The Million Trees blog is folding its tent and moving on because most of the projects in the San Francisco Bay Area that I have followed for 20 years have been approved, funded, and are being implemented. Every public land manager in the Bay Area has made a commitment to destroying most non-native trees and using pesticides for that purpose.
If you wish to continue following the development of these projects, I recommend these websites: San Francisco Forest Alliance, Defend East Bay Forests, Save the East Bay Hills, and Hills Conservation Network.
For the record, this is a brief summary of my beliefs about the environment:
- Climate change is the environmental issue of our time.
- The native plant movement is a dead end because of climate change. When the climate changes, the vegetation changes.
- Destroying healthy trees contributes to climate change by releasing their stored carbon into the atmosphere. Both native and non-native trees store carbon and are therefore equally valuable to combat climate change.
- Native plant projects that use pesticides to eradicate non-natives cannot legitimately be called “restorations,” because pesticides damage the soil and kill animals.
- I am opposed to the use of irrational fear to justify destructive native plant projects. Native vegetation is not inherently less flammable than non-native vegetation. There are advantages and disadvantages to both native and non-native vegetation.
If I return to the blogosphere in the future, the title and mission of a new blog would change. The focus would be the science that informs my commitment to the cosmopolitan landscape that exists, rather than the fantasized landscape of the past. I will also continue to inform readers of new studies that find evidence of the damage that pesticides do to the environment and its inhabitants. If you are a subscriber to the Million Trees blog, you will be informed if I publish a new blog.
Thank you for your readership.
Million Trees
Conservation Sense and Nonsense 