UCSF has sent an email to its neighbors about its plans for the Sutro forest in which they say, “Contrary to rumors being circulated, there is no plan to cut down 30,000 trees in the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, and it is unfortunate that this misinformation continues to spread.”
Our response is, Do the math!!
The Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) claims that the thinned forest will have 62 trees per acre. (DEIR Appendix F) The DEIR arrives at this figure by assuming that each tree will occupy a circle with a radius of 15’. In fact, it is not possible to pack circles into another geometric space, whether it is a bigger circle, a rectangle or a square without wasting space. Therefore, this calculation arrives at a bogus answer which is larger than is physically possible.
We have calculated the number of trees remaining in the thinned forest based on the number of squares in an acre that are 30’ X 30’. Such calculations of tree density are found in books regarding arboriculture, which corroborates that we are using a standard calculation used by the timber industry and the DEIR is not. (1)
48.4
43560/900 = trees per acre if 30 feet apart (the proposed plan)
12.1
43560/3600 = trees per acre if 60 feet apart (the proposed plan)
45000
Total number of trees existing now on 61 acres (according to UCSF)
34040
46 acres X 740 trees/acre = Number of trees existing in project area
2112
44 acres X 48 trees/acre = thinned forest with 30’ spacing
24
2 acres (Demo Area #4) X 12 trees/acre = thinned forest with 60’ spacing
31904
Existing Trees – Thinned Forest = Trees Removed in Project Area
70.9%
Trees Removed/Existing Trees in total forest = Percent of Trees Removed in Total Forest
If UCSF wishes to reduce the number of trees that will be removed by the proposed plan, it can do so by reducing the spacing between the trees or the number of acres to be “thinned.” All other numbers used to arrive at an estimated number of tree removals are straight-forward mathematical calculations based on the information provided by UCSF.
UCSF would be wise to read the DEIR for its project, which says, “Under full-implementation or worst-case implementation of management activities under the proposed project, approximately 60% of all existing trees, including large and small trees, could be removed.” UCSF reports that there are 45,000 trees in the Mount Sutro Reserve presently. Sixty-percent of 45,000 is 27,000 trees. We think UCSF’s estimate of tree removals is just a few thousand trees less than what is actually planned. What are we quibbling about?
Once again, we invite UCSF to revise its proposed project to reduce the number of trees that will be removed.
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(1) Ecology and Silviculture of Eucalypt Forests, R.G. Florence, CSIRO, Australia
The short answer to that question is “I don’t know.” However, since many of the over 1,200 signers of the petition to University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to save the forest have asked this question, it seems that they deserve some answer. So, in this post, we will tell you the reasons that UCSF has given for its plans to destroy the forest.
UCSF makes two erroneous claims about the Sutro forest which it uses to justify its destruction. They claim that the forest is unhealthy and that destroying most of the forest will benefit the few trees that remain. They also claim that the forest is very flammable and that destroying most of the forest will make it less flammable. This is our response to these claims.
The Draft Environmental Impact Report for UCSF’s planned project claims that the forest is old and dying. If we don’t beat it to the punch and kill it first, it will soon die without our help. An analogy comes to mind: “We had to destroy the village to save it,” which was the explanation given for the destruction of a village during the Vietnam War. It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t make sense now.
The fact is, the Sutro forest is young and in the prime of its life. Eighty-two percent of the forest is blue gum eucalyptus. Blue gums live in Australia from 200 to 500 years. (1) They live toward the longer end of that range in milder climates such as the San Francisco Bay Area. The blue gum eucalypts were planted on Mount Sutro in the 1880s. It is still a young forest.
Another indication that the forest is young is that the individual trees are small by blue gum standards. The study plots used by the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) to calculate how much carbon is stored in the trees found that 77% of the trunks of the trees are 5 inches in diameter at breast height or less (if the study plots are representative of the entire forest, which is questionable). It also says that this species of eucalyptus grows very fast and that its trunk is 9 inches in diameter after only three years of growth. In other words, the DEIR claims that the trees are old and no longer growing, yet it says that most of the trees are very small and it intends to destroy the small trees, not the big ones. This is just one of many contradictions that we find in the DEIR.
There is little risk of wildfire in the Sutro Forest
FEMA asked UCSF to supply scientific evidence that the project would reduce fire risk despite the fact that the project would reduce fog condensation from the tall trees which moistens the forest floor, making ignition unlikely. FEMA also asked for scientific evidence that a wind driven wildfire would not be more likely after the destruction of the wind break provided by the forest. UCSF chose to withdraw its grant application, presumably because they could not answer those questions.
In 2010, UCSF applied for another fire hazard mitigation grant from the California Fire Safe Council. The Council has funded 150 such grants in California, but they denied UCSF’s application. That suggests that the California Fire Safe Council shares FEMA’s opinion.
You might ask, where is UCSF getting the money to pay for this project? We don’t know, but we consider that a legitimate and important question given that UCSF is a publicly funded enterprise.
UCSF may not be able to answer FEMA’s questions, but we can, using specific scientific studies. In 1987, 20,000 hectares burned in a wildfire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. The effects of that fire on the forest were studied by Weatherspoon and Skinner of the USDA Forest Service. They reported the results of their study in Forest Science. (2) They found the least amount of fire damage in those sections of the forest that had not been thinned or clear-cut. In other words, the more trees there were, the less damage was done by the fire. They explained that finding:
“The occurrence of lower Fire Damage Classes in uncut stands [of trees] probably is attributable largely to the absence of activity fuels [e.g., grasses] and to the relatively closed canopy, which reduces insolation [exposure to the sun], wind movement near the surface, and associated drying of fuels. Conversely, opening the stand by partial cutting adds fuels and creates a microclimate conducive to increased fire intensities.”
In other words the denser the forest,
The less wind on the forest floor, thereby slowing the spread of fire
The more shade on the forest floor.
The less flammable vegetation on the forest floor
The more moist the forest floor
All of these factors combine to reduce fire hazard in dense forest. Likewise, in a study of fire behavior in eucalyptus forest in Australia, based on a series of experimental controlled burns, wind speed and fire spread were significantly reduced on the forest floor.(3) Thinning the forest will not reduce fire hazard. In fact, it will increase fire hazard.
Jon E. Keeley of the USGS is a world-renowned expert on the fire ecology of California. We have read his recently published book (Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems: Ecology, Evolution and Management, Cambridge University Press, 2011) and many of his articles. Anyone with a sincere interest in wildfire hazards in California would be wise to read these publications. Reference to Keeley’s work is conspicuously absent from the Draft EIR.
Keeley’s most recently published study of specific wildfires in the Wildland-Urban-Interface (WUI) of California is most relevant to consideration of wildfire hazard in the Sutro Reserve. (4) The authors studied the property damage resulting from specific wildfires in California “…and identified the main contributors to property loss.” Keeley and his colleagues found that steep slopes in canyons that create wind corridors were the best predictors of fire damage and that grassy fuels were more likely to spread the fire than woody fuels. Applying these observations to Mount Sutro, its topography is the biggest factor in the potential for wildfire and substituting the forest with grassland and scrub will result in more dangerous fuel loads.
Scripps Ranch fire, San Diego, 2003. All the homes burned, but the eucalypts that surrounded them did not catch fire.
UCSF and native plant advocates make allegations about the flammability of eucalypts by misrepresenting actual wildfires in the Bay Area. These allegations are addressed elsewhere on Million Trees, which we invite you to visit if you have more questions:
So, if the forest is healthy and destroying it does not reduce fire hazards, how can UCSF justify all the damage this project will do to the environment:
Releasing thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that are stored in the trees and significantly reducing the ability of the forest to sequester carbon in the future, thereby contributing to climate change.
Increasing air pollution by reducing the ability of the forest to absorb air pollutants.
Using pesticides to destroy the vegetation in the understory and preventing the trees that are destroyed from resprouting.
Destroying the food and cover of the birds and animals that live in the forest.
Eliminating the noise and wind barrier that protects UCSF’s neighbors
Increasing the risk of wildfire by eliminating the windbreak, reducing the moisture in the forest, and littering the forest with the dead logs and wood chips of the trees that are destroyed.
We can’t imagine why UCSF wants to destroy its forest. We understand why native plant advocates support this project because they are making the same demands all over the Bay Area. They want land managers to destroy non-native trees because they believe that destroying them will result in the return of native plants. The UCSF project makes no commitment to plant native plants after the forest is destroyed, with the exception of a few small areas and then only if “money is available.” Native plants will not magically emerge from the wood-chip tomb on the forest floor. Is it possible that UCSF shares the fantasy of native plant advocates that this destructive project will result in a landscape of grassland and chaparral which is the native landscape on Mount Sutro? Surely a scientific institution of such distinction knows better. Or it should.
Here are the things you can do to help us save this beautiful forest:
Sign the petition to save the forest. Available here.
Attend andspeak at a UCSF hearing about the project: Monday, February 25, 2013, 7 pm, Millberry Union Conference Center, 500 Parnassus Ave, Golden Gate Room
Submit awritten public commentby 5 PM, March 19, 2013 to UCSF Environmental Coordinator Diane Wong at EIR@planning.ucsf.edu or mail to UCSF Campus Planning, Box 0286, San Francisco, CA 94143-0286. Include your full name and address.
Write to the Board of Regents to ask why a public medical institution is engaging in such a controversial, expensive, and environmentally destructive act. Address: Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents, 1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607 Fax: (510) 987-9224
Subscribe to the website SaveSutro.com for ongoing information and analysis.
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(1) Eucalypt ecology: Individuals to ecosystems, by Jann Elizabeth Williams, John Woinarski ,Cambridge University Press, 1997
(2) Weatherspoon, C.P. and Skinner, C.N., “An Assessment of Factors Associated with Damage to Tree Crowns from the 1987 Wildfires in Northern California,” Forest Science, Vol. 41, No 3, pages 430-453
(3) Gould, J.S., et. al., Project Vesta: Fire in Dry Eucalyptus Forests, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and Department of Environment and Conservation, Western Australia, November 2007
(4) Alexandra Syphard, Jon E. Keeley, et. al., “Housing Arrangement and Location Determine the Likelihood of Housing Loss Due to Wildire.” PLOS ONE, March 18, 2012
We often hear people say that a walk in the woods is restorative, but is there any scientific evidence of this relationship between nature and our mental and physical well-being? Apparently there is. Here are brief summaries of the many studies that found such a relationship:
Patients recovering from gall bladder surgery recovered faster in a room with a natural view than those with a view of a brick wall. (1)
Mortality—particularly from cardio-vascular illness—in England was found to be lower amongst those living in “green” environments (after controlling for socio-economic status). (2)
In Japan, a positive association was found between survival rate amongst seniors and access to walkable green space. (3)
In Holland, those living in greener areas were less likely to be diagnosed with 15 of the 24 health outcomes examined. These results were strongest for anxiety and depression and for children. (4)
In New York City, children living in areas with more street trees were less likely to have asthma. (5)
Intervening variables probably influenced these outcomes. For example, since trees reduce air pollution by absorbing many of the pollutants in the air, that is a probable explanation for reduced asthma rates where there are more trees.
The survey of San Francisco’s urban forest conducted by the US Forest Service provides an estimate of how much pollution these trees are now removing from San Francisco’s air. This survey estimates that there are 669,000 trees in San Francisco. According to the survey, trees and shrubs in San Francisco are removing 260 tons of pollutants from the air every year: “Pollution removal was greatest for particulate matter less than 10 microns (PM10), followed by ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and carbon monoxide (CO).”
The US Forest Service survey also informs us that San Francisco has one of the smallest tree canopies in the country, covering less than 12% of it’s land. Only Newark, New Jersey has a slightly smaller tree canopy. We should not be surprised by the small size of our urban forest. It is an inhospitable climate for trees, which is why there were virtually no native trees in pre-settlement San Francisco. If we want trees in San Francisco, most will be non-native trees that tolerate the harsh conditions.
The relationship between the death of trees and the death of people
Now there is a new study which found a statistical relationship between the death of millions of trees and increased death rates of people living in the vicinity of those trees: “The Relationship between Trees and Human Health.” (6)
White Ash or American Ash. Creative Commons
This study reports that there are 22 species of ash trees native in North America and 7.5 billion ash trees in the country. In 2002, the emerald ash borer from East Asia was discovered in North America. It was first seen in Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario. Since its arrival, it is said to have killed 100 million ash trees.
The study estimated the correlation between emerald ash borer presence and county-level mortality from 1990 to 2007 in 15 US states while controlling for demographic variables. The study found an increase in mortality related to cardiovascular and lower-respiratory-tract illness (pneumonia) in counties infested with emerald ash borer. The relationship was stronger where the infestation of the emerald ash borer was greatest. The study concluded that “Across the 15 states in the study area, the borer was associated with an additional 6113 deaths related to illness of the lower respiratory system, and 15,080 cardiovascular related deaths.”
Atlantic magazine was impressed with these findings. Shortly after the study was published, Atlantic informed their readers in an article entitled, “When Trees Die, People Die.”
Sticking our heads in the sand
Unfortunately, native plant advocates choose to ignore the valuable functions our trees perform in our environment, including how they remove pollutants from the air we breathe. As we informed our readers recently, native plant advocates in San Francisco have convinced the University of California at San Francisco to destroy over 30,000 trees on their 61 acre open space reserve. UCSF does not plan to replace most of these trees.
The Draft Environmental Impact Report for this project says nothing about the probable increase in air pollution resulting from this destruction. In the legally mandated chapter regarding possible impact of the project on air quality, the Draft EIR speaks only of the fossil fuel pollution associated with the use of mechanized equipment needed to destroy these trees.
The University of California at San Francisco is a medical institution. It educates medical practitioners. It provides patient care and it conducts medical research. We find it deeply ironic that this medical institution would seemingly be unaware of the damage they will do to the health of its neighbors by destroying one of the few forests that exists in San Francisco. Or worse, they are aware of the damage this project will do to the public’s health, but choose to hide it.
Here are the things you can do to help us save this beautiful forest:
Sign the petition to save the forest. Available here.
Attend andspeak at a UCSF hearing about the project: Monday, February 25, 2013, 7 pm, Millberry Union Conference Center, 500 Parnassus Ave, Golden Gate Room
Submit awritten public commentby 5 PM, March 19, 2013 to UCSF Environmental Coordinator Diane Wong at EIR@planning.ucsf.edu or mail to UCSF Campus Planning, Box 0286, San Francisco, CA 94143-0286. Include your full name and address.
Write to the Board of Regents to ask why a public medical institution is engaging in such a controversial, expensive, and environmentally destructive act. Address: Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents, 1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607 Fax: (510) 987-9224
Subscribe to the website SaveSutro.com for ongoing information and analysis.
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(1) Ulrich, RS, “View through a window may influence recovery from surgery,” Science, 1984:224:420-421
(2) Mitchell, R, Popham, F, “Effects of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational study,” Lancet, 2008, 372:1655-1660
(3) Takona, R., et. al., “Urban residential environments and senior citizens’ longevity in megacity areas,” J Epidemiol Community Health, 2002, 56(2):9013-918
(4) Maas, J, et. al., “Morbidity is related to a green living environment,” J Epidemiol Community Health, 2009, 63(12):967-973
(5) Lovasi, GS, et.al., “Children living in areas with more street trees have lower prevalence of asthma,” J Epidemoil Community Health, 2008, 62(7):647-649
(6) Donavan, GH, et. al., “The Relationship between Trees and Human Health,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2013, 44(2):139-145
We are reprinting with permission Save Sutro’s announcement of the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the project to destroy over 30,000 trees on Mount Sutro in San Francisco.
Here are the things you can do to participate in the effort to save this beautiful forest:
Sign the petition to save the forest. Available here.
Attend andspeak at a UCSF hearing about the project: Monday, February 25, 2013, 7 pm, Millberry Union Conference Center, 500 Parnassus Ave, Golden Gate Room
Submit awritten public commentby 5 PM, March 19, 2013 to UCSF Environmental Coordinator Diane Wong at EIR@planning.ucsf.edu or mail to UCSF Campus Planning, Box 0286, San Francisco, CA 94143-0286. Include your full name and address.
Write to the Board of Regents to ask why a public medical institution is engaging in such a controversial, expensive, and environmentally destructive act. Address: Office of the Secretary and Chief of Staff to the Regents, 1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor, Oakland, CA 94607 Fax: (510) 987-9224
Subscribe to the website SaveSutro.com for ongoing information and analysis.
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Mount Sutro Forest has approximately 45,000 trees in the 61 acres belonging to UCSF, and designated as an open space reserve. This dense forest, with an estimated 740 trees per acre, a sub-canopy of acacia, an understory of blackberry and nearly a hundred other plant species, is functionally a cloud forest. All summer long, it gets its moisture from the fog, and the dense greenery holds it in. Where it isn’t disturbed, it’s a lush beautiful forest, providing habitat for birds and animals, and a wonderful sense of seclusion from urban sounds and sights.
THE TREE REMOVAL PLAN
UCSF now has published a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) on a project to remove over 90% of the trees on three-quarters of the area. Only 15 acres – on the steep western edge of the forest – will remain as they are. Tree-felling could start as early as Fall 2013.
Comments were due on March 4th, but because of the length and complexity of the document, neighbors asked for, and got, an extension. Comments are now due before March 19, 2013.]
On most of the forest (44 acres), UCSF plans to cut down trees to achieve a spacing of 30 feet between trees – the width of a small road – and mow down nearly all the understory habitat. On another 2 acres, they will space the trees 60 feet apart.
The stumps of the trees will be covered in black plastic, or else poisoned with Garlon to prevent re-sprouting. Eventually, this will kill the roots, which will start to decay. We’ll address some of these issues in more detail in later posts.
Right now, we want to talk about the number of trees that will be felled. A spacing of 30 feet between trees gives about 50-60 trees per acre. A spacing of 60 feet gives 12-15 trees per acre.
(The easiest way to think about it is that each tree occupies a 30 x 30 foot space, or 900 sq ft. An acre is 43,560 sq ft, so this would give 48.4 trees to an acre. The DEIR calculates it as 61 trees per acre, assuming each tree occupies a circle that’s 30 feet in diameter, 707 sq ft. But there’s no way to arrange circles without wasted spaces between them, so this doesn’t exactly work.)
So on 44 acres, they will retain maybe 50 trees per acre (or maybe fewer). On two more acres with a 60-ft spacing, they will retain 12-15 trees per acre. All the rest will be cut down. Even using the DEIR’s overly optimistic calculation, they will be felling some 31,000 trees. Our calculations are closer to 32,000. Either way, it’s a huge number.
That means that in the 46 acres where UCSF will be felling trees, they will remove more than 90% of the standing trees.
The DEIR says that they will start by cutting down trees that are dead or dying. Aside from their value as habitat (some birds like woodpeckers depend on them), there are not all that many of them in Sutro Forest, which despite everything that has been claimed to the opposite, is a thriving forest. Next in line will be trees with diameters under 12 inches, or roughly 3 feet around – as thick as an adult’s waist. Then they’ll start on the larger trees. Since it’s going to be 90% of the trees, we expect thousands of large trees to be removed.
IT GETS WORSE
However, this is not all. We expect further tree losses for four reasons:
Wind throw. Since these trees have grown up in a dense forest where they shelter each other, removing 90% of the trees exposes the remaining 10% to winds to which they’re not adapted. This can be expected to knock down a significant number of the trees not felled. Since the Plan only calls for monitoring the trees and felling any that seem vulnerable to wind-throw, it’s unlikely any vulnerable trees will be saved.
Physical damage. Damage done to the remaining trees in the process of removing the ones they intend to fell. With such large-scale felling, damage to the other trees is inevitable, from machinery, erosion, and falling timbers.
Pesticide damage. This forest has an intertwined, intergrafted root system. When pesticides are used to prevent resprouting on tree-stumps and cut shrubs and ivy, it is quite possible for it to enter the root system and damage remaining trees.
Loss of support. Compounding the effects of the wind-throw, the remaining trees will suffer from a lack of support as the root network dies with 90% of the trees being removed. This could destabilize them, and make them more likely to fail.
What remains will be a seriously weakened forest with a greater risk of failure and tree-loss, not the healthier forest that the DEIR claims. It is likely that the long-term impact of the Project will be the elimination of the forest altogether, and instead will be something like Tank Hill or Twin Peaks plus a few trees.
IMPLEMENTING THIS PLAN
The project is to be implemented in two phases. In the first phase, trees will be felled and the understory removed in four “demonstration areas” totaling 7.5 acres. They are shown on the map below in yellow, as areas #1-#4. (One of these, #4 “East Bowl”, is the two-acre area slated to have only 12-15 trees per acre.
One area (#5 on the map) is supposed to be a “hands off” area to demonstrate the untouched forest. However, a trail has already been punched through it in November 2011, even before the DEIR had been published.
During this phase, they would experiment with the 3 acres on the South Ridge, just above the Forest Knolls neighborhood. On 1 acre, they would use tarping to prevent regrowth of felled trees; on 1 acre, they would use pesticides, particularly Garlon; and 1 acre they would trim off sprouts by hand. They could also use pesticides on the understory “consistent with city standards” – presumably those of the Natural Areas Program (See article on NAP’s Pesticide Use.)
In the second year, the plan would be extended to the remaining forest, with the proviso that not more than a quarter of the forest would be “thinned” at “any given time
One of the arguments used by native plant advocates to defend the use of pesticides to eradicate non-native plants and trees is that this use is trivial in comparison to the volume of pesticides used by agriculture. It’s not an argument that makes sense to us. In fact, the opposite seems a stronger argument. In other words, if it is necessary to use pesticides to produce our food, all the more reason to avoid the use of pesticides for other purposes, because the harm done by pesticides is cumulative. Humans and other animals accumulate pesticides and other toxic substances in our bodies throughout our lifetimes so the fewer sources of toxic contamination, the better.
However, as we learn more about how pesticides are used by agriculture and how harmful pesticides are to us and other animals, the more we question the underlying premise. That is, we wonder if it really is necessary to use pesticides to produce our food. We have researched this question and we are reporting to our readers a brief history of pesticide use by agriculture, the consequences of this use, and finally, the growing evidence that present levels of pesticide use by agriculture isn’t necessary or justified.
The history of pesticide use by agriculture
The use of synthetic pesticides by agriculture began after World War II as a result of the development of new chemicals and the industry that produced them during the war. Prior to WW II, farmers generally purchased raw chemicals to formulate primitive pesticides because ready-to-use pesticides were not available. Here are some of the statistical trends that describe the use of pesticides by agriculture: (1)
Three-fourths of all pesticide use in the U.S. is by agriculture.
Pesticide use has been consistent at 2.6 to 2.7 pounds per acre of cropland per year for the past 25 years.
The volume of synthetic herbicide use has increased steadily since 1945, but the volume of insecticide use has declined after the 1980s as new low-dose products have been developed.
Fruits/nuts lead all other crops in terms of pesticide applications, with about 45 pounds of active ingredient per acre grown. Vegetables receive about half that rate, but the rate nearly doubled from 13.4 to 23.7 pounds per acre from 1988-89 to 1996-97.
The expenditures for pesticides by agriculture are another way to understand the increased use of pesticides and their importance to both the agricultural industry and the chemical industry: Farm expenditures on pesticides have increased from $296 million in 1929-31 to about $8.5 billion in 1995-97 in constant dollars. These are the factors that account for increased expenditures over seven decades: (1)
The amount of active ingredient in pesticides usage increased during that period three fold (from 230 to 782 million pounds).
The replacement of low cost pesticides such as sulfur and petroleum by more expensive formulated pesticides.
From 1974-76 to 1995-97, the average expenditure per pound of active ingredient nearly doubled.
The average expenditure per capita for agricultural pesticides was reported as $32.10 in 2003. That is, for every American, $32.10 was spent on pesticides for agriculture per year.
How does America’s pesticide usage compare to the rest of the world? (2)
World-wide expenditures on pesticides were $39.443 billion in 2007. The United States bought one-third of all of the pesticides sold in the world in 2007.
The U.S. used 25% of all herbicides and 22% of all pesticides used in the world in 2007.
Changes in farming practices in the United States
Cornfield. Creative Commons
Farming in the United States has changed since World War II. There are fewer farms and they are much larger than they were in the past. Most farming is no longer done by the owner of the land. This separation of farming and ownership has destroyed farming communities. We no longer find farmers congregating in local cafes swapping tips at 5 am. It has become an impersonal industry. (3)
Feedlot
Farming practices have changed to accommodate the industrial model. Farms now grow only one or two crops which substantially reduces the traditional practice of crop rotation. Animals are no longer found on farms because farming and raising livestock are now done separately. Farms now specialize.
Increased pesticide use is both cause and effect of these changes in farming practices. The drop in crop prices which made small farms unprofitable also motivated pesticide use to reduce labor costs. Pesticides were also a substitute for the crop rotations which reduced insect populations by disrupting the relationship between predator and host. Pesticides also compensated for the weed-suppressing effects of alfalfa grown to feed livestock now gone from the farm. The loss of animal manure on the farm required the substitution of chemical fertilizers. The manure which had been useful in the past is now a waste product that pollutes water from run-off from industrial-size feed lots. Separating farming from land ownership meant those using synthetic chemicals were no longer poisoning their own land and suffering the long-term consequences of their choices.
Traditional farming methods are equally effective and do less damage to the environment
The agriculture and chemical industries have been successful in convincing the public that the use of pesticides and associated farming methods were necessary to produce the food we need at the prices we are willing to pay. This fiction has thus far sustained an industry that is clearly damaging the environment and exposing the public to environmental pollution. There is growing evidence that traditional farming methods are equally effective and do less damage to the environment.
The results of a large-scale, long-term study comparing traditional farming methods with industrial farming methods were recently published. The study was conducted by the US Department of Agriculture, University of Minnesota, and University of Iowa on the research farm of the University of Iowa. They divided the research acres into three sectors and used three different farming methods to test and compare the efficacy of these methods: (4)
Conventional method: growing only corn and soybeans in a two-year rotation cycle, using synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.
Three-year rotation cycle, adding a crop of grains and clover.
Four-year rotation cycle, adding a crop of alfalfa plus livestock which was fed the alfalfa.
They conducted this test over a nine-year period from 2003-2011. Here are the results of their study:
The longer rotations of more crops produced higher yields than conventional methods: 4% more corn and 9% more soybeans. The longer rotations were also more profitable than conventional methods.
The longer rotations required less synthetic fertilizer than the conventional method. The amount of fertilizer required by the longer rotations also decreased over time as the soil improved during the study.
“The longer rotations reduced herbicide use by a whopping 88% with little increase in weediness.” (4)
Longer rotations substitute labor for other inputs, but without reducing profitability.
Why aren’t traditional farming methods adopted?
As stunning as this information is, it is actually not new: “In 1989, the National Research Council investigated alternative agricultural operations such as these and reported that U.S. farming could be shifted to more natural forms without losses to yields or profits, without significantly higher food prices, and with significant gains in health and environmental protection.” (3)
The Union of Concerned Scientists explains why the public is unaware of the superiority of traditional farming methods in their article about the new study done at the University of Iowa. They tell us that the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture reports that 53% of all food and agriculture research is conducted by the private sector. Clearly the agriculture and chemical industries would not fund a study that might conclude that conventional farming methods are harmful and/or uneconomical. So, the availability of funding for such studies is limited. (4)
In the event that such a study is conducted, what are the chances that it will be published? The study done at the University of Iowa was rejected for publication by the journals Science and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was finally accepted by PLOS One which is solely an on-line publication. (5)
Finally, in the event that a farmer learns that traditional farming methods are less harmful to the environment and equally productive, what are the chances that he will adopt those methods? The chances are small because the farmer probably does not own the land and is therefore unconcerned about polluting it and there is no cost to the farmer associated with polluting the environment. (5)
Pesticides are a public health risk whether they are used in agriculture or in our public parks. In both cases, the good news is that it isn’t necessary to use pesticides. If the public wants to reduce the public health risks of pesticide use, they will have to speak up. Those who use pesticides are not going to stop using them unless they are forced to do so.
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(1) Center for Integrated Pest Management, North Carolina State University, “Pesticide usage in the United States: Trends during the 20th Century,” February 2003. Available here.
(2) Environmental Protection Agency, “Pesticide Industry Sales and Usage. 2006 and 2007 Market Estimates.” Available here.
(3) Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream, Addison-Wesley, 1997
(4) Karen Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists, “Crop Rotation Generates Profits without Pollution (or, What Agribusiness Doesn’t Want You to Know,” October 11, 2012. Available here.
(5) Mark Bittman, “A Simple Fix for Farming,” New York Times, October 19, 2012. Available here.
Americans banned DDT in 1972 and PCBs a few years later. We pat ourselves on the back for banning these and other toxic chemicals, but should we? Recent research suggests that though they were banned forty years ago, they are still making us sick.
Although these chemicals were banned, the chemical industry continues to churn out new products about which we know little. Will we find out decades later that these new chemicals are just as likely to poison us as their predecessors? The history of their predecessors suggests that is a likely outcome.
Living with the consequences of our folly
The National Research Council recently published a report (1) that informed us that at least 126,000 sites throughout the country have contaminated groundwater that requires remediation. About 10% of those sites are considered “complex” which is a euphemism for the fact that the technology required to clean them up does not presently exist, meaning that restoration is unlikely to be achieved in the next 50 to 100 years. The report estimates the cost of cleaning up these sites will be from $110 billion to $127 billion. However, the report also acknowledges that both the estimate of the number of sites and the cost of the clean up are probably underestimates.
What are the consequences of living with toxic chemicals? Researchers at Brown University tested the blood of over 3,000 women between the ages of 16-49 for levels of mercury, lead, and PCBs. These three chemicals are known to harm brain development of fetuses and babies. The sample was designed to represent the national population of 134.4 million women of childbearing age. Here’s what they found:
“Nearly 23 percent of American women of childbearing age met or exceeded the median blood levels for all three chemical pollutants.” (2)
“All but 17.3 percent of the women aged 16 to 49 were at or above the median blood level for one or more of these chemicals, which are passed to fetuses through the placenta and to babies through breast milk.” (2)
“As women grew older, their risk of exceeding the median blood level in two or more of these pollutants grew exponentially to the point where women aged 30 to 39 had 12 times greater risk and women aged 40-49 [born before these chemicals were banned] had a risk 30 times greater than those women aged 16 to 19.” (2)
“Fish and alcohol consumption also raised the risk of having higher blood levels. Women who ate fish more than once a week during the prior 30 days had 4.5 times the risk of exceeding the median in two or more of these pollutants.” (2)
The body burden of multiple pollutants
While these findings are horrifying, they pale in comparison to the stunning finding that “One risk factor significantly reduced a woman’s risk of having elevated blood levels of the pollutants, but it was not good news: breastfeeding. Women who had breastfed at least one child for at least a month sometime in their lives had about half the risk of exceeding the media blood level for two or more pollutants. In other words, …women pass the pollutants that have accumulated in their bodies to their infants.” (2)
This particular study emphasizes the consequences of these pollutants for the children of the women who were tested. What about the women themselves? Surely these pollutants are also affecting their health and well-being. We turn to an outstanding book—Living Downstream– by an ecologist and cancer survivor (so far) for an answer to this question.(3)
First we must acknowledge how little we know about the connection between chemical pollution and its consequences to our health. The damage being done to our bodies by pollutants is not immediate nor is our exposure usually quantifiable which makes cause and effect very difficult to prove. Circumstantial evidence of the connection is therefore easily dismissed as anecdotal: women born in the United States between 1948 and 1958 had almost three times the rates of breast cancer in 1997 than their great-grandmothers did when they were the same age. Coincidentally, pesticide use in the United States had doubled between 1952 and 1997. (3, page 13)
Ironically, although DDT and PCBs were banned forty years ago, the connection between breast cancer and these pesticides was not discovered until after they were banned. The first study was conducted 4 years after DDT was banned on only 14 women with breast cancer. Significantly higher levels of DDT and PCBs were found in their tumors than in the surrounding healthy tissues. It took another 17 years to replicate that study on a statistically significant number of women: 14,200 women in New York City who had mammograms. The 58 women in that sample who were diagnosed with breast cancer had higher levels of DDT and PCB in their blood than women without breast cancer. (3)
It took nearly 50 years to prove that women with breast cancer have higher levels of DDT and PCB in their bodies than women without breast cancer. How long will it take us to learn what damage we are doing to ourselves with the pesticides that we are using now?
We aren’t testing for chemical pollution
Bacterial pollution at Pine Lake, San Francisco. February 2012. Courtesy Save Sutro
In San Francisco, the Department of Public Health tests the water bodies in the city for bacteria. In February 2012 they closed Pine Lake to the public because of bacterial levels. This incident prompted us to ask about San Francisco’s testing of water bodies. We learned that testing for bacteria is the ONLY test conducted in San Francisco. The watershed of Twin Peaks and Glen Canyon into Islais Creek was sprayed with pesticides over 30 times in 2011 by the Natural Areas Program, yet the water in the creek was not tested for pesticide levels. Islais Creek flows into the bay.
The need for more testing of water bodies was recently recognized by the European Science Foundation. (4) They conducted a poll of 10,000 citizens from 10 European countries which found that pollution is the top concern of the public among all concerns regarding the marine environment.
The public has good reason for their concern. There are presently about 30,000 chemicals available on the European market with production volume exceeding one ton per year. The volume of these chemicals entering rivers, streams, estuaries, and seas is increasing and potentially damaging marine organisms, ecosystems, and processes. Yet the testing of waters for these chemicals lags far behind the increasing number of chemicals being introduced to the environment.
We are on a pesticide treadmill
The tests required to put new chemicals on the market are minimal. The testing of pollution levels in the environment is also minimal. Yet, we continually introduce new pesticides about which we know little. Why? We speculate about the motivation for introducing new pesticides into the environment:
As the patents on pesticides expire, the manufacturers must introduce new pesticides in order to maintain their profit margins.
The longer a pesticide is in use, the more likely its target is to build up a resistance to it. Hundreds of weeds are resistant to available herbicides. Hundreds of insects are resistant to available insecticides.
The less the public knows about a pesticide, the less likely they are to be afraid of it and the less likely they are to object to its use..
Volume of pesticide use by San Francisco’s “Natural Areas Program.” Courtesy San Francisco Forest Alliance
Those who work for these projects and those who support them defend their use of pesticides in our public parks by telling us they are following the rules, and the rules guarantee no harm will be done by the pesticides. What they don’t seem to understand is that many of the pesticides—and other chemicals—that we now know are harmful to us and the animals that we live with, were legal when they were used. They were legal because we did not know yet that they were harmful.
It took decades for us to understand that the pesticides we were using were harmful. We see no reason to believe that the pesticides we are using now will not also prove to be harmful. By the time we learned how harmful they are, a great deal of damage had already been done. And although many were banned decades ago, they persist in the environment and in our bodies. Therefore, we object to the frivolous use of pesticides in our public parks. Using pesticides for the purpose of killing vegetation solely because it is non-native is irresponsible, given the potential damage they can do to humans and wildlife.
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(1) National Academy of Sciences, “Clean-up of some U.S. contaminated groundwater sites unlikely for decades,” November 8, 2012
(2) Marcella Remer Thompson, Kim Boekelheide, “Multiple environmental chemical exposures to lead, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls among child-bearing-aged women: Body burden and risk factors,” Elsevier, November 16, 2012
(3) Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream, Addison-Wesley, 1997
(4) European Science Foundation, “Chemical pollution in Europe’s Seas: The monitoring must catch up with the science,” March 21, 2012
We have been watching attempts to eradicate non-native plants and replace them with native plants on public lands in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 15 years. Few of these efforts have been successful. Non-native plants are repeatedly eradicated, then natives are planted. Within months the natives are dead and non-natives have returned.
The few projects that are successful are usually fenced, irrigated, and intensively planted and weeded. Few managers of public lands have the resources to achieve success. We have identified here on the Million Trees blog many reasons why attempts to return native plants to places in the Bay Area where they have not existed for over 100 years are often failures. Many of those reasons are related to the changes in the environment:
Higher levels of CO2 and associated climate change are promoting the growth of non-native plants. A USDA weed ecologist (1) studied the effects of higher temperatures and CO2 on the growth of non-natives (AKA weeds) by growing identical sets of seeds in a rural setting and an urban setting with higher temperatures and CO2 levels. Seeds grown in the urban setting produced substantially larger plants with much more pollen and therefore greater reproductive capability.
The growth of non-native annual grasses is encouraged by higher levels of nitrogen in the soil found in urban environments as a result of the burning of fossil fuels. (2)
The methods used by the projects undermine success
With the exception of the project on Mount Sutro in San Francisco, all of the projects use herbicides to eradicate the non-native plants and trees. Most of the non-native trees will resprout if their stumps are not sprayed immediately with herbicide and this must be done repeatedly to kill the roots of the trees. Many of these herbicides persist in the ground for years and probably suppress subsequent plant growth.
This problem is illustrated by a USDA study of the effects of a one-time aerial spraying of herbicides on grassland after 16 years. Although the herbicide is assumed to “dissipate” within a few years, the negative effect on the natives persisted 16 years later: “…the invasive leafy spurge may have ultimately increased due to spraying. Conversely, several desirable native herbs were still suffering the effects of the spraying,,,”
Anyone who is familiar with native plant restorations in the Bay Area knows that most are covered in a thick layer of mulch. When tree removals are required for a project, the mulch is usually composed of the chips of the trees that have been cut down. The projects of UC Berkeley for which UC is applying for FEMA funding (based on its claim that the clear-cutting of all non-native trees will reduce fire hazards) say specifically that the clear-cut areas will be covered with 24 inches of mulch composed of the chips of the destroyed trees.
The UC Berkeley projects also claim that native vegetation will return to these clear-cut areas without being planted based on an assumption that the seeds of native plants are dormant in the soil. One wonders how these seeds would be able to germinate when covered with 24 inches of mulch, or how the sprouts could penetrate it. Their proposal contains the fanciful suggestion that squirrels will plant the acorns of oaks in the mulch, which may be true of the oaks, but is an unlikely scenario for the many other native plants and trees which UC claims will populate their “restorations” without being planted.
Lack of horticultural knowledge is also handicapping these projects
One of 5 native oaks that survive on Tank Hill 10 years after 25 oaks were planted.
The managers of these projects often display a profound ignorance of basic horticultural knowledge. For example, we have seen them plant natives that require full sun in the deep shade of trees where they will not survive. We have seen them plant native trees that will not tolerate wind on the slopes of windy hills, only to watch the trees wither and die.
The managers of these projects are apparently unaware of the fact that hundreds of species of California native plants require fire to germinate their seeds and that most of the population will die within 5 years of the fire. (3) These are examples of such “pyroendemics” that sprout after a fire and are almost entirely gone within 5 years:
UC Berkeley and East Bay Regional Park District do not plan to plant any natives after eradicating non-native plants and trees. Their plans say that they expect seeds that are dormant in the ground to sprout when the ground is cleared of non-native plants. Unless they set fire to that ground, many seeds will not germinate and most of the plants that are germinated by that fire will disappear within 5 years unless another fire germinates another generation of plants.
UC Berkeley does not use prescribed burns on its property. East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD) conducts only a handful of small prescribed burns every year, which they claim are solely for the purpose of reducing fuel loads. In an article about prescribed burns conducted by EBRPD, the District’s “Resource Analyst” is quoted as saying, “’This is not a restoration project. Our primary goal is fuels reduction.’” (4) Ironically, both of these owners of public lands claim that their objective in the eradication of non-native plants is to reduce fire hazard, yet they are trying to reintroduce a landscape that is dependent upon fire for survival.
The Natural Areas Program in San Francisco has never conducted a prescribed burn and the DRAFT Environmental Impact Report for their plan says they do not intend to do so in the future.
New and growing evidence that soil is altered by plants
In addition to these issues which have contributed to the failed attempts to reintroduce an historical landscape to the San Francisco Bay Area, we are reporting today on a new issue. Plants can change the microbial composition of the soil, including mycorrhizal fungi which have symbiotic relationships with plants.
Researchers tested soil for changes in composition after just three growth cycles. Several species of non-native annual grasses were grown in native soils. They reported that the non-native species reduced the population and changed the composition of the mycorrhizal fungi, which reduced the ability of native species to establish and persist in modified soils. (5)
The Berkeley Meadow is a 72-acre native plant garden on a former garbage dump on landfill.
How many more decades and how much more taxpayers’ money must we spend on these projects before land managers acknowledge their failures?
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(1) Lewis Ziska, USDA Scientist, Beltsville, MD
(2) US Fish & Wildlife, Recovery Plan for Mission Blue butterfly
(3) Jon Keeley, et. al., Fire in Mediterranean Ecosystems, Cambridge University Press, 2012
(4) Wendy Tokuda, “Taming the Flames,” Bay Nature, July-September 2012
(5) Nicholas Jordan, et. al., “Soil-Occupancy Effects of Invasive and Native Grassland Plant Species Composition and Diversity of Mycorrhizal Associations,” Invasive Plant Science and Management, October-December 2012
We are reprinting with permission an article about bats in San Francisco’s parks from the San Francisco Forest Alliance. The article reports observations of bats as well as a study of bat populations in San Francisco’s parks. The study found that both the number of bats as well as the number of species of bats was related to the amount of forest edge in each park and the availability of water. The study reports that the forest edge contains more insects which are the primary food of the bats.
We are posting this story today because hundreds of trees in Glen Canyon Park in which bats and many other creatures live are being destroyed as we speak. Here is a video of the destruction which started yesterday and continues today, along with a narrative of how and why this needless destruction is happening. Please watch this moving video to understand why we are so committed to opposing the pointless destruction of our trees by extremist agendas that are damaging the environment and harming the animals that live in our open spaces. (Edited to Add: And here is a video showing the second day of the demolition project.)
The study did not find any relationship between the number of bats nor the number of species of bats with the percent of native plant coverage. We speculate—although the study does not—that the absence of correlation between bat populations and native plant populations suggests that there are not more insects in native plants than at the forest edge. Although native plant advocates claim that more insects are found in native plants, this is yet more evidence that this claim is not true.
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Bats are insect-eating machines. According to the USGS, “Bats normally eat about half their weight in flying insects each night.” So even for those who don’t find these night-flying mammals charming, it’s good to know there are bats among us.
San Francisco has at least four species of bats, all of which eat insects. According to research by Jennifer Krauel, which involved recording bat sounds to determine which species they were, Mexican Free-tailed bats are the most common. Parks with water – like Glen Canyon – also have Yuma Myotis bats. The other two species she found (more rarely) were Western Red Bats, and Little Brown Bats, and she found them in just a couple of places.
Her research indicated that “amount of forest edge and distance to water were the factors best explaining species richness and foraging activity.” It also showed that bats in San Francisco remain active through the winter and don’t hibernate or move elsewhere.
Glen Canyon’s bats are often visible at dusk. They’re most evident in the Fall, though they’ve been seen at other times of the year. (The pictures above are from February and April, those below from October.)
Here’s a note on bat-viewing from one visitor to Glen Canyon.
“It was late in the afternoon, and late in October. We were standing around the entrance to the park on Alms Rd. As dusk fell, bats emerged from the tall eucalyptus trees. Quite suddenly they were in the air right above us. I pulled out my camera, which is not really good in poor light but I tried to take some pictures anyway. Here’s one:
“They’re difficult to spot in the picture, but all those black smudges are bats that were moving too fast for my pocket-camera. Here’s the same picture, cropped, with the bats circled in yellow:
“They dispersed over the canyon. Here’s another picture from a few minutes later (and the one below it shows where the bats are).
“It was fantastic. I haven’t seen this many bats anywhere in San Francisco.”
LARGE TREES ARE IMPORTANT
We did a little research, and found a Stanford report that emphasized the importance of large trees to a particular species of bats, Yuma Myotis… bats that Krauel’s research had actually found in Glen Canyon Park.
“Yuma bats that forage in the preserve travel several miles to roost in large trees in Portola Valley and Woodside, suburban communities on the San Francisco Peninsula. The average diameter of the bats’ chosen trees is about a yard across — more than three times wider than the average tree in those areas.”
(The link to the abstract of the actual Stanford research paper is HERE.)
That’s the size of the big eucalyptus trees in Glen Canyon Park – including those that SFRPD wants to chop down.
WHY BATS MATTER
Bats are an important part of an eco-system, and fill a role few other creatures do: They hunt night-flying insects like mosquitoes that birds don’t catch because they’re sleeping. This is especially important now as West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease, has been spreading.
Having bats in a landscape contributes to its bio-diversity. All species of bats are protected in California.
(Some people are concerned that bats carry rabies – and it’s true no one should handle bats, especially grounded bats that may be sick, with their bare hands. But according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, less than 1% of bats are infected. [Click HERE to see their note.] The risk of getting rabies from a bat is less than the risk of being struck by lightning.)
HOW WILL SF RPD ENSURE THE PRESERVATION OF THE BATS?
We’re concerned about the impact of the planned tree removals on Glen Canyon’s bats.
All species of bats are protected, and removing the trees will impact their habitat by reducing the number of safe roosting spots, especially for Yuma Myotis bats that need both large trees and nearness to water.
The contractor will be chopping down the trees in the daytime. Bats roosting there are likely to be killed – if not in the process of the tree-felling, by being forced to fly blinded and confused in the daytime and fall prey to hawks, crows and ravens.
How is SF RPD going to ensure the protection of these bats?
And in what ways will felling large trees near the stream alter the ecology of the canyon?
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service recently announced that after a 25-year effort, they are finally giving up on the fantasy that they can relocate otters from the coast of California to one of the Channel Islands off the coast. From 1987 to 1991, they captured and relocated 140 otters in a futile attempt to create a “no-otter zone.” (1)
Only 40 otters remain near the Channel Islands. Fish & Wildlife claims that most of the otters returned to the coast. We’ll never know how many otters died in the process of relocation and subsequent repatriation. Clearly, even if they survived the pointless ordeal, they didn’t benefit from it.
Otters were nearly hunted to extinction because of their soft fur. Their population plummeted from 16,000 in the late 1700s to only 50 in the 1930s. They were listed by the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species in 1977 and their population has stabilized at about 2,800.
Because of their status as a legally protected species, U.S. Fish & Wildlife decided to move them based on their belief that they would be safer. They claimed to be concerned that the otters might be harmed by off-shore oil drilling. One wonders if their concern might have had more to do with the fishermen who say that otters are depriving them of their catch of abalone and sea urchins.
Fish & Wildlife published a study of their project in 2005, which acknowledged the failure of the effort, yet it took 7 years for them to get around to officially ending it.
Killing one animal to save another
Such attempts to control nature and the animals that live in it are the stock and trade of U.S. Fish & Wildlife as well as their colleagues in state agencies with a similar mission. Here are a couple of local examples.
Northern spotted owl
The spotted owl was given endangered species status over 25 years ago. Logging was substantially reduced in the Pacific Northwest in an effort to save the habitat of the spotted owl, with devastating consequences for the timber-based economy. Despite that effort, the population of spotted owls declined over 40% in the past 25 years.
So, now US Fish & Wildlife has selected a new scapegoat for the decline of the spotted owl population. They have decided that another owl, the barred owl, is the culprit. The barred owl is larger and its range is apparently expanding. So, in its infinite wisdom, Fish & Wildlife recently announced that it will begin shooting barred owls where they don’t “belong” based on their assumption that the spotted owl will benefit from the removal of its competitor. (2)
Carpet bombing with rodenticides
As crazy as the plan to shoot barred owls is, here’s a plan that strikes us even worse. In April 2011, U.S. Fish & Wildlife announced its intention to evaluate a plan to aerial bomb the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco with rodenticides to kill resident mice. (3)
Ashy storm petrel. Creative Commons
Here’s their logic for this strategy: the mice are eaten by burrowing owls which don’t “belong” on the Farallones, in their opinion. They claim that they don’t want to kill the burrowing owls because they acknowledge that they are just as rare in their historic range as the birds they claim will be saved by this bizarre plan. They claim that when the burrowing owls eat all the mice, they start eating the eggs of the ashy storm petrel which is an equally rare bird, but it “belongs” on the Farallones, so its perceived needs trump those of the equally rare burrowing owl. They believe that if the mice are killed, the burrowing owls will return to where Fish & Wildlife believes they belong.
There is so much wrong with this plan that it’s difficult to know where to start. The Farallones are an important bird sanctuary, home to many species of birds many of which are rare. Can Fish & Wildlife guarantee that the burrowing owl is the only species of bird that will eat the poisoned mice? How many burrowing owls will die from eating the poisoned mice? If they don’t die, won’t they eat even more eggs of the storm petrel? Will the death of the mice deprive other species of birds of their food? As the rodenticide washes off the islands into the ocean, will it kill the marine life around the island? Will it enter the food web of the entire island, killing unintended targets such as the birds that eat fish?
As crazy as this plan sounds, it is not a new strategy for Fish & Wildlife. In 2008, 46 tons of rodenticides were dumped on an island in the Aleutian chain off the coast of Alaska. That carpet bombing is known to have killed a total of 420 birds, including 40 bald eagles. (4)
Just as humans have moved around the Earth in search of more hospitable conditions—more food, better climate, less competition—animals have done the same. Now humans have decided that the animals must stay put. Wherever they existed in the historic past is where they “belong.” When animals move, man has decided they are “invasive” and they must be stopped.
Man’s war on invasive species is accelerating because as the climate changes there is greater pressure on animals to move to find the food and habitat they need and on plants to find suitable growing conditions. Humans are apparently unwilling or unable to do anything to stop climate change, yet they are willing and able to try to prevent plants and animals from adjusting to climate change.
As senseless as it seems to deprive plants and animals of their survival mechanisms, this harmful approach has been immortalized in U.S. law by the Endangered Species Act.The ESA is about 40 years old and was enacted at a time when the consequences of climate change were largely unknown. It defines endangered species as any plant or animal that becomes rare within its historic range. So, for example, if an animal or plant moves in response to climate change, it is often designated as an endangered species even though it may be plentiful in its new home to which it is better adapted. And Fish & Wildlife comes to its “rescue” by trying to force it to return to its historic range to which it is no longer adapted.
As we pondered this conundrum, we were reminded of a television commercial in 1970. Mother Nature is telling stories to her animal friends in the forest, when someone hands her a tub of margarine to taste. She smiles sweetly and congratulates herself on how delicious butter is. She is informed that it isn’t butter, but rather an artificial substitute. She rises from her throne, raises her voice to scold, shoots lightning from her fingers and warns us, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” (see this charming video here).
Will nature punish humans for their refusal to allow it to change as needed to survive? No, not literally, of course, but perhaps we will suffer the unintended consequences of our arrogant attempts to control natural processes we do not understand.
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(1) Peter Fimrite, “Feds scrap ‘dumb idea’ of relocating otters,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 2012
(2) Associated Press, “U.S. plans to kill Barred owls to save spotted owls,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 29, 2012
(3) Kelly Zito, “Pesticide bombing of Farallones mice stirs debate,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 12, 2011
(4) Peter Fimrite, “Concern over fallout of bombing mice,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2011
In recent weeks we have had a discouraging barrage of comments on Million Trees from someone who does not believe that the climate has changed. We responded within the limitations of our research tools because such disbelief is an obstacle to the public policy needed to address the problem. We are now pleased to inform our readers that such disbelief is dwindling and that only a small minority of Americans continues to disbelieve in the reality of climate change.
The majority (57%) of those who think the temperature has increased are extremely or very sure about it, while only 31% of those who don’t believe the temperature has increased are extremely or very sure about their opinion. In other words, a small minority of Americans doesn’t believe that the climate has changed and they aren’t as confident about their opinion as those who do believe that the climate has changed
Also, most (80%) Americans who think the climate has changed, consider it a serious problem and a growing majority (57%) think the U.S. government should do something about global warming.
Trusting our eyes and ears
The most fascinating aspect of the study was that science apparently does not deserve the credit for this growing acknowledgement of the reality of climate change. Only 31% of those surveyed said they “trust the things scientists say about the environment” completely or a lot. This is actually a small decrease from the percentage (32%) of Americans who said that at the time of the last survey in 2009.
Source: NASA
Apparently, the increasing numbers of Americans who now believe in the reality of climate change are primarily using their own eyes and ears to reach this conclusion. Jon Kronick, social psychologist and pollster at Stanford University, advised the Associated Press on the poll. He said of those who have become believers in the past two years, “They don’t believe what the scientists say, they believe what the thermometers say…Events are helping these people see what scientists thought they had been seeing all along.” (1)
Taking action
We are encouraged by this news. We hope that it will give our politicians the courage to start taking action to address the causes of climate change. An easy and painless place to start is to quit destroying the trees that are storing tons of carbon solely because they aren’t native. When those trees are destroyed, the stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide as the wood decays. Carbon dioxide is the predominant greenhouse gas which is contributing to climate change.
Creative Commons
Happy New Year! May 2013 bring to the San Francisco Bay Area saner, less destructive management of our public lands. Thank you for your readership in 2012.
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(1) Associated Press, “More in U.S. believe in global warming,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 15, 2012.
Conservation Sense and Nonsense 