also contain volatile oils in their leaves.  In fact these “native” plants burn more readily than eucs because they grow closer to the ground than eucalyptus, thus igniting more easily from common grass and brush fires.

• READ a firefighter’s report, by former Chief of Fire Prevention at Oakland Army Base, David Maloney: CLICK HERE

• READ MORE “NATIVES-ARE-FIRE-PRONE” MYTHS: http://sutroforest.com/eucalyptus-myths/native-plants-are-more-fire-prone-than-eucalyptus

A forest destroyed. CLICK TO ENLARGE

CREATING A FIRE HAZARD BY CUTTING DOWN FORESTS:  After clear cutting, the trees will be chipped and left on the ground.  Thousands of cubic yards of dead, drying wood chips will BECOME the fire hazard proponents claim to be cutting down forests to prevent.  This is hard to believe, but it’s the plan.  It only makes sense if the actual agenda is eradication of all trees of certain species, not reducing fire risk.

NO PLANT RESTORATION of any kind, “native” or otherwise, is planned.  Even if the plan DID include re-planting, 2,000 acres of 100-year-old forest can’t be “replaced.”  The decades of time this requires is what we no longer have in our era of unprecedented, rapid climate change. Large, dense, living moist tree trunks will be turned into vast piles of tiny, dead wood chips and big logs strewn over the hillsides. Months and years later, low vegetation like thistle, broom and poison oak will grow.

In summer and autumn, all this dries out in direct sun since the forest’s cooling canopy has been destroyed — and this dry brush becomes a fire hazard greater than the moisture-filled, fog-capturing forest it replaced.  Even the California Native Plant Society’s own website says: Logged-over lands are frequently invaded by non-native plants such as pampas grass and brooms, which prevent establishment of seedling trees.

Thousands of gallons will be used after cutting.

THEN ADD POISON

• GO TO Monsanto Roundup™ roundup PAGE

Have we learned nothing since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1962 and revolutionized our understanding and conceptualization of the environment as an interconnected web of life?  You can’t poison one living entity without affecting others, since all life is linked — don’t we all learn this now in grade school?

A 1993 UC Berkeley study found glyphosate (Monsanto Roundup’s™ active ingredient) to be the most common cause of pesticide-related illness among CA landscape maintenance workers, and the 3rd most common cause among agricultural workers.)

The clearcut plan includes applying thousands of gallons of carcinogenic herbicides to the hundreds of thousands of tree stumps to prevent re-growth.  Twice each year for ten years, or as needed, to keep the stumps from re-sprouting.  These well-known toxic chemicals — Dow Garlon™ (triclopyr) and Monsanto Roundup™ (glyphosate) — end up poisoning the land, the water, the birds, the rodents, then the raptors and owls, and of course us humans when we visit these lands, our parks and open space.

The manufacturers, of course, claim they are completely safe, despite causing tumors in laboratory animals (to name just one result of numerous peer-reviewed studies), but a wealth of scientific literature documents otherwise.  See articles below:

• READ “The Case for Banning Glyphosate” by Dr. Jeff Ritterman, M.D.  Monsanto’s Roundup™ active ingredient causes birth defects, spontaneous abortions in animals:  (Jeff Ritterman, M.D. is VP of the Board of Directors of the SF Bay Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, retired chief of cardiology at Kaiser [hospital] Richmond, CA: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29244-will-richmond-reject-roundup-the-case-for-banning-glyphosate

• READ “Roundup and glyphosate Toxicity Grossly Underestimated,” an overview of glyphosate toxicity, by Dr. Joseph Mercola (osteopath): http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/30/glyphosate-toxicity.aspx

• READ “Enough To Make You Sick,” an overview of Monsanto’s Roundup™, by Rational Opinions Blog (Common Sense Thoughts, Opinions, and other Contemplations): http://rationalopinionsblog.com/2015/06/21/monsantos-roundup-enough-to-make-you-sick

• READ The World Health Organization (WHO) report classifying glyphosate (Roundup’s active ingredient), “probably carcinogenic to humans” in March 2015 report: READ REPORT.

• READ Reuters news report, Aug. 19, 2015, “Scientists call for new review of herbicide, cite ‘flawed’ U.S. regulations”: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0QO28D20150819

• READ “Nearly 300 experts agree GMOs not proven safe”: http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2013/15210-nearly-300-experts-agree-gmos-not-proven-safe

• READ “What’s Wrong With Roundup?”: http://www.eastbaypesticidealert.org/glyphosate.html

• READ how glyphosate (Roundup™) has gotten into foods — and breast milk.

• GO TO Monsanto Roundup™ roundup PAGE

Thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides will be used. CLICK TO ENLARGE

VIDEO: Monsanto lobbyist says he’ll drink Roundup™ — but his bluff is called:

THE 1991 OAKLAND HILLS FIRE is often falsely blamed on eucalyptus trees. That terrible blaze roared out of control and destroyed houses and killed people — but eucalyptus were NOT the cause — lack of preparedness and planning was.  This included: 1) inadequate radio communications between different agencies; 2) pumps running out of water soon into the fire fighting; 3) fire trucks unable to access narrow streets; 4) non-universal hydrant hookups; 5) wood houses with wood roofs that turned the fire into a conflagration (bigger and much hotter).

• READ October 1991 FEMA REPORT (Federal Emergency Management Agency) that determined a host of factors contributed to the disaster: http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/tr-060.pdf

• READ Oakland Local article by Laura McCamy with comments by retired Oakland firefighter David Maloney who served on the Task Force on Emergency Preparedness & Community Restoration after the 1991 Oakland Hills fire.

He [Oakland firefighter David Maloney] called the EIS “a land transformation plan which is masquerading as a fire hazard reduction plan,” adding, “It stands fire science on its head.”  Maloney noted that, in the Oakland Hills fire, “the radiant heat from the houses caught the trees on fire,” not the other way around.

Most people don’t know that a (“native”) grass fire, not completely extinguished the Saturday before, re-ignited and started the blaze.  Valiant firefighters had a tough fight on their hands, with high winds, steep slopes and poor accessibility.  The money spent on this deforestation plan would be better spent on improved fire preparedness in the many ways listed above and in the 1991 FEMA report.

READ ABOUT the 1991 Oakland Hills fire & its cause:

• “Remembering the Oakland Firestorm”: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Remembering-the-Oakland-Firestorm-132282138.html

• Oakland Hills Fire Survivor Remembers Conflagration that took his mother: http://oaklandlocal.com/2013/06/oakland-hills-fire-survivor-remembers-conflagration-that-took-his-mother

• LEARN MORE about the 1991 Oakland Hills fire on SutroForest.com.

“Native” Plants, Invasion Biology, and The War on Nature “Native” is a term without scientific or botanical basis, like the term “weed,” which is also used to describe eucalyptus trees by people who dislike or even hate them.  Hating a tree so much you want to kill all of them is actually more revealing about the person doing the hating than the tree.  In reality, the term “native” was coined by people with an aesthetic agenda. Eucalyptus, acacia and even Monterey pine trees are labeled “non-native” by choosing an arbitrary date for when these plants they want to kill “invaded” America (well, actually brought here and planted).  Usually this is with European settlers, arguably the most invasive non-natives of all.  This static snapshot in time is idealized as being best.  Habitat “restoration” is then clamored for — even if it means cutting down entire forests of healthy, mature trees co-existing with myriad plant and animal species.

• GO to: INVASION BIOLOGY page

Poison the plants…

Even thousands of gallons of poisons, the carcinogenic herbicides Roundup™ and Garlon™ made, respectively, by Monsanto and Dow, are used for the killing.  This is the plan for the East Bay hills.

Plants, land, water table, wildlife and inevitably humans in an ecosystem are interconnected, so all will be poisoned over time.  Confoundingly, even environmental groups like the Sierra Club have endorsed using these toxins to “restore” habitats.  But restore them to what, and to what snapshot in ever-moving time?

• READ Arthur Shapiro, Ph.D., Evolution & Ecology Professor, U.C. Davis:

EXCERPT: “Restoration ecology” is a euphemism for a kind of gardening informed by an almost cultish veneration of the “native” and abhorrence of the naturalized, which is commonly characterized as “invasive.” Let me make this clear: neither “restoration” nor conservation can be mandated by science—only informed by it. The decision of what actions to take may be motivated by many things, including politics, esthetics, economics and even religion, but it cannot be science-driven.

• READ critique of the “native” plant idea, by permaculturist Toby Hemenway.

This clearcutting and poisoning is ongoing in the SF Bay Area, for years.  This, in our era of human-caused global warming when we need more mature trees of all species, not so many fewer.  In the East Bay hills, as elsewhere, this will mean destruction of hundreds upon hundreds of acres of precious animal habitat.  And then applying thousands of gallons of the toxic herbicides which will poison not just tree stumps, but then unavoidably the land, the rodents, the owls and raptors that feed on rodents, the groundwater, and inevitably us humans who are connected to it all.  Didn’t we learn all this decades ago?

Tragically, this practice is even approved by many who call themselves environmentalists, who speak of “sustainability” and “habitat restoration,” including The Sierra Club and The Audubon Society.  They should know better.  Clearcutting forests and massive herbicide applications are no answer, they are the problem.  This is habitat destruction. 

“Nativists” ignore myriad examples of how eucalyptus have integrated into and benefit California’s ecosystem: providing shade, animal habitat, carbon sequestration, hillside stabilization, etc.  Eucalyptus, introduced here from Australia over 150 years ago, now co-exist beautifully with numerous species of flora and fauna.  For instance, over 100 species of birds live in CA eucalyptus trees.  Nature, by design, does a perfect job determining what works, often better than humans do when we imagine ourselves separate from nature, often by applying abstract mental constructs like native and non-native, as if plant and animals species haven’t always migrated and mixed.

• READ MORE on INVASION BIOLOGY PAGE

• READ Huffington Post essay,
“The Jewels in Oakland’s Crown: In Defense of Eucalyptus Trees”
by Nathan Winograd, Director of The No Kill [Animal] Advocacy Shelter, Oakland, CA.

• LEARN MORE ABOUT EUCALYPTUS in The Bay Area.

• READ “Mother Nature’s Melting Pot” by anthropologist Hugh Raffles: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/opinion/03Raffles.html?_r=3&ref=todayspaper

• READ Nathan Winograd 4.16.15 essay, “Rejecting Arbitary Labels That Enable Great Harm:” http://milliontrees.me/2015/04/06/rejecting-arbitrary-labels-that-enable-great-harm-fighting-the-oakland-uc-berkeley-east-bay-regional-park-districts-war-on-nature

• WATCH mind-opening “Invasion Biology” VIDEO of conservation biologist David Theodoropoulus:

CLICK TO ENLARGE critters

Eucalyptus have thrived in California for over 150 years, long enough to integrate into our ecosystem, and provide numerous and substantial benefits including habitat for numerous birds, mammals, insects and other species.  They have become “naturalized” species, meaning they are self-sustaining and healthy ecosystems.  Nativists rarely use this term because it won’t advance their kill-them-all agenda.  Hence the labels “invasive,” “weeds,” and “non-native” which DO reinforce their clearcutting agenda.  They longer see the forest for its trees and advocate for complete extermination.

A FIRESTORM OF MISINFORMATION, misdirection and exploitation of fear of fire has coalesced into a consortium.  These three agencies, influenced by the nativist agenda to eradicate all trees they don’t like, are lobbying aggressively for the destruction of over 2,000 acres of productive, carbon-storing, shade-producing eucalyptus, pine and acacia forest:
1) UC Berkeley (The University of CA Berkeley);
2) The City of Oakland, CA;
3) East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD)

In the educated, environmentally aware San Francisco Bay area, with numerous parks and greenbelts, you’d think we’d know better; that in this era of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change mature, living trees are one answer, not a problem.  Tragically, human fear and ignorance are the problem, as in evidence here.  And the stakes have been raised to…

NUMBERS TOO BIG TO VISUALIZE

CLICK TO ENLARGE

To adapt the trenchant words of a famous killer of humans:

“One death is a tragedy.  The death of millions is a statistic.”  –  Joseph Stalin

Can you even picture 450,000 trees being cut down?  Are you willing to experience just one?  People who casually advocate for the destruction of hundreds of thousands, even millions of trees —  including many who call themselves environmentalists — toss out huge numbers (if they talk numbers at all) and “removing” trees, devoid of emotion.  And of course it must be this way. To be willing to be feel the actual, present-moment world in which trees and birds and animals live (and humans when they’re not lost in thought), you must be willing to be in touch with your own feelings.  If you do sense that a tree, and an entire forest is alive, then it’s a very different experience to watch just one tree being chainsawed to its death.

We humans are interconnected with trees in an ancient web of life.  We have been for millennia.  The species doesn’t matter; if it’s a weathered oak, or a stout, 100-year-old eucalyptus, or a Monterey pine or cypress that has danced in more windy days than any human ever will.  Be quiet and still on the inside, and tune in as its centuries of life are ended in minutes.  Bureaucrats call these killings “removals,” even “hazardous fuels reduction,” either to hide the feeling of it, or simply because they can’t (i.e., choose not to) feel it.  Maybe some people labeled it “bad” or “hazardous,” or the “wrong” type of tree.  If you allow yourself to feel such things, then lobbying for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of healthy trees becomes a serious affair, approached with the solemnity of how we humans go to war.

TreeSpirit’s Jack Gescheidt’s telephone conservations about the number of trees to be cut down is all about being hard to believe: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2015-07-17/article

If you repeat a lie long enough it becomes real.  Then the lie no longer exists and you’re left with is your version of the truth. – Irfan Master

WMDs Q&A – Weapons of Mass Deception

MYTH: The oil in eucalyptus trees makes them more flammable than most trees, and “native” trees?
REALITY:  FALSE.  The leaves of “native” California Bay Laurels and coyote brush also contain volatile oils that make them equally or even more flammable than eucalyptus leaves.  But since they are “native,” nativists don’t target them for destruction by labeling them dangerously flammable.  And since bay trees grow much closer to the ground than eucalyptus, their leaves are more likely to ignite in ground fires common in the Bay Area.  (As opposed to crown fires in tree tops caused by lightning strikes common in, e.g., the Sierra Mts.).  In fact, eucalyptus trunks are more dense and fire resistant than those of bays or oaks.

MYTH:  Eucalyptus tree bark litter is a tremendous fire hazard?
REALITY:  COMPARED TO WHAT? No simple yes or no answer here.  Some alternate fire mitigation plans (to cutting down entire forests) are to remove (rake or burn or “goat”) bark litter out.  This is less expensive than cutting down hundreds of thousands of trees and then twice every year, for ten years, applying carcinogenic herbicides — the current plan, believe it not it’s true.  This will reduce the ground fuels load.

But removing all understory vegetation leaves the ground exposed so it won’t hold as much winter rain or summer fog drip, and therefore dries out — which makes ground fires more likely.  NOTE: If you cut down the trees to end leaf and bark litter forever, then fast-growing, opportunistic plants like thistle, broom and poison oak will fill the void — and become their own fire hazard.  Eucalyptus forest canopies, like all tree canopies, help suppress the growth of other, more flammable plants.

NOTE ALSO: Fire authorities don’t consider ANY living tree species a fire hazard necessitating destruction.  Nor “ground fuels”  Forests retain moisture beneath their canopies and within their trunks and are therefore considered.

“Fire Science has proven that every living tree — regardless of its species — due to its moisture content and canopy coverage of ground fuels, contributes to wildfire hazard mitigation.” – David Maloney, Chief of Fire Prevention, Oakland Army Base

READ firefighter David Maloney’s FULL REPORT on eucalyptus trees in the East Bay hills and how the plan to cut down East Bay forests will INCREASE fire danger.   Healthy, dense, green forests of ANY species are living, green plants that don’t burn as readily as dead materials — like wood chips and logs the clearcut plan would create and leave on the ground in abundance.  The thick water-filled trunks of eucalyptus trees are, compared to these dead ground fuels, fire-resistant.

And the East Bay’s eucalyptus forests capture fog and create 10″ of rain-drip fog each year, particularly significant in the dry summer months.  Their forest canopy shades the earth, thus cooling it, and take the place of dry grasses which are what caused the 1991 fire and currently (summer 2015) creating wildfires all over California.  Living eucalyptus trees stabilize steep hillsides, and create bird and animal habitat, too.

NOTE AGAIN: The deforestation plan will NOT remove any wood from the hills, only turn it from wet, living wood (trees!) into dry, dead brush, chips, and logs left on the gorund (not removed from the hillsides), thus increasing fire danger.

These disturbing facts point to the actual goal of the clearcutting driven by the “native” plant agenda of species eradication, not fire risk reduction.  READ MORE on “Invasion Biology” page.

Best fire defense is… CLICK TO ENLARGE

MYTH:  Firefighters and other fire experts say eucalyptus are dangerous, flammable and should all be removed.
REALITY: Some do and some don’t.  Many fire scientists don’t draw distinctions between tree species, degrees of flammability, and fuel loads.  Its complex and not, uh, clearcut.

“Native” bay trees and “native” coyote brush also contain flammable oils, as eucalypts do, and arguably more likely to ignite in the grass fires common in the Bay Area, because they grow closer to the ground.  Bay Area fire marshals know that ALL living, green trees are NOT fire hazards — only dead materials are.

The best fire defense is simpler: cut defensible areas around houses and buildings, from 30-100 feet, depending on the structure, the trees, the wind, the forest, etc.  And if you really fear forest fire, why live next to them?   Or at least be consistent and advocate cutting down all trees, not just species targeted by the nativists.  Nativists fan fire fears to leverage their species-specific extermination agenda.

The nativists, and also the agencies promoting cutting thousands of acres of trees, also repeatedly avoid discussion of the huge numbers of trees the plan will fell.  They also ignore the massive amounts of carbon stored in these forests that would be released into the atmosphere.  The 1991 Berkeley Hills fire — so often falsely blamed on eucalpytus trees — raged out of control for these human reasons.  This isn’t as simplistic as demonizing eucalypts as dangerous invaders — but it’s true.

READ MORE about the 1991 fire and its causes.

MYTH:  Eucalyptus trees were responsible for that 1991 Berkeley Hills fire that destroyed homes and took lives.
REALITY:  It’s not true.  Eucalyptus were NOT the origin of the fire, nor responsible for its infamous intensity.  In fact, the fire began the day before, on Saturday, Oct 19th, in dry brush, grass and (“native”) scrub oak on a steep slope above Buckingham Blvd.  It was extinguished by firefighters by nightfall.  But the next day, Sunday, Oct. 20th, the fire restarted as (“Diablo”) winds (from the east) increased flare-ups in grasses, dry brush within and just beyond the burned area.  It then spread into oak trees which ignited houses which burn hotter than any trees.  By the time flames reached the first grove of eucalyptus (1/6 mile away, just above Charing Cross), the fire was no longer just vegetation; it was a higher-temperature, structure/house-fueled conflagration that consumed everything in its path.

LEARN HOW & WHY the 1991 fire is blamed on eucalyptus to advance the native plant agenda.

This is NOT any solution. CLICK TO ENLARGE

MYTH:  Cutting down hundreds of thousands of trees assures safety from another wildfire.  Because everyone knows forests burn.
REALITY:  NO, and again, compared to what?  The plan for the Oakland and Berkeley Hills is to leave all the wood on the hillsides as acres of mulched trees — wood chips — in piles up to 2 feet deep.  That’s it.  These will dry out and become their own flammable hazard.  Millions of pounds of drying, oily and now DEAD, combustible wood is not only more flammable than a living, green, wet forest, but also, obviously, far less desirable.  These  forests create shade, produce oxygen, and make water: creating an annual average 10″ of fog drip in the dry CA summer.  The eucalyptus forests provide animal habitat.  And the steep hillsides, without trees, will more likely collapse when there IS rain.  Picture West Virginia coal mining landscapes.  To contemplate a plan this extensive, destructive and drastic only shows how out of touch with nature’s living systems we’ve become, how driven by fear and aesthetic (“native plant”) agendas.

MYTH:  Clearcutting makes us safe from forest fires.
REALITY:  There is a simpler, less expensive solution that is also healthier for humans, animals, and our environment: a) more fire hydrants at edges of forests and communities; b) all hydrants with universal hook-ups; c) better, faster fire response planning; d) better communications; e) making defensible areas around structures; f) making houses and structure “ignition resistant.”  Had these systems and strategies been in place in 1991, the blaze would not have done the damage it did.  LEARN MORE.

MYTH: Eucalyptus trees harm birds, even kill hummingbirds by “gumming up” their beaks and suffocating them.
REALITY: Once people have decided eucalyptus trees are monstrous, they search for — and create — myriad ways to demonize them.  It would be laughable if it weren’t so non-scientific and harmful.  There is no end to the tales being told, and repeated, and via repetition believed.  READ how this especially nasty and bizarre “bird-killer” rumor, now perceived by many as factual, got started and spread, on Million Trees.me.  CLICK HERE

MYTH:  Eucalyptus forests are monocultures where few if any other plants or animals can grow.
REALITY:  COMPLETELY FALSE.  Even a July 1, 20016 Bay Nature Magazine article with a strong “nativist” bias illustrates both the extent of the maligning, and then evidence and studies to show life flourishes among these exotic trees:

EXCERPT: Writing in the early 1970s, James Roof, then-director of the [San Francisco] East Bay Regional Park District’s botanic garden, called eucalyptus “horrible water suckers” that concentrate moisture underneath their canopy, leading to the growth of “thickets” of blackberries, poison oak, ivy, and wild cucumber: “The end result is the rendering of once open, sunny, wildflower-bearing land into foreboding and pestilential jungles, of no earthly use to man, bird, or beast.”  Red-tailed hawks and great horned owls often nest in eucalyptus, especially if they are the only large trees available. Small birds feed on the nectar, and reptiles and amphibians live in the understory. A recent study by biologist David Suddjian counted more than 90 bird species that make regular use of Monterey County eucalyptus habitats, including at least 59 species that nest in them. Eucalyptus trees on the shores of San Leandro’s Lake Chabot host a large heron rookery. In Santa Cruz County, Suddjian found that great egrets, great blue herons, and double-crested cormorants nest exclusively in eucalyptus.  A 1975 study by UC Berkeley professor Robert Stebbins found that in terms of vertebrate life, East Bay eucalyptus groves are less diverse than chaparral or oak woodland habitats, but more so than nearby stands of Monterey pine or redwoods. He said that small animals use the thick litter underneath the trees for cover, and that the trees’ nectar, pollen, and seeds provide food. In fact, the nectar is a valuable winter food for hummingbirds and monarchs.

THE FINAL SOLUTION – CLICK TO ENLARGE

Again, the only 100% fireproofing solution is to cut down ALL the trees, and ALL the shrubs, and ALL the grasses on ALL the hills and PAVE EVERYTHING.  Then there is nothing left to burn.  No one advocates this plan because it is extreme to the point of absurdity.  But so is cutting down 1/2-million healthy, green trees that shade and cool the earth, stabilize steep hillside in the East Bay hills, and sustain us and our environment, especially now in our era of human-caused global warming.

What’s become of us as a society that we can even conceive of projects this environmentally devastating?  Have we learned nothing since Rachel Carson’s 1962 “Silent Spring” taught us the role nature plays in sustaining us, and its interconnected web of life?  About our responsibility to be wise stewards of the land and ecosystems to which we are linked?

EUCALYPTUS FORESTS DO MUCH MORE GOOD THAN HARM

California’s eucalyptus trees provide tremendous benefits, as all trees do, including:

• sequestering carbon in our era of human-caused global warming.  Killing huge numbers of large, mature eucalyptus trees, which are storing huge amounts of carbon, is the LAST thing we should be doing;
• producing oxygen at a time when we desperately need cleaner air;
• creating 2,000 acres of shade in our heating climate (caused in part by deforestation); mature eucalyptus forests create far more than the grass-covered hills and occasional oaks of 200 years ago;
• stabilizing hillsides; the massive clearcut plan will result in landslides and pesticides run-off (poisons applied to tree stumps to supress re-sprouting);
• filtering and cleaning ground water; • providing precious habitat for tens of thousands of birds and mammals — precious sanctuary from ever-advancing human developments like this apocalyptic one.

READ about the HISTORY & BENEFITS OF California’s EUCALYPTUS FORESTS, by Joe McBride, retired Professor of Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley.

In the educated, environmentally aware San Francisco Bay area, with numerous parks and greenbelts, you’d think we’d know better; that in this era of anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change mature, living trees and forests are the answer, not the problem.  Ironically and tragically, human fear, greed, and ignorance are the problem, as in evidence here.  Instead, the stakes have been raised to…

• READ Nathan Winograd’s essay, “The Jewels in Oakland’s Crown: In Defense of Eucalyptus Trees”

NUMBERS TOO BIG TO VISUALIZE

Can you picture 100,000 or 200,000, or as many as 400,000 trees being cut down?  The trenchant words of a famous killer of humans come to mind:

“One death is a tragedy.  One million deaths is a statistic.”

                                                       – Joseph Stalin

TreeSpirit Founder Jack Gescheidt’s telephone conservations about the number of trees slated for slaughter are all about being hard to believe: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2015-07-17/article

WHAT WE LOVE, WE PROTECT; WHAT WE FEAR, WE KILL

Our current local, national and global predicament of climate change is caused in part by deforestation projects like this one, and of course much bigger projects worldwide, as in the Amazon Basin.  And if you believe climate change is caused largely by humans — the consensus of 95% of the world’s climate researchers and scientists, not the 5% trotted out by oil and gas interests to maintain the status quo — we can do something about this.

Now, right now — not a year from now, not 20 years from now, is the time to stand up for forests everywhere, for animal habitat, for living in partnership with the natural world, for sanity…for living free from terror of what lies beyond our cities…and chainsawing and bulldozing it all down.

READ NY Times Op-Ed: “More Logging Won’t Stop Wildfires” by Chad Hanson & Dominick A. Dellasala, July 23, 2015: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/opinion/more-logging-wont-stop-wildfires.html?_r=0

“Invasion Biology” VIDEO – What is “native?” WATCH this eye-opening presentation dissecting the pseudo-science of so-called “native species,” and challenging popular misconceptions.  By conservation biologist David Theodoropoulus @ the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference, Eugene, OR, March 5th, 2011:

ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER

Like never before in human history, we are on an edge of our own destruction — or salvation.  Like never before, we need more green, life-giving forests of all kinds.  One reason we’re in the environmental mess we’re in is because we’ve cut down so many of our forests — about 50% of what we homo sapiens started out with on Earth when we began our reign. We need forests ecologically, emotionally and spiritually — woodlands, parks and living, unpaved places, so WE feel alive and awake to the wonder and preciousness of our own aliveness, our own wild nature.

• IN THE NEWS: TV COVERAGE from Oakland City Hall, 6.2.15:  CLICK: http://kron4.com/2015/06/02/4-million-fire-prevention-grant-ignites-passions-in-oakland

• KPFA 94.1FM Radio INTERVIEW with Jean Stewart, disability rights and environmental activist, speaks about the 450,000-tree clearcut plan, the herbicides involved, and her own disability from herbicide exposure.  “Pushing Limits” 30 min. program, produced and hosted by Adrienne Lauby: CLICK: http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20150821-Fri1430.mp3

LEARN MORE from these environmental groups working to save our forests:

• Hills Conservation Network
• Million Trees
• Save Sutro Forest
• SF Forest Alliance
• SaveEastBayhills.org

TAKE ACTION:

• DONATE $10, $20 $50 or more TO SUPPORT TreeSpirit’s campaign of educational outreach.  Right now, and in the years ahead, literally millions of healthy, beneficial, desperately needed trees will be clearcut because of misinformation, ignorance and human xenophobia projected onto plants without scientific rigor. TreeSpirit is devoted to bringing more sound, less malicious, and more scientifically valid information to the masses.  CLICK TO SUPPORT THIS ONGOING CAMPAIGN

• CALL/WRITE PUBLIC OFFICIALS: http://www.saveeastbayhills.org/take-action.html

• DONATE TO THE LAWSUIT challenging the clearcut plan’s science and reasons, by The Hills Conservation Network; environmental issues are rarely resolved without a successful lawsuit challenging them in the courts;

• SIGN MoveOn.org PETITION to The Sierra Club (SF Bay Area chapter) to cease its efforts to INCREASE (!) deforestation and herbicide use (including Monsanto Roundup™, Dow Garlon™).  This venerable environmental org is currently on the wrong side of environmental science and history, supporting the 450,000-tree clearcut and herbicide application plan — and sueing FEMA for additional logging!  Why?  The Club, tragically, supports “Invasion Biology”:  http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/sierra-club-must-stop.fb51?source=c.fb&r_by=14041501

• SIGN PETITION to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf to save 450,000 trees from being clearcut under the false pretext of “fire danger mitigation”  that will INCREASE fire danger in the Oakland hills.

• SHARE THIS WEBPAGE and news of this environmentally disastrous clearcut with all your friends.  Citizens have been intentionally misled about the huge numbers of trees — almost 1/2-million  — to be cut down, and the amount of Roundup™ and Garlon™ herbicides to be used, since the truth will create public outrage.  THIS PAGE’S URL: https://treespiritproject.com/sfbayclearcut

• DOWNLOAD & DISTRIBUTE 1-page “Squirrel” FLYER (at right) by SaveEastBayHills.org, download HERE.

• DOWNLOAD & DISTRIBUTE 1-page “Destruction” FLYER (on left) by SaveEastBayHills.org, HERE.

• JOIN THE TreeSpirit EMAIL LIST to stay informed on this issue and related events:

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

                                                                                             – Margaret Mead