Oakland’s revised Vegetation Management Plan is the compromise I hoped for

On September 1^st, I told readers that Oakland would soon publish a revised Vegetation Management Plan to reduce fire hazards in Oakland by managing vegetation on 2,000 acres of city-owned property and 300 miles of roadside.  I also shared with readers my anxiety that the revised plan would be more destructive than the previous version of the plan in response to criticism of that version.    

The 4^th revision of Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan and its revised Draft Environmental Impact Report was published on September 20^th.  These documents are available HERE.  There will be a public hearing about the plan by Oakland’s Planning Commission on November 1^st.  The deadline for submitting written comments on the plan is November 4^th.  Comments can be submitted by email DEIR-comments@oaklandvegmanagement.org or by mail to Montrose Environmental, attention Ken Schwarz, 1 Kaiser Plaza, Suite 340, Oakland CA 94612.

Update:  The deadline for commenting on the Vegetation Management Plan has been extended to Monday, November 6, 2023, at 5 PM.

The Oakland Planning Commission held a public hearing about the VMP on Wednesday, November 1, 2023.  There was no expressed opposition to the VMP at the hearing.  Representatives of Claremont Canyon Conservancy, North Hills Community Association, and Oakland Fire Safe Council spoke in support of the plan. 

One speaker said that Oakland Fire Department and the consultant who wrote the plan successfully “threaded the needle” that made agreement possible.  She also said that “of course, we wish all the eucalyptus were gone, but we understand that is expensive.”

All members of the Planning Commission expressed their admiration and support for the VMP.

Below is a map of the VMP project areas.  Figure 2.2 in the revised plan also shows detailed maps of roads in VMP project areas, with property ownership adjacent to roads indicated, which require different vegetation management standards.   

The authors of the plan have made it easy for you to read the revised version by underlining additions and striking out deletions.  If you have read earlier versions of the plan, you won’t need to read it all again, because revisions are minimal.  They are briefly summarized on page 1-2 of the plan:

If you need a reminder of vegetation management standards in the previous version, you can find them on Table 2-4.  Basically, the VMP will thin trees and vegetation and remove dead trees and fire ladders to canopies in management areas. The most significant revision of those vegetation management standards is the expansion of clearance of dead and dying trees from 30-100 feet from the edge of 300 miles of roadsides on city-owned property. The management standards defined by the previous version were acceptable to me and the proposed revision of those standards are also acceptable to me. 

However, I am sorry to see that more eucalyptus will be removed because the diameter size standard for removal has been increased from 8 to 10 inches (circumference is greater than 31 inches).  The flammability of eucalyptus has been exaggerated by native plant advocates who want all non-native trees to be destroyed.  California’s native vegetation is fire adapted and fire dependent.  Many of our most prominent native plants—such as ceanothus and manzanita–will not germinate in the absence of fire.  The planned removal of isolated non-native trees within stands of native trees is unnecessary because it will not reduce fire hazards. The VMP should be a fire hazard reduction plan, NOT a native plant restoration.

Although I recognize that dead trees are important for the long-term health of forests because they provide food and habitat for insects and birds as well as recycle nutrients into the soil, we can’t indulge that preference in very high fire hazard zones in high-density population areas that are being treated by Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan.  As always, we must set priorities and the public’s safety must be a high priority. 

Like most public policy, the revised Vegetation Management Plan is a compromise between two extremes.  One extreme wanted all non-native trees to be destroyed in the management areas as well as within 100 feet from the edge of 300 miles of roadside.  They also wanted Oakland to make a commitment to replace those trees with native vegetation.  The opposite extreme wanted no trees to be destroyed and no herbicides to be used to control vegetation or prevent destroyed trees from resprouting. 

The revised Vegetation Management Plan is the compromise I had hoped for.  Specifically, I had hoped that fire hazards could be reduced in Oakland without destroying more trees than necessary to mitigate fire hazards. The thinning strategy that the VMP proposes has been used successfully by the East Bay Regional Park District for over 10 years.  It leaves the canopy intact so the forest floor is shaded, which suppresses the growth of weeds and keeps the forest floor moist, which retards ignition.

I had hoped that herbicides would not be used in public parks, but did not achieve that goal. However, I am grateful that the revised plan makes many efforts to protect the public, their pets, wildlife and goats grazing in project areas from exposure to the herbicides that will be used.  (Improvements in these protections are described on pages 2-81, 3.3-29, 3.3-32)  There are also extensive new protections for monarch butterflies and a rare species of bee (see page 3.4-86). 

If your interests in the Vegetation Management Plan are different from mine, I urge you to read the plan and form your own opinion.  I hope you will be able to support the revision because it is going to be attacked by the same extreme interests that have prevented Oakland from adopting and implementing a fire hazard mitigation plan for over 7 years. Expressing our support might help to get the VMP over the finish line after years of delay caused by gridlock. I would welcome you to the middle ground that I occupy.  It’s lonely here in the middle.  We don’t have much of an audience above the noise made by the extremes, but we have the capacity to enable public policy to be made if we speak up in defense of compromise. If we want to reduce wildfire hazards in Oakland, we must compromise.