We believe that greater dialogue with native plant advocates would create more opportunities to find a compromise that would resolve the conflict about deforestation and pesticide use on our public lands. Unfortunately, in the many years in which we have been engaged in the effort to prevent the destruction of our urban forest, we have found few such opportunities.
The Sierra Club is an extreme example of an organization that has isolated itself from all dissenting views on this issue. Therefore, we were very excited that a member of the Sierra Club was able to send a letter to members, which we hoped would create new opportunities for dialogue with the Club and its allies on this issue. (That letter is available HERE: Letter to Sierra Club members )
We are publishing today one of the responses that the author of the letter to Sierra Club received from a Sierra Club member. We will also publish the reply to that letter. We believe this dialogue is an example of the danger of isolating ourselves from those with whom we disagree. When we refuse to discuss the issues, we deprive ourselves of opportunities to learn and we exacerbate conflict.
This is the letter sent by a native plant advocate to the author of the letter sent by a fellow Sierra Club member (we have removed his name because we do not have permission to publish):
And this is the reply to that letter. We have removed the author’s name because the letter was sent on behalf of hundreds of people who share her views. Using her name more than necessary, inappropriately personalizes the issue. This should be a public policy debate, not a personal vendetta.
Thank you for your letter of March 15, 2016, regarding my letter to Sierra Club members in the San Francisco Bay Area.
I am writing to provide you with the documentation about which you have questions:
Attachment A: David Nowak’s “Historical Vegetation Change in Oakland…” states that, “Trees in riparian woodlands covered approximately 1.1% of Oakland’s preurbanized lands — redwood stand 0.7%, and coast live oak stand 0.5%. Original forest cover is estimated at 2.3%…” David Nowak has been employed by the US Forest Service since earning his Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley.
I also recommend another visit to the Oakland Museum where you will find a touch screen map of historic vegetation of Oakland and surrounding communities in the East Bay. It will confirm that the East Bay hills were not forested prior to settlement.
Attachment B: The Environmental Assessment for the Strentzel-Muir Gravesite Plan at the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, California confirms that John Muir planted eucalyptus on his property. The document also confirms the intentions of the National Park Service to retain eucalyptus on the property. The entire document is available here:
Attachment C: This is a holiday greeting card sent by John Muir to a personal friend in 1911, in which he depicts eucalyptus and describes it in poetic verse.
Christmas Card from John Muir
There are many reasons why eucalyptus was planted in California. I recommend the history of the trees of California by Jared Farmer, Trees in Paradise: A California History, for a more complete understanding of why eucalyptus was planted in California. Mr. Farmer also describes John Muir’s fondness for eucalyptus.
We all have a right to our opinions, Mr. [redacted]. However, it is not in anyone’s interests to be misinformed of the facts regarding our urban forest.
Please let me know if there are any other statements in my letter for which you require documentation.
Sincerely,
[redacted]
Cc: Michael Brune and Aaron Mair
No, this is NOT an April Fool’s joke. These are actual letters sent by actual people. We will publish a more comprehensive report of feedback from Sierra Club members to the letter from a fellow member in late April.
We are re-publishing an excerpt of Dave Maloney’s report, “The Next Major Fire in the East Bay Hills” that was written and published by Save the East Bay Hills. Thanks to Save the East Bay Hills for making this important report available to the readers of Million Trees. If you haven’t visited the website of Save the East Bay Hills, we recommend that you do. Its strong suit is the “Take Action” page, where you will find many specific suggestions for what you can do to help us prevent the destruction of our urban forest.
Dave Maloney is the former Chief of Fire Prevention for the U.S. Army at the Oakland Army Base. He is a retired firefighter from the Oakland Fire Department. He holds lifetime certification from the California State Fire Marshal’s Office as a Fire Investigator, and lifetime certification from the U.S. Dept. of Defense as a Fire Inspector. He was a member of the 1991-92 Emergency Preparedness and Community Restoration Task Force (the Oakland-Berkeley Mayors’ Firestorm Task Force) which investigated the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire. He is currently a wildland fire prevention consultant.
The plan to deforest thousands of acres of East Bay public lands:
“ignores the U.S. Forest Service analysis dated September 27, 2013, which recommends against removing Eucalyptus trees;”
“violates the recommendations made by the 1991/1992 Task Force on Emergency Preparedness and Community Restoration, commonly known as the Oakland/Berkeley Mayors’ Fire Storm Task Force;”
“has no basis in fire science;”
“violates fundamental principles of Wildland Fire Prevention;”
“is ideologically motivated;” and,
“creates the conditions for a perfect firestorm.”
Specifically, Maloney states that, “The EBRPD, UC Berkeley (UCB), and the City of Oakland (Oakland) deforestation plan will create an enormous belt of grass and chaparral that will stretch from Richmond to Castro Valley to the eastern edge of Contra Costa County. This grassland belt will be many times more flammable than wooded terrain.” In fact, “the speed of grass fires can be at least twice that of fires involving trees, especially if there are only a few trees, or none, to act as windbreaks.”
Why? “All trees perform three vital functions in preventing or slowing the spread of grass and chaparral fires: they collect, with their leaves, moisture from the night air and drip it on the natural vegetation beneath them; the tops (canopies) of the trees create shade so this moisture is not evaporated by the sun by mid day; [and] they act as windbreaks which slow the velocity of the wind that pushes grass and chaparral fires.” As a result, “Removing trees of any species and wanting grasses and chaparral to replace them greatly increases the chance of a catastrophic, unstoppable fire.”
Chief Maloney further notes, “that any claims by proponents of deforestation that this will reduce the risk of fire “typified opinionated misinformation being spread by those with quotable positions.” In fact, Maloney argues that proponents know they are not being truthful, but are intentionally “exploiting the public’s fear of wildfire and misrepresenting fire hazard mitigation as a strategy to achieve their goals” which has nothing to do with fire and everything to do with wanting to return the hills to the largely treeless appearance they had during the pre-Colombian period.
For example, he states that their “claim that Eucalyptus trees are more flammable than other trees — and more flammable than grasses — is untrue and now dangerously misleading.” “One example of their true intentions is revealed by their refusal to tell the public that the California Bay Laurel tree, which they consider ‘native’ to the Bay Area has more volatile oil than any Eucalyptus tree. For years we’ve been hearing that the volatile oils of the Eucalyptus trees make them a supreme fire hazard. Yet the Bay Laurel contains 7.6% volatile oils of the samples tested, according to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (1974). The amount of volatile oils in Eucalyptus trees range from 1 to 7% of the samples tested. But no Bay Laurel trees are to be cut down — nor ever mentioned.”
Even if this were not true, he notes that “essential/volatile oils of any tree [are] irrelevant to the flammability of a tree…” for two primary reasons. First, “Every species of tree in the East Bay hills is at least 30% water. This moisture is far greater than the amount of essential/volatile oil in any tree. It overwhelms by far any chance the essential/volatile oil has to set the tree on fire.” Second, “the volatile/essential oil in any tree cannot sustain heat long enough to ignite the highly dense wood of the tree.”
That is why “only 1% of all wildland fires start in trees. The other 99% start in grasses, bushes and shrubs. (The Oakland Hills fire of 1991 started in grass.) And only 8% of all wildland fires catch trees on fire. This means that 91% of all wildland fires do not involve trees at all but are restricted to grasses, bushes and shrubs. If we decrease the amount of trees in the hills and replace them with grasses we will have dramatically increased the chances of a wildland fire occurring.”
Instead of clear cutting trees, what should be done to reduce fire risk?
Maloney notes that the “Task Force on Emergency Preparedness and Community Restoration, commonly known as the 1991 Oakland/Berkeley Mayors’ Fire Storm Task Force,” of which he was a member, investigated “the causes of the ’91 fire and mak[d]e recommendations to prevent its recurrence. The committee spent hundreds of hours analyzing data and examining the burned areas.” Its February, 1992 report noted that “the most important factor in reducing fire danger from vegetation is not removing specific species but regular ongoing maintenance” such as “regular brush removal.” Not surprisingly, the “recommendations have been ignored by U.C. Berkeley, the City of Oakland and the East Bay Regional Park District.”
“Ignorance and influence are the parents of disaster,” he writes. “The Sierra club, the California Native Plant Society, Claremont Canyon Conservancy and others are very influential organizations. They are misusing their influence by attempting to lead the public into supporting the destruction of our East Bay forests and the creation of grassy, fire prone East Bay hills. And they are being very disrespectful to the entity of fire and the laws of physics which tell us how that entity behaves.” Instead, they are exploiting the 1991 tragedy in a manner that “imperils the public” and “endangers the firefighters who will be called to fight the fires” that will be caused by “improper wildfire hazard management” that puts “ideology ahead of fire science.”
Indeed, similar deforestation occurred in Australia, leading to predictable and catastrophic fires, exactly what proponents of deforestation threaten here.
On February 8, 2016, letters were sent to members of the Sierra Club in San Francisco from another Club member. That letter is available HERE: Letter to Sierra Club members. The letter contained a postcard petition on which members were invited to express their opinion of the Club’s support for deforestation and pesticide use in the San Francisco Bay Area. That petition is available HERE: Letter to Sierra Club members – postcard petition.
The author of the letter reports that she has received 380 postcard petitions from Club members in San Francisco, indicating their opposition to the Club’s policy on these issues. Only ONE postcard expressed support for the Club’s policy. The letter was sent to 6,252 members, but undeliverable letters resulted in a net of 6,216 letters received. This suggests that at least 6% of Club members in San Francisco are opposed to the Club’s policy. Here are some (not all) of the comments that members wrote on their postcard petitions to the Sierra Club:
“SF native is windy sandy hills with poison oak!”
“Should the Sierra Club continue with its current position, I will cancel my membership” [several similar comments]
“If this native plant bullshit continues I’ll donate my dues to save the eucalyptus grove”
“I am strongly opposed!! (and have been for months)”
“Sierra Club member since 1975. The idea to destroy our trees is absurd. What would Golden Gate Park be without trees? Sand Dunes!”
“These people would cut down every tree on SF streets & Golden Gate Park”
“Fanatical purists! Should we plant more poison oak?!”
“If you want to go back to the habitats before get rid of people, buildings & cars. Chop down & poison those instead of plants that were here before you were born.”
“I read your arguments for supporting this senseless destruction, and found them anachronistic and short-sighted…a 19th Century approach to conservation.”
“This same kind of “restoration” has been tried on a pilot basis in Glen Canyon, near my home, and has failed miserably.”
This antique postcard of the Claremont Hotel shows the treeless landscape of the East Bay Hills that the Sierra Club demands be recreated by destroying all non-native trees.
The author of the letter intended to send her letter to all members of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club. The Bay Chapter includes Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin Counties, in addition to San Francisco City/County. Unfortunately, the staff of Sierra Club did not understand the composition of the Bay Chapter and therefore her letter was initially only sent to members in San Francisco. It took one month to correct that error.
The letter was sent to over 20,000 Club members in Alameda, Contra Costa, and Marin Counties on March 8, 2016. We will report the response to the letter in April.
What you can do to influence the Sierra Club
Meanwhile, there is something Sierra Club members can do to influence the Club’s policies. The national Sierra Club is conducting its annual election of Board Members now. Ballots have been sent to all Club members with the roster of candidates. The roster of candidates and an electronic ballot are also available HERE. You must vote by April 27, 2016. If you are a Sierra Club member, we suggest that you look carefully at the qualifications and opinions of the candidates before making your choice.
To help you make the best choice, a member of our team has asked all candidates the following questions:
What is your opinion of destroying non-native trees?
What is your opinion of pesticide use in public parks and open spaces?
Here are the replies that were received from the candidates:
Susana Reyes
What is your opinion of destroying non-native trees? “Just the mere thought of cutting a tree upsets me greatly. I can’t offer a position about destroying non-native trees without considering the different factors that may come into play – like climate conditions, types of landscape, threats to biodiversity, invasive or not, fire threats – just to name a few. It also depends on the land management practices in the areas where non-native trees exist. There ought to be other options to destroying non-native trees. I would think very carefully about destroying non-native trees especially if only a fraction display traits that harm or displace native species and disrupts the ecological landscape”
What is your opinion of pesticide use in public parks and open spaces? “I strongly oppose pesticide use in our parks and open spaces. I am all too familiar with herbicide “Roundup” for example and its use to stop unwanted plants. Another one is rodenticide which is used to kill rats in parks/open spaces. In Los Angeles, our beloved mountain lion, P22, who calls Griffith Park home, was sickened last year with mange as this poison worked its way up the food chain. Many of the chem Research has shown links to certain types of cancer, developmental disorders, and physical disabilities. Pesticides end up in our drinking water, watersheds, and rivers/lakes. The use of toxic pesticides to manage pest problems has become a common practice around the world. Pesticides are used almost everywhere and therefore, can be found in our food, air, and water.”
Robin Mann
“Let me just note that I am running for reelection to the Board because I believe I can contribute to the Club’s progress towards its major goals for the environment and for ensuring a strong and effective organization into the future.
Being a strong and effective organization, in the case of the Sierra Club, requires among other things ensuring a broad and engaged grassroots presence everywhere. And we know that strong grassroots engagement necessarily means people coming together to resolve local issues that often have competing considerations. Our policies and our approach generally allow some latitude to ensure the local context is being taken into account. I wouldn’t want to try to dictate the solution for all situations.
My understanding from my work with the Club’s efforts to strengthen resiliency in the face of mounting climate change impacts is that restoring native vegetation is desirable, and can contribute to restoring greater ecological balance. And my understanding from my work on the ground with organizations doing habitat restoration is that sometimes HERBICIDES are needed as a last resort to enable newly planted natives to become established.
If you are speaking of herbicides being used in public parks and open spaces, my view is they generally should not be used for maintenance purposes as non-toxic alternatives are available. For habitat and vegetation reestablishment I would defer to those designing the project with the expectation that herbicides would be minimized, used responsibly, and any exposure to park users avoided.
If you are speaking of pesticide use for insects or other “nuisance” species, I expect that in most instances a non-toxic management alternative is available, and so the burden should be on the public entity to justify use of a pesticide for maintenance purposes.”
Luther Dale:
“I have to say I do not know the context of these issues nor knowledge sufficient to give you a good answer. There are so many environmental issues and I accept that I can’t be knowledgable about them all. I do know a lot about some issues and know how to listen and learn about issues new to me. Thanks for your passion about these and other environmental problems and for your work to care for the earth.”
Mike O’Brien:
What is your opinion of destroying non-native trees? “I have strong concerns about invasive species crowding out and changing native ecosystems in detrimental ways. That said, we have already made significant and irreversible impacts to many ecosystems. I don’t believe a policy of eliminating all non-native trees simply because they are non-native makes sense at this point. Rather, it should be taken on a case by case basis where we consider what the impacts are of the non-native species and any work should typically be done in conjunction with a plan to restore native trees and habitat.”
What is your opinion of pesticide use in public parks and open spaces? “Strong preference to zero use of pesticides. There have been occasions where serious threats from invasive species have proved practically impossible to overcome without targeted use of pesticides, but this should be a rare exception as opposed normal operating” procedure.
Judy Hatcher:
“As you probably noticed from my candidate profile, I’m the ED of Pesticide Action Network, so I’m not in favor of pesticides–especially highly hazardous ones–in public spaces or anywhere else. I think the issue of non-native trees is specific to particular contexts and environments. But it’s unfortunate that the damage non-native plants and animals cause lead communities to demand increased use of pesticides and herbicides, which have negative consequences for human health as well as for the natural environment.
PAN focuses on industrial agriculture, so we don’t do a lot around non-native plants except for how they impact farming (hello, RoundUp!).”
If there are other environmental issues of concern to you, you can also ask the candidates questions:
As the presidential primary election rages on around us, we are reminded of how important it is to participate in our democracy. When we don’t participate, we are handing our power to those who do. Our country and our environment are in peril. Please step up and exercise your rights by voting in the election of the national Board of the Sierra Club if you are a member.
On March 1, 2016, UC Berkeley published an Addendum to the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for its Long Range Development Plan. They claim the Addendum is a substitute for an EIR for its portion of the FEMA Grant projects in Strawberry and Claremont Canyons. The Addendum is available HERE.
Public comments on the Addendum are accepted prior to 5:00 pm on Tuesday March 22, 2016. Send public comments to planning@berkeley.edu. The announcement of the Addendum says, “The University will consider whether to approve the proposed project, as described and analyzed in the addendum, as well as all comments received, in the spring of 2016.”
The project is unchanged
Our reading of this document is that it makes no changes in the project as described by the Environmental Impact Statement for the FEMA Grants (available HERE). Therefore, whatever comments you submitted on the EIS for the FEMA Grants are equally relevant to UC’s Addendum.
Frowning Ridge after 1,900 trees were removed from 11 acres in 2004
Additional justification for the project
We read only the “guts” of the Addendum, Sections I to V. We did not read sections regarding “Mitigating Monitoring Program” or “Biological Opinion Post Treatment Monitoring Plan.” Therefore, our comments here should not be considered comprehensive. However, we noted new justifications for the project that seem legally bogus in some cases and scientifically unsound in others.
UC Berkeley destroyed about 600 trees on Frowning Ridge in August 2014, before the Environmental Impact Statement was complete. FEMA has therefore refused to fund that portion of the grant.
Justification for carbon loss
The Addendum cites Cal-FIRE policy regarding quantifying carbon loss. Cal-FIRE states that although “There is not an approved forest carbon protocol for fuel reduction projects,” it suggests: “On an acre treated for fuels the carbon balance emitted from the treatment subtracted from the carbon retained multiplied by its reduced probability of loss [by fire] over the time of treatment is effective.” (Addendum page 18)
In other words, Cal-FIRE suggests that if the probability of fire is lowered by the project, carbon loss associated with such a theoretical fire can be subtracted from the carbon loss resulting from the destruction of trees by the project.
There are several problems with this justification for the carbon loss associated with the destruction of trees by the project:
The claim that the probability of fire will be lowered by the proposed project is entirely theoretical. Many highly qualified analysts of this project believe that the project will increase the probability of fire, not decrease it. For example, the US Forest Service said, “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.”
The law that defines and regulates environmental impact reviews is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), not Cal-FIRE policy. CEQA requires that environmental impact is defined by a comparison of existing conditions with post-project conditions. In other words, environmental impact is not measured by comparing some theoretical landscape in which a theoretical fire occurred with the post-treatment landscape. Therefore, the methods used by the Addendum to quantify carbon loss do not conform to the law (CEQA) that regulates environmental impact reviews.
The Cal-FIRE policy defines its fuels reduction program as follows: “vegetation treatment…will focus on selectively removing understory trees and brush to reduce fire hazards, improve tree growth, and increase forest health and resilience.” Therefore, the Cal-FIRE policy is not relevant to the project of UC Berkeley, which intends to destroy ALL non-native canopy trees and does not intend to remove understory brush and trees. Consequently, carbon loss will be significantly greater than the projects proposed by Cal-FIRE because carbon storage is greater in the large, mature trees that will be destroyed than carbon stored in the understory.
The science of carbon storage
We have heard many absurd statements about carbon storage in the many years we have defended our urban forest, such as “grass stores more carbon than trees.” But the explanations provided by UC’s Addendum that their project will not cause carbon loss enter the realm of science fiction:
UC claims, “The report concluded that the HCFRR project area currently stores an estimated 61,565 CO2e tons, the majority of which will remain stored in the project area in the form of post-treatment chips.” (Addendum, page 19)
When questioned by the consultant (URS Corporation) that was hired to complete the Environmental Impact Statement for the FEMA projects about the flammability of 2 feet of wood chip mulch in the project area, UCB responded that the chips would decay within 3 to 5 years (available HERE). Now UCB wishes us to believe that the wood chips will not decay, but will continue to store carbon forever. UCB contradicts itself or it is ignorant of the role of decomposition in the release of carbon stored during the life of the tree. As the wood decomposes, the carbon stored in the wood is released into the atmosphere:
“Two common tree disposal/utilization scenarios were modeled: 1) mulching and 2) landfill. Although no mulch decomposition studies could be found, studies on decomposition of tree roots and twigs reveal that 50% of the carbon is lost within the first 3 years. The remaining carbon is estimated to be lost within 20 years of mulching. Belowground biomass was modeled to decompose at the same rate as mulch regardless of how the aboveground biomass was disposed” (1)
UC claims, “Remaining native trees will continue to grow and sequester carbon at a rate of ~ 530 ton equivalents per decade therefore…this will increase to 10,560 in year l00.” (Addendum, page 19) In other words, UC assumes, without factual support and in defiance of reality that native trees will not burn for 100 years. UC also ignores the much larger amounts of carbon that the eucalypts would sequester if left in place because larger trees store more carbon than smaller, younger trees.
UC claims that a project area currently storing 61,565 CO₂ₑ tons will release 50,000 tons of CO₂ₑ if it burns. That is a gross over-estimate of the degree of carbon loss from trees in a fire. According to the National Park Service, 2/3rd of the fuel load in a eucalyptus forest is in the trunks and only 1/3rd in fine fuels (branches, twigs, leaves, etc). (2) The trunks of the trees do not burn in a fire, which is why they are left lying on the ground after they are destroyed. Therefore only 1/3rd of the wood burns in the fire and only 1/3rd of the carbon stored in the tree – approximately 20,000 tons – would be lost in the fire.
We are profoundly disappointed that a world-class scientific institution, such as UC, would make such scientifically unsound claims in defense of its destructive project in the East Bay Hills.
If you read UC’s Addendum and you see other issues that we don’t mention here, we hope you will post a comment to inform others of what you have found. This is a collaborative effort that we invite everyone to participate in. The Hills Conservation Network believes the strongest criticism of UC’s Addendum to the EIR for their Long Range Development Plan is that it is not a legally acceptable substitute for a complete EIR. You can read their arguments on their website. There is also a petition to UCB on their website.
Status of lawsuit of Hills Conservation Network
Meanwhile, the lawsuit of the Hills Conservation Network (HCN) against the UC Berkeley and City of Oakland portions of the FEMA grants projects in the East Bay Hills is moving forward. HCN Informed its supporters of the current status of its lawsuit on March 2, 2016:
“Hills Conservation Network took a momentous step yesterday with the filing of our opening brief for the lawsuit against FEMA, the City of Oakland, UC, EBRPD and Cal OES. Despite extensive efforts to find another solution we decided this was the only reasonable course of action open to us.
While this is a complex matter and we are told that one never knows how a NEPA suit will turn out, we believe we have a very strong case and hope that we will prevail and these forests will be saved. If you are interested you can read the brief at http://www.hillsconservationnetwork.org
Needless to say, this has been expensive. We have spent well over $10,000 on legal fees in the past 3 months and expect that it will take at least that much more to see this through the process, which is expected to result in a ruling in the summer.
Yesterday we were notified by UC that they intend to obtain CEQA clearance for their projects (which we hope will not be funded by FEMA) by issuing an addendum to their 2020 Long Range Development Plan. We are consulting with our lawyers on how best to respond to this and expect to propose a strategy to the public by Monday.
Again, your contributions are what makes all this possible. Were it not for your support these forests would have been long gone, but with your support we are able to prevent this environmental disaster from unfolding.
This is the last in a series of rebuttals to the Sierra Club’s “pre-buttal” to a letter from a Sierra Club member to members of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club about the Club’s support for deforestation and pesticide use on our public lands.
The truth about how much herbicide will be used
Sierra Club misrepresents volume of herbicide use: “If used, herbicide would be applied in minute quantities under strict environmental controls.” (1)
Courtesy Hills Conservation Network
East Bay Regional Park District (EBPRD) informs us in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the FEMA project in the East Bay Hills that it intends to use 2,250 gallons of herbicide on its project acres to destroy non-native vegetation and prevent the trees they destroy from resprouting. You can see the detailed table of their intended herbicide use for yourself by looking at the DEIS. (2) On what planet would 2,250 gallons be called “minute quantities?”
EBRPD intentions were to “thin” non-native trees, not destroy them all. The Sierra Club has sued EBRPD to force them to destroy ALL non-native trees on their project acres. If the Sierra Club lawsuit is successful, EBRPD will be forced to destroy MORE trees than it wanted to destroy. That means it will be forced to use EVEN MORE herbicide than it intended to use, i.e., MORE than 2,250 gallons.
EBRPD is only ONE of the three public land owners that are participating in the FEMA project. The other two public land owners (UC Berkeley and City of Oakland) intend to destroy ALL non-native trees on their project acres. That means they will have to use EVEN MORE herbicide than EBRPD intended to use per acre of project area.
Sierra Club fabricates an argument we have not made: “Comparing this use of herbicide to the regular broadcast spraying of farmland elsewhere is a misrepresentation of fact.” (1)
This is a red herring, intended to confuse you with an argument that no one has made in opposition to this project. We have not likened pesticides used for these projects with agricultural use of pesticides. We aren’t being given a choice between agricultural pesticides and pesticides in our parks. The Sierra Club is asking us to accept additional pesticides in our parks on top of the agricultural pesticides we are already exposed to and over which we have no control. Since many pesticides accumulate in our bodies over our lifetimes, additional pesticide exposure results in greater toxicity and potential for damage to our health.
Horticultural fiction
Sierra Club fantasizes about the post-project landscape: “Concerns about not planting trees to replace those being removed miss the mark. Replanting is not necessary. (1)
Knowledgeable organizations do not share the Sierra Club’s fantasy that native trees will magically emerge from 2 feet of eucalyptus wood chip mulch to colonize the bare ground. Here is a partial list of the environmental consultants, governmental agencies, and environmental organizations that have refuted this fiction:
URS Corporation is the environmental consultant initially hired to complete the environment impact review of the FEMA projects. Their report said: “However, we question the assumption that the types of vegetation recolonizing the area would be native. Based on conditions observed during site visits in April 2009, current understory species such as English ivy, acacia, vinca sp., French broom, and Himalayan blackberry would likely be the first to recover and recolonize newly disturbed areas once the eucalyptus removal is complete.”
The US Forest Service evaluated the FEMA projects. This is their prediction of the post-project landscape: “a combination of native and non-native herbaceous and chaparral communities.”
The California Native Plant Society predicted the post-project landscape in its written public comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) with this rhetorical question: “What mechanism is being instituted by FEMA in this DEIS to guarantee a commitment of money and personnel for management of greatly increased acreages of newly created annual weedy grassland?”
The Audubon Society predicted the post-project landscape in its written public comment on the DEIS: “There is no support for the conclusion that native vegetation will return on its own. This plan may not result in an increase in native trees and plants…Heavy mulching will delay or prevent the growth of native species.”
Trees were destroyed here by UC Berkeley over 10 years ago. The landscape is now non-native annual grasses. This is the typical outcome of tree removals on sunny hills without a water source.
Sierra Club and Claremont Canyon Conservancy (CCC) repeatedly refer to Site 29 on Claremont Blvd as a model for the FEMA projects. They fail to acknowledge that Site 29 is not representative of most FEMA project areas because CCC planted native trees (primarily redwoods) on Site 29 and the microclimate of Site 29 is not typical of other project areas. Site 29 is a riparian corridor—there is a creek running through it—so there is more available water than in most project areas. It is also protected from wind and sun by hills on north and south sides of the site. CCC has not made a commitment to plant native trees on 2,000 acres of the FEMA project areas and even if it did, it could not expect the same results in radically different microclimates such as sunny, windy ridge lines with no available water source.
Fundamentals of carbon storage
Sierra Club does not understand the fundamentals of carbon storage: “Carbon sequestering and erosion control will not be reduced by removing eucalyptus trees…Indeed, reducing the fire danger by removing the eucalyptus will do much to prevent the release of tons of carbon that occurs during a wildfire. [x]” (1)
Sierra Club continues with the fiction that non-native trees will burn while native trees will not. There is no evidence behind that story, and much evidence to the contrary. The numerous wildfires throughout California each summer demonstrate that native trees and shrubs are extremely flammable—easily ignited and burning vigorously once ignited. Native trees, shrubs, and grasses also release their stored carbon when they burn. The NSF article cited by the Sierra Club in support of its bogus statement does not suggest that prospectively destroying forests is a means of preventing carbon loss.
Destroying eucalyptus trees will release hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon stored in those trees. That’s a simple, inarguable fact. There are no plans to replace the eucalyptus with “native trees.” A small portion of the carbon released by eucalyptus destruction may be recaptured by the grasses and shrubs that will grow in place of the eucalyptus, but the net loss of stored carbon to the atmosphere from the eucalyptus is huge and permanent. Further, the eucalyptus would have continued to store even more carbon if left in place. That future carbon sequestration is also lost.
The DEIS for the FEMA-funded projects tries to minimize the loss of stored carbon from destruction of eucalyptus by quantifying only carbon loss from the destruction of tree trunks, ignoring leaves, branches, roots, understory, forest floor litter, and soil. But even they acknowledge, “…the planned growth of oak and bay woodlands and successional grassland containing shrub islands would not sequester as much carbon as the larger eucalyptus and pines and the denser coastal scrub that would be removed.” (DEIS 5.6-11)
Killing habitat needed by wildlife
Sierra Club does not know who lives in our urban landscapes: “Native landscapes provide habitat for much more diverse ecosystems.” (1)
There are many studies that find that our non-native landscape provides valuable habitat and no studies that say otherwise:
“Most California natives in cultivation are of no more butterfly interest than nonnatives, and most of the best butterfly flowers in our area are exotic.” (3)
“[T]he science does not support the supposition that native plantings are required for biodiversity…it is clear that an automatic preference for native trees when planning in urban areas is not a science-based policy.” (4)
“Three types of trees were used most frequently by roosting monarchs [in California]: eucalyptus (75% of the habitats primarily Eucalyptus globulus), pine (20% of the habitats primarily Pinus radiata), and cypress (16% of the habitats primarily Cupressus macrocarpa)” (5)
“In the first half of the 20th century, the Anna’s Hummingbird bred only in northern Baja California and southern California. The planting of exotic flowering trees provided nectar and nesting sites, and allowed the hummingbird to greatly expand its breeding range…Anna’s Hummingbird populations increased by almost 2% per year between 1966 and 2010, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey…Thanks to widespread backyard feeders and introduced trees such as eucalyptus, it now occurs in healthy numbers all the way to Vancouver, Canada.” (6)
Red-tailed hawk nesting in eucalyptus. Courtesy urbanwildness.org
“Fourteen of 27 nests in 1994 and 38 of 58 nests in 1995 were in exotic trees, predominantly eucalyptus. Nesting and fledging success were higher in exotic trees than in native trees in both years, owing in part to greater stability and protective cover. Most nest trees in upland areas were exotics, and even in riparian habitats, where tall native cottonwoods and sycamores were available, Red-shouldered Hawks selected eucalyptus more often than expected based on availability.” (7)
A study that compared species diversity and abundance of plants, invertebrates, amphibians, birds, and rodents in eucalyptus forest with oak-bay woodland in Berkeley, California reported this finding: “Species richness was nearly identical for understory plants, leaf-litter invertebrates, amphibians and birds; only rodents had significantly fewer species in eucalypt sites. Species diversity patterns…were qualitatively identical to those for species richness, except for leaf-litter invertebrates, which were significantly more diverse in eucalypt sites during the spring.” (8)
We could provide many more citations from studies that consistently find that our existing non-native landscape is essential to wildlife and that destroying it will be harmful to wildlife, particularly considering the enormous amount of herbicide that will be used. We ask this common-sense, rhetorical question, “How could destroying most of our landscape provide a more diverse ecosystem?” It defies logic.
Environmentalism gone awry
If the Sierra Club would replace a few of its lawyers with a few scientists, perhaps we would not be having this debate. Environmentalism has gone astray because it is not knowledgable about some basic scientific issues, such as carbon storage, the toxicity of herbicides, and the habitat needed by our wildlife. Climate change is the environmental issue of our time. If an environmental organization does not understand the fundamentals of carbon storage it is not capable of doing its job. The Sierra Club must improve its knowledge of the Bay Area environment or it will fade into irrelevance in the struggle to protect that environment.
(3) Arthur Shapiro, Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions, University of California Press, 2007
(4) Linda Chalker-Scott, “Nonnative, Noninvasive Woody Species Can Enhance Urban Landscape Biodiversity,” Arboriculture & Urban Forestry, 2015, 41(4): 173-186
(5) Dennis Frey and Andrew Schaffner, “Spatial and Temporal Pattern of Monarch Overwintering Abundance in Western North America,” in The Monarch Butterfly Biology and Conservation, Cornell University Press, 2004.
(7) Stephen Rottenborn, “Nest-Site selection and reproductive success of urban red-shouldered hawks in Central California,” J. Raptor Research, 34(1):18-25
(8) Dov Sax, “Equal diversity in disparate species assemblages: a comparison of native and exotic woodlands in California,” Global Ecology and Biogeography, 11, 49-52, 2002.
John Muir is the founder of the Sierra Club. He would be disgusted by the Club’s advocacy for deforestation. He planted eucalyptus trees on his property in Martinez. He was as fond of eucalyptus as those who fight for their preservation today.
In this post we continue to deconstruct the Sierra Club’s “pre-buttal” to the letter from a Sierra Club member to fellow members. We will examine the following claim that other environmental organizations support the Sierra Club’s agenda to destroy all non-native trees on 2,000 acres of public land in the East Bay Hills, and to use pesticides to do it:
“Members should know that this strategy also has the support of many fire experts and other environmental organizations, including the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society, and the Claremont Canyon Conservancy.” (1)
In 2009, Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon Society, and the California Native Plant Society co-signed an “Environmental Green Paper” entitled “Managing the East Bay Hills Wildland/Urban Interface to Preserve Native Habitat and Reduce the Risk of Catastrophic Fire.” This suggests that at that point in time, these three organizations were in agreement about those issues.
However, by the time the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the FEMA projects that will implement that policy was published in 2013, their public comments on the DEIS suggest that their opinions diverged significantly. Here are some of the comments they made that suggest substantial disagreement with the planned project.
California Native Plant Society predicts the result of FEMA projects
California Native Plant Society (CNPS) public comment on the DEIS (excerpt):
“The FEMA grants require monitoring and weed maintenance for years to come. Yet the FEMA grants do not supply funding for any of the follow up weed abatement. The East Bay Regional Park District, City of Oakland, and UC Berkeley have great trouble keeping up with acres of weedy species now in their stewardship purview. There just isn’t money available for comprehensive management of weedy invasives. This is demonstrated by the many acres of weedy ‘fuels managed’ areas, including fire roads. What mechanism is being instituted by FEMA in this DEIS to guarantee a commitment of money and personnel for management of greatly increased acreages of newly created annual weedy grassland?” (2)
The rhetorical question asked by CNPS suggests that they share our skepticism about the outcome of the FEMA projects. The project is not providing any funding for planting native plants or maintaining them in the long run. CNPS seems to agree with us that the likely outcome of this project will be non-native annual grasses.
The CNPS comment also seems to share our opinion that the annual grasses that are the likely colonizers of the bare ground will be a fire hazard: “…exotic annual grassland, known for drying out the top layer of soil, and extending the fire season with dried out flashy surface fuel that can act like a fuse to ignite other areas.” (2)
The CNPS prediction of the landscape resulting from the FEMA grants is in stark contrast to the rosy prediction of the Sierra Club. The Club claims that native plants will magically emerge from the bare ground after non-native plants and trees are destroyed, without being planted.
Audubon Society “does not support” the FEMA project
Audubon Society’s public comment on the FEMA DEIS identifies many of the same issues that have been raised by critics of the project:
“The proposed tree removals may lead to colonization by broom or other invasive plants with little value to native birds and wildlife, unless native plants are reintroduced. Although the amount of herbicide to be used on each tree is rather small, the total amount to be used by the project is very large. We believe that alternative methods to prevent resprouting should be used near water and perhaps in other specific circumstances…There is no support for the conclusion that native vegetation will return on its own. This plan may not result in an increase in native trees and plants…Heavy mulching will delay or prevent the growth of native species.” (3)
In fact, the Audubon Society states explicitly that it does not support the plan as proposed by the DEIS (emphasis added):
“In spite of our approval of the general concept of the plan, the Golden Gate Audubon Society does not support this plan as drafted for the following reasons:
1) The plan calls for the removal of both non-native and native trees and brush with no plans to replant cleared areas with native vegetation;
2) The plan would use herbicides indiscriminately, rather than relying on more benign control of re-sprouting where herbicides are contra-indicated.” (3)
Clearly, the Audubon Society does not agree with the Sierra Club about the FEMA projects. The Audubon Society agrees with the critics of this project that dangerous amounts of herbicide will be used and the outcome of the project will not be a landscape of native plants. While the Sierra Club keeps telling us that “minimal amounts of herbicide will be used,” the Audubon Society has done its homework and can see that huge amounts of herbicide will be used.
Who supports the Sierra Club’s position on the FEMA grants?
The California Native Plant Society and the Audubon Society do not agree with the Sierra Club about the FEMA projects. The fact that they did not join the Sierra Club’s lawsuit demanding 100% eradication of non-native trees in the project acres is another indication that they do not share the Club’s opinion of the projects.
Update: Although CNPS did not join the Sierra Club lawsuit against FEMA, it has indicated its support for the suit on its website: “The East Bay Chapter of the California Native Plant Society strongly supports the litigation action by SPRAWLDEF and the Sierra Club, against FEMA’s surprising Record of Decision regarding fuels management in the East Bay Hills.”
Despite the fact that CNPS understands that the resulting landscape will be predominantly highly flammable non-native annual grasses, it apparently wants all non-native trees to be destroyed. We don’t understand why CNPS was surprised by the final version of the Environmental Impact Statement, since it was virtually unchanged from the draft on which they submitted a written public comment.
We learned of CNPS’s support for the Sierra Club lawsuit from a member of the Club’s leadership. Although this information doesn’t literally contradict what we have reported, we post it here in the interests of full disclosure.
Although the Claremont Canyon Conservancy agrees with the Sierra Club about the FEMA projects, we note that they did not join the Club’s lawsuit either. The only organization that joined the Sierra Club lawsuit is SPRAWLDEF (Sustainability, Parks, Recycling, and Wildlife Legal Defense Fund). (4) SPRAWLDEF (5) is a non-profit organization created and run by Norman LaForce, the Sierra Club officer who claims to be one of the primary authors of the FEMA projects (6). SPAWLDEF has sued other public agencies, including the East Bay Regional Park District.
Update: SPRAWLDEF’s tax return for 2011 reports $250,000 of income for legal settlements from environmental lawsuits. The tax return is signed by Norman LaForce.
The role of lawsuits in the funding of environmental organizations
Lawsuits against the various governmental agencies have become an important source of revenue for environmental organizations. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has mastered this strategy. The New York Times reports (7) that CBD had filed 700 lawsuits when the article was published in March 2010, and they were successful in those suits 93% of the time, according to CBD. Those suits forced the government to list 350 endangered species and designate 120 million acres of critical habitat for their recovery. Revenue generated for CBD by these suits was $1.4 million in 2008, compared with $7.6 million from contributions and grants.
Sharp Park, Pacifica, CA. Photo by Erica Reder, SF Public Press
Brent Plater is a former CBD lawyer who created a non-profit in San Francisco, Wild Equity Institute. He has sued San Francisco several times about Sharp Park, where he believes that closing the golf course would benefit the endangered red-legged frog. He has not succeeded in making that case to our judiciary, losing every case. Despite losing, he and his collaborators were awarded $385,809 for “legal expenses” by the court, according to the San Francisco Chronicle: “It turns out that Plater and his organization can win by losing. Take the ruling in U.S. District Court on July 1, 2013, which, by any measure, rates as a legal smackdown of the institute. As Judge Susan Illston said in her ruling, ‘plaintiffs did not prevail on a single substantive motion before the Court.’” (8) So, even when they lose, they can walk away with a sizeable chunk of change. To be clear, it is the taxpayers of San Francisco who paid Wild Equity for suing the City of San Francisco.
So, ponder for a minute the interesting relationship between SPRAWLDEF and the Sierra Club. The person who connects them is Norman LaForce, who is both a lawyer and an officer in the Sierra Club. If these organizations prevail in their lawsuit against FEMA, will Norman LaForce share in the spoils? One wonders.
The Sierra Club has said many silly things in defense of its lawsuit demanding 100% destruction of all non-native trees on 2,000 acres of public land in the East Bay Hills, and Million Trees has responded to many of them (1). Now Sierra Club has provided a new batch of ridiculous statements in its “pre-buttal” to the letter from a Chapter member to fellow Chapter members.
The winner of the intense competition for silliest statement
Sierra Club’s silliest statement: “Eucalyptus trees are called “gasoline trees” in Australia for their tendency to explode in fireballs at very high temperatures.[ii]” (2)
You would not hear such a statement in Australia about ANY tree (eucalyptus or otherwise) because Australians do not use the word “gasoline.” What Americans call “gasoline,” is called “petrol” in Australia (and Britain, New Zealand, etc.). (3)
So, the next question is, do Australians call eucalyptus trees “petrol trees?” The answer is, “NO, they do NOT call eucalyptus trees “petrol trees.” A Google search for “petrol tree” directs the searcher to an article about a tree that is being grown in Australia as a source of diesel fuel. The Brazilian tree Copaifera langsdorfii produces “natural diesel.” Australian farmers have planted 20,000 of these trees with the expectation that “in 15 or so years they’ll have their very own oil mine growing on their farmland.” (4)
The Sierra Club provides a citation for its statement about “gasoline trees.” The citation is a paper by Carol Rice, the primary author of the East Bay Regional Park District’s “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan.” So, we might expect her to claim that eucalyptus is very flammable and she does. However, she does not call them “gasoline trees” (nor does she claim that Australians do) nor does she claim that eucalyptus “explodes in fireballs.”
Wildfires in Mediterranean climates
The Sierra Club also provides a brief film clip of a wildfire in Australia. The film clip is narrated by an American who claims that “firemen call eucalyptus gasoline trees.” We hear Australians describing the fire, but they don’t say anything about “gasoline trees.”
Let’s compare that film clip in Australia with wildfires here in California. Our most recent local wildfire was in September 2015, in Lake County about 100 miles north of San Francisco. The Lake County fire destroyed about 1,200 buildings, killed 4 people, and burned over 76,000 acres. HERE is a film clip of that fire, taken from the dashboard camera of a county sheriff driving through the fire.
“Native” trees burning in a Wildfire in California. Bureau of Land Management.
As we would expect, the Lake County fire looks very much like the fire in Australia because that’s what wildfires look like. Most start in dry grass and move quickly through the fine fuel. If it is a wind-driven fire, it will move into tree canopies and it will jump over roads. The fire in Lake County burned predominantly native vegetation. You will not see any eucalyptus trees burning in the film clip of the fire.
Wildfire behavior in California and southern portions of Australia are similar because their climates are similar. They share a Mediterranean climate in which winter rains produce copious herbaceous vegetation that dries out during the long, dry summer months. The green grass of winter becomes the fine fuel of summer. It ignites easily and if conditions are right (high winds and temperatures and low humidity) quickly becomes a wildfire in which everything burns. The native vegetation that survives these conditions must be adapted to periodic fire. Therefore, native vegetation in California and in Australia are both adapted to periodic fire. Destroying our non-native vegetation will not reduce fire hazards because native vegetation is equally flammable.
Many native trees are as flammable as eucalyptus trees. The leaves of native bay laurel trees contain twice as much oil as eucalyptus leaves. A cord of native oak wood contains more BTUs (measure of heat energy) than a cord of eucalyptus wood. Native redwoods are taller than eucalyptus and are therefore as likely to cast embers over long distances. There is as much fine fuel in the oak-bay woodland as there is in the eucalyptus forest.
What is a “gasoline tree?” It is a rhetorical device.
A Google search for “gasoline tree” turns up a mixed bag of American nativists using that term to describe eucalyptus, and sites about tree species being grown for biofuel as a substitute for gasoline.
Calling eucalyptus trees “gasoline trees” is a rhetorical device. A native plant advocate probably made it up, then it was shared in their closed community until it became a “fact” in their minds. It is a means of generating fear. It is a tool used by native plant advocates to support their demand to destroy all non-native trees in California. Name-calling does not alter the fact thatif the trees are removed, the landscape will be much more flammable. They will be replaced by grasses and shrubs that will be easily-ignited fine fuels and result in fast-moving fires.
Preview
This is the second of a series of articles, debunking the latest batch of inaccurate statements made by the Sierra Club in its “pre-buttal” to the letter from a Club member to other Club members. Stay tuned!
If you’re a member of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club, you will soon receive a letter from a fellow Club member exposing the Club’s advocacy for deforestation and pesticide use on public lands in the Bay Area. It will also contain a postcard which you can return to express your opinion of the Club’s policy.
The Sierra Club is worried. They’ve already issued a “pre-buttal” in the form of a note tucked into their newspaper, the Yodeler (available here: SierraClub – Yodeler Insert) that directed members to read their on-line “pre-buttal.” Their “pre-buttal” is factually inaccurate, for which the national Sierra Club takes no responsibility.
Herbicide spraying in one of the project areas
Why would they allow an opposing letter through to their membership?
The Sierra Club didn’t allow the member’s letter to go to their mailing list out of any interest in members hearing both sides of the story. It’s the law.
California State law requires that non-profit organizations with elected boards, such as the Sierra Club, enable their members to communicate with fellow members. This doesn’t mean they release their members’ contact information. The letter must be given to the non-profit organization, which uses a third-party direct mailing company. In this case, the mailing was arranged with the national headquarters of the Sierra Club, which manages the mailing list of the entire membership.
The Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club has 6,300 members, so it is expensive to take advantage of this privilege. All the more reason to be outraged by the fact that the Chapter pre-emptively sabotaged this effort to communicate with its membership.
Here’s the story
We will let the author of the letter to the Chapter members tell you what happened by publishing her report to the many people who are collaborating in the effort to prevent the destruction of our urban forest (emphasis added):
January 27, 2016
Friends, I am writing to tell you the fate of my letter to the members of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club. My letter has not been sent yet, but it probably will be soon. The local chapter inserted a printed letter into the published version of the Yodeler informing members that they would be receiving my letter. That letter told them to go to the Chapter website to see a point-by-point “pre-buttal” to my letter. That is available on-line HERE.
I sent the staff in the national headquarters the email below and copied the Chapter staff who signed the letter in the Yodeler. You can read that email to see what I asked for. Now I have had a conversation with Bruce Hamilton who is in the legal office of national headquarters and I am writing to tell you the final outcome:
Mr. Hamilton freely admits that he gave my letter to the Chapter before my letter was sent. He did not see anything wrong with having done that. He says that the national headquarters assumes no responsibility for what the Chapter has done nor anything they say in their “pre-buttal.” I pointed out that I have provided evidence that the Club has refused to meet with us. He says the national headquarters takes no responsibility for ascertaining the facts. He has refused to request that the Chapter remove their “pre-buttal” from the website or revise it in any way. I told him that I would consult a lawyer about what “remedies are available to me.” [Redacted personal information]
So that is the fate of my letter to the members of the local Chapter of the Sierra Club. One hopes that members will now be so curious about my letter that they may actually read it! [Redacted personal comments]
In solidarity,
Mary McAllister
From: Mary McAllister
Sent: Wednesday, January 27, 2016 6:50 AM
To: michelle.epstein@sierraclub.org ; bruce.hamilton@sierraclub.org
Cc: Michelle Myers
Subject: Letter to members of the San Francisco Bay Chapter
Dear Mr. Hamilton and Ms. Epstein,
As you know, I have been trying to arrange a mailing to the members of the San Francisco Bay Chapter for some months. My letter has not yet been sent, yet the Bay Chapter has preemptively sabotaged my letter with an insert in the printed Yodeler alerting people to read the Chapter’s on-line prospective rebuttal to a letter that has not yet been sent.
The on-line “pre-buttal” starts by claiming that the Sierra Club has never refused to meet with me. I have attached [available here: sierra-club-petition-to-national-leadership] my letters to the Sierra Club requesting a meeting that were sent in November. Those letters were sent certified and I have the return receipts, proving that the Club received my request for a meeting. The Club did not reply to those letters.
Also, below is my email correspondence with a member of the Chapter Conservation Committee attempting to get this issue on the agenda of the Conservation Committee in September 2015. This request was also ignored or denied. Since no one responded to me, I do not know which. [These emails are available here: Sierra Club – Conservation Committee]
These are just two of the most recent attempts to discuss this issue with the Chapter. I have a much longer paper trail of attempts that go back several years, including an email from someone representing Mr. Brune.
If the Chapter and/or the national Club are now willing to meet with us, I am still ready and willing to do so.
Meanwhile, I ask that the on-line “pre-buttal” be removed until my letter is actually sent and received by Chapter members. The well has already been poisoned, but this is the only remedy available to me at this time.
When my letter has been sent and received by members, I hope that the Chapter rebuttal will be more accurate than what is presently on-line. The Chapter leadership has been sent a multitude of studies, reports from environmental consultants and government professionals such as the US Forest Service. They therefore know—or should know—that nothing they are saying in their “pre-buttal” is accurate. I would be happy to present all these materials to you and others in a meeting.
I am one of hundreds of people who have been fighting for the preservation of our urban forest in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly 15 years. Please understand that although I am required by law to make this request as an individual member, I do so on behalf of thousands of people who share my commitment.
Mary McAllister
The bottom line
We are still trying to get the facts out to all Sierra Club members, and to all those who recognize that its views are out of step with the environmental realities of the 21st century.
We hope that those who are still members of the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club will read the letter from a fellow member and send the postcard expressing their opinion of Chapter policy regarding deforestation and pesticide use. Thank you for reading this post.
As a reminder: The map below shows all the areas that are affected by this massive deforestation scheme that will fell nearly half a million trees. It’s a travesty that the Sierra Club is not only supporting these projects, but has also filed a lawsuit demanding that they be even more destructive than planned.
The Secret Lives of Bats is appropriately named because our knowledge of bats is limited by the fact that they are active at night while we sleep and their activities are shrouded by darkness. The author of this engaging little book, Merlin Tuttle, devoted his life, from the time he was a teenager, to the study and conservation of bats. Although he learned a great deal about bats in the 60 years he has studied them, it is his accomplishments in bat conservation that are most inspiring and impressive.
A few bat facts
“Chiroptera” from Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur, 1904
There are nearly 1,300 species of bats and they are distributed all over the world, with the exception of Polar Regions. We can’t describe the entire range of variation in the characteristics of such a diverse order (Chiroptera), so we will describe them only in general terms:
Bats are the only flying mammal. Their pups are born live and are generally fed breast milk by their mothers.
Many bat species live in caves and migrate from cold caves where they hibernate in winter to warmer caves where their pups are born.
Seventy percent of bat species eat insects. Bats in the US are insectivores. Most remaining bat species eat fruit and live in tropical regions. There are three bat species, called vampire bats that eat exclusively blood. There are also a few species of carnivorous bats such as those that eat fish or frogs.
Many bat species live 20 to 30 years.
Most bat species use echolocation to find their prey in the darkness. See a video of a bat finding a moth, using echolocation HERE.
Local bat facts
There are 17 bat species in coastal California. A study of foraging bats in 22 of San Francisco’s municipal parks found 4 species of insectivore bats. The amount of forest edge and distance to water were the factors best explaining species richness and foraging activity. The study found no correlation between bat foraging and the percent of native of plants, implying that there is no correlation between insect populations and native plants.
Why are bats important?
Insect-eating bats reduce insect populations, which reduces agricultural pests and disease-carrying mosquito populations. A study in Arizona and New Mexico found that crop pests made up to two-thirds of free-tailed bats’ diets. Another study found free-tailed bats feasting on migrating moths in Texas thousands of feet aboveground. Tuttle estimates that “a single bat easily can consume more than 20 moths in a night, each carrying 500 to 1,000 eggs that otherwise would be laid on crops. A density of 5,000 to 10,000 caterpillars per acre of cotton exceeds the threshold for pesticides. Yet 20 moths can lay from 10,000 to 20,000 eggs. If even half hatched to become caterpillars, they still could force a farmer to spray an acre of crop.” (1) Reduced populations of crop pests means fewer pesticides, which reduces farmers’ costs and toxicity exposure to consumers.
Common fruit bat. This photo makes it clear that the wings of a bat are also its hands. Creative Commons
Fruit-eating bats are important pollinators and dispersers of seeds. There are some species of plants that can only be pollinated by bats because of the shape of the flower and the fact that it blooms only at night.
Although birds are also dispersers of seeds, the germination success of the seeds they disperse is probably less than those dispersed by bats because most bird species poop while perched, unlike bats that usually poop while flying. Seeds deposited on open ground are more likely to germinate than seeds deposited in the shade of tree canopy. Therefore, bats probably play a vital role in the reforestation of fallow agricultural land.
Bad raps about bats
So, as useful as bats are, why are their colonies often threatened with destruction?
Bats departing from Congress Ave Bridge, Austin Texas
In the past, ignorance of the valuable functions performed by bats was the usual reason why their colonies are destroyed. The fact that the lives of bats are largely unseen contributes to that ignorance. The colony of Brazilian free-tailed bats in Austin, Texas is a case in point. In 1984, 1.5 million Brazilian free-tailed bats took up residence under a bridge in Austin, Texas. “Newspaper headlines screamed, ‘Bat colonies sink teeth into city.’ They claimed that hundreds of thousands of rabid bats were invading and attacking the citizens of Austin.” (1)
Tuttle was the curator of mammals at the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin at the time. He had recently founded Bat Conservation International. He quit his job and moved his fledging enterprise to Austin, where he was not warmly received. But Tuttle is an engaging fellow and his knowledge of and fondness for bats is contagious. Tuttle is equally modest, so he gives the bats full credit for convincing the public that bats need not be feared. Within two months of his arrival, he turned the media coverage around.
The colony of Brazilian free-tailed bats in Austin is now internationally famous and a major tourist attraction. Every evening at dusk, crowds form to witness the departure of the bats to forage for the evening. My family has witnessed this moving event. It is, indeed, a spectacle, on par with watching and listening to the raucous honking of huge flocks of Aleutian geese departing at dawn from their roosts for agricultural fields in Humboldt County. Nature makes the best performance art.
Our federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention informs us that we have little to fear from rabid bats: “Most bats don’t have rabies. For example, even among bats submitted for rabies testing because they could be captured, were obviously weak or sick, or had been captured by a cat, only about 6% had rabies.”
Anthropogenic problems and bad solutions
There are only three species of vampire bats in tropical regions, but only one is considered a problem because it has a preference for mammals. The population of this species of bat has grown because of the introduction of large herds of domesticated cattle. The bats deplete the blood of the cattle and can spread diseases. Reluctantly, Tuttle admits that these bat populations must be controlled.
So, his mission where vampire bats are causing problems for ranchers was to educate the ranchers about how to identify and find the bats. There are other species of bats living in these areas that are performing valuable functions and unfortunately they roost in big colonies that are easy for the ranchers to find. The ranchers were dynamiting or destroying these colonies because they were unable to distinguish them from the bats that were causing their problems. Unfortunately, the vampire bats roost independently, hiding in trees. So, they are more difficult for the ranchers to find. With Tuttle’s help, tactics were devised to find the individually roosting vampire bats in order to reduce their populations.
New challenges for bats
Tuttle and his compatriots have accomplished a great deal in the past 60 years to increase our knowledge of bats and the important roles they play in nature. He has convinced many people that it is not in their interests to destroy bat colonies on their properties. However, he closes his book with two new challenges to bats:
Wind turbines are killing as many bats as they are birds. We must carefully study the design and placement of wind turbines to reduce this threat to our winged neighbors.
White-nosed syndrome is a fungus that has killed tens of thousands of bats in caves, particularly in the North East of the US. The fungus seems to live in a fairly narrow temperature range, so we are hopeful that it will not continue to spread rampantly.
The danger of misinformation
Millions of bats needlessly lost their lives because people were afraid of them. Much progress has been made to inform the public of the value of bats. Is this starting to sound familiar? It should. Millions of eucalyptus trees have been destroyed because people were needlessly afraid of them. Please help us spread the word about the value of our trees.
(1) Merlin Tuttle, The Secret Lives of Bats, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. A favorable review of this book is also available in the New Yorker.
Portrait of Alexander von Humboldt by Joseph Stieler, 1843
Alexander von Humboldt made so many contributions to science that we cannot do him justice here. We will therefore focus on his study of nature and put his accomplishments in that area into the context of historical events and his personal views of those events. We draw from Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature in this article. (2)
Humboldt is considered the originator of the scientific concept of biogeography, “the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space and through (geological) time.” (1) In other words, biogeography attempts to explain why species are where they are. It is therefore relevant to the mission of Million Trees, which is to make the case that species belong wherever they persist without human management and without regard to how they got there.
The journey begins
Alexander von Humboldt was born in 1769 in what was then Prussia and is now Germany. Under the thumb of a domineering mother, he was required to spend most of his twenties as a mining inspector. In that capacity, he mastered the science of geology that he put to good use throughout his long life.
At the age of 27, he was freed from his obligations to his mother by her death. With the help of his inheritance he began his travels to satisfy his intense curiosity about the world. He brought along on his journeys the tools of measurement that existed at that time. He made detailed recordings of his measurements wherever he went and they were the basis of comparing the many places he visited.
His journey began in the mountains of Europe and they became the baseline of his comparisons throughout his journeys. But his movements in Europe were hampered by the political situation. Revolutionary France was expanding its empire with a series of wars in Europe that prevented him from visiting many places of interest to him. After several failed attempts to join voyages to other places, the King of Spain granted Humboldt a passport to the Spanish colonies in South America to collect the flora and fauna of the New World.
Humboldt set sail from Spain in June 1799, along with “a great collection of the latest instruments, ranging from telescopes and microscopes to a large pendulum clock and compasses—forty-two instruments in all, individually packed with protective velvet-lined boxes—along with vials for storing seeds and soil samples, reams of paper, scales and countless tools.” (2)
Journey of Alexander von Humboldt in the New World, 1799-1804. Creative Commons – Share Alike
Finding unity in nature
Alexander von Humboldt collecting plants at the foot of Chimborazo. Painting by Friedrich George Weitsch
Humboldt and his companions climbed every mountain they encountered, taking precise measurements of altitude, temperature, and samples of soil and plants as they gained altitude. As he accumulated data from each climb he began to see a pattern in what he encountered. Humboldt’s new, revolutionary idea of nature fell into place for him as he climbed Chimborazo in Ecuador to an unprecedented height of 19,413 feet, about 1,000 feet shy of the summit: “Nature, Humboldt realized, was a web of life and a global force…Humboldt was struck by this ‘resemblance which we trace in climates the most distant from each other.’” (2)
Humboldt’s Naturegemälde
Humboldt called the graphic depiction of his theory Naturegemälde which means roughly “painting of nature.” His drawing shows that plants are distributed according to their altitudes and latitudes, from subterranean mushroom species to the lichens that grow below the snow line. In similar latitudes, palms grow in the tropical zone at the foot of the mountain. Oaks and shrubs prefer the temperate climate above the tropical zone. Naturegemälde illustrated for the first time that “nature is a global force with corresponding climate zones across continents.” (2)
Addendum: In 2012 – 210 years after Humboldt climbed Chimborazo – a scientific expedition surveyed the vegetation on Chimborazo and compared that survey to Humboldt’s survey in 1802. They found that the vegetation has moved to higher altitudes on average 500 meters. This movement of plants to higher elevations (and latitudes in other examples) is a response to climate change, which requires plant and animal species to move in order to survive. It is one of many examples of why the concept of “native plants” is meaningless at a time of rapid climate change. (3)
Humboldt’s theory of the unity of nature, connected in a global web of life, required an interdisciplinary approach of which few of his contemporaries were capable. He drew equally from his fund of knowledge about astronomy, botany, geology, and meteorology. Sadly, as human knowledge has expanded exponentially in over 300 years, an interdisciplinary approach to science has become unattainable. Scientific inquiry has become increasingly narrowly specialized, preventing the global view that informed Humboldt’s studies. The “big picture” is lost in the compartmentalization of science into isolated, specialized scientific disciplines.
Socio-political context of Humboldt’s travels
We cannot fully appreciate Humboldt’s scientific accomplishments without mentioning his interest in and concern for the human realm. Humboldt was 20 years old when the French Revolution occurred in 1789. He was thrilled and delighted by the prospect of liberty and equality for the French people. His admiration for the French made Paris his home for much of his life. He believed that science would thrive in such an atmosphere of freedom of thought and action.
As Humboldt travelled in the New World, he brought this standard of freedom and liberty along with him. New Spain was lacking in that regard. He believed that the cultural accomplishments of the indigenous people were sadly devalued. He was disgusted by the oppression of the indigenous people and the lack of basic human rights of the colonists. He observed the consequences of this oppression in the colonial landscape. Mineral riches were ravaged and forests were razed for the cash crops that impoverished the settlers. The colonial government required them to grow monocultures such as indigo (blue dye), in lieu of the crops needed to feed the population.
Humboldt was one of the first scientists to observe the destructive consequences of deforestation. Forests were cleared for agricultural fields. Wood was the fuel of the time, providing heat and light. Later forests would fuel ships, trains and industrial steam engines. Where forests were cleared, the land quickly dried out because trees recycle water into the atmosphere. Erosion and desertification are the eventual consequences of deforestation.
For the same reason that Humboldt admired the French Revolution, he also admired the new American republic that had only recently gained its independence from Britain and was founded on democratic principles. He went far out of his way to visit the United States to consult with the young democracy.
Thomas Jefferson was the President at the time and they spent much valuable time together. The Spanish jealously guarded all useful information about New Spain because the United States was clearly a rival in the New World. Humboldt brought the Americans much useful information about their competitor because he not only wished to be helpful to their young enterprise, he firmly believed in universal access to information.
However, there was one horrible blot on the reputation of the United States that made Humboldt queasy. He abhorred slavery in his own country as well as in the United States. As much as he enjoyed the company of Thomas Jefferson and respected his intelligence, he was scandalized by the scale of enslavement on Jefferson’s Virginia plantation.
Humboldt’s concern for the welfare of humans extended to all races, ethnicities, and classes. Just as he embraced all nature as worthy of his attention, his view of humanity was equally generous and inclusive. We venture to guess that he would be as mystified by the pointless distinction between “native” and “non-native” plants and animals as we are.
Humboldt’s legacy
When Humboldt returned to Europe in 1804 at the age of 35, his reputation as an important scientist was already established by the correspondence in which he had engaged during the 5-year voyage. He returned with the detailed record of his travels, including specimens:
“[He] returned with trunks filled with dozens of notebooks, hundreds of sketches and tens of thousands of astronomical, geological and meteorological observations. He brought back some 60,000 plant specimens, 6,000 species of which almost 2,000 were new to European botanists—a staggering figure, considering that there were only 6,000 known species by the end of the eighteenth century.” (2)
He spent 21 years publishing over 30 volumes about his 5-year journey in the New World. Not only were these books widely read, they influenced many of the greatest scientists and thinkers who succeeded him:
Charles Darwin’s correspondence with Humboldt and many references to Humboldt’s publications in his own work are evidence of Humboldt’s influence on Darwin’s work. Just as Humboldt’s journey inspired his theory of the unity of nature, Darwin’s journey around the globe was the inspiration for his theory of evolution. Readers of Darwin’s early work observed the similarity of his writing style with that of Humboldt.
Humboldt was equally influential in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau published an unsuccessful book shortly after his two-year reclusive experience on Walden Pond. Then he learned from Humboldt’s books to observe and record the workings of nature, which eventually transformed his writings into the nature writing that made him famous. The records he kept of the climate on Walden Pond are still used as a reference point for the climate change that has occurred in the past 150 years.
George Perkins Marsh is considered the first American environmentalist. His book Man and Nature was the first to express alarm in 1864 about American deforestation. The writings of Humboldt were the first to alert Marsh to this issue and as they did for Humboldt this issue was brought into focus by extensive travels. Marsh could see America’s future in Egypt where thousands of years of intensive agriculture left the land bare and unproductive.
This is but a short list of important scientists all over the world who were influenced and inspired by the writings of Alexander von Humboldt long after his death in 1859 at the age of 89. We encourage our readers to read Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World for the full story. We have reported on other books by Andrea Wulf—The Brother Gardeners and The Founding Gardeners. Ms. Wulf turns botanical history into a gripping story.
What is Humboldt’s message to Million Trees?
Alexander von Humboldt delivers a powerful message that fits well with our mission. He saw the world and its inhabitants as fitting together in a harmonious and comprehensible manner. He was always looking for the connections between seemingly disparate elements in nature and finding them wherever he looked. His egalitarian hopes for humanity fit perfectly with his perception of nature as working together to make a web of life with humans as a part of that web.
We would like to think that Million Trees shares the Humboldtian viewpoint and we hope that our readers agree. We hope that the New Year will bring more harmony to nature and those who live within it.
(2) Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015
(3) Morueta-Holme N, Engemann K, Sandoval-Acuña P, Jonas JD, Segnitz RM, Svenning JC, “Strong upslope shifts in Chimborazo’s vegetation over two centuries since Humboldt,” Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Oct 13;112(41):12741-5. Available HERE.
Conservation Sense and Nonsense 