Category: Climate Change

Action Opportunity: Draft of Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan

The City of Oakland applied for a FEMA pre-disaster mitigation grant in 2005 to clear-cut all non-native trees on 122 acres of city owned property in the East Bay hills, based on the claim that it would reduce fire hazards.  FEMA cancelled that grant in September 2016 in settlement of a lawsuit against the project. 

The City of Oakland began the process of writing a new plan to reduce fire hazards in the hills by hiring a consultant to develop a Vegetation Management Plan in November 2016.  The new plan will be much more comprehensive than the original plan, covering 1,925 acres of open space and 308 miles of roadside in Oakland.  Oakland also made a commitment to an open public process to develop the plan.  A survey of public opinion was conducted and two public meetings were held in 2017. 

A draft of Oakland’s Vegetation Management Plan is now available HERE.  There are detailed maps of the areas that will be covered by the plan.  We suggest you take a look at those maps to determine what effect the plan will have on your neighborhood and the parks and open spaces you visit.

 A public meeting about the draft was held on May 23, 2018 and written public comments will be accepted until June 11, 2018. Comments may be submitted in the following ways: Download comment card; Email VMPcomments@oaklandvegmanagement.org; Mail:  266 Grand Avenue, Suite 210, Attn: Ken Schwarz, Oakland, CA 94610.  We hope you will participate in this public process that will determine the future of much of the landscape in the Oakland hills.

We are publishing an excerpt of the written public comment of one of our readers, which we hope will help you understand the issues and to write a comment of your own.  Asterisks indicate where some detail has been omitted.  You can see the entire public comment HERE: Oakland Draft Vegetation Management Plan – public comment

 Million Trees

Ken Schwarz
Horizon Water & Environment
266 Grand Avenue, Suite 210
Oakland, CA 94610

I am broadly supportive of the Draft Vegetation Management Plan (DVMP) because:

  • It will create defensible space around structures in Very High Wildfire Hazard Severity Zones.
  • It will clear easily ignited vegetation on roadsides in places where fire hazards are greatest.
  • It sets priorities for implementation in places where fire hazards are greatest.

These three elements of the plan will reduce fire hazards while limiting destruction of trees and vegetation and being fiscally responsible.

My public comment will identify some weaknesses in the plan and make specific suggestions for improving the plan with the goal of minimizing fire hazards as well as collateral damage to the environment.

The 300-foot “buffer” zone is unnecessarily destructive.  California law requires 100-feet of defensible space around structures.  The DVMP proposes extending defensible space along roadsides and around structures to 300-feet, the length of a football field.  Such a wide clearance of vegetation greatly exceeds California fire code and is therefore unnecessarily destructive.  In a recently published op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, two academic scientists confirm our understanding of how to keep our communities safe:  “The science is clear that the most effective way to protect homes from wildfire is to make homes themselves more fire-safe, using fire-resistant roofing and siding, installing ember-proof vents and exterior sprinklers, and maintaining “defensible space” within 60 to 100 feet of individual homes by reducing grasses, shrubs and small trees immediately adjacent to houses. Vegetation management beyond 100 feet from homes provides no additional protection.”[1]

The buffer zone should be eliminated, reduced in size, or reduced to Priority 3 so that it is less destructive and costly. 

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The description of herbicide use in the draft is unnecessarily vague, because it provides no information about what herbicides will be used and the health and environmental hazards of specific herbicides.  Nor does it explain how, where, or why herbicides will be used.

Instead of providing that information, the plan describes the public’s opposition to herbicides as “social stigma,” which implies that our opposition is a baseless prejudice against herbicides.  In fact, our opposition is based on scientific information about the dangers of herbicides and those dangers must be acknowledged by the final version of this plan.

The dangers of herbicides are well documented and well known. ****** Here is a brief list of some of the most recent studies that conclude that glyphosate products are very dangerous to the health of animals and humans:

  • The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. The IARC is composed of an international team of scientists convened by the World Health Organization of the United Nations.
  • The State of California responded to that news by requiring all glyphosate products sold in the State to be labeled as carcinogens. The State was sued several times by the manufacturer of Round Up—Monsanto–to prevent the labeling requirement.  The State of California recently won in the state court of appeals[2].  Unless Monsanto appeals and wins in the State Supreme Court, all glyphosate products will be labeled as carcinogens in California.
  • US National Toxicology Program recently conducted tests on formulated glyphosate products for the first time. In the past, tests were conducted only on the active ingredient…that is glyphosate alone. The formulated products that are actually applied as weed killers contain many other chemicals, some of which are not even known. The head of the National Toxicology Program Laboratory, told The Guardian newspaper the agency’s work is ongoing but its early findings are clear on one key point. “We see the formulations are much more toxic. The formulations were killing the cells. The glyphosate really didn’t do it,” DeVito said. A summary of the NTP analysis said that “glyphosate formulations decreased human cell ‘viability’, disrupting cell membranes. Cell viability was ‘significantly altered’ by the formulations, it stated.”[3]
  • The Global Glyphosate Study is being conducted by six scientific institutions all over the world. ******* This international consortium of scientific institutions recently published preliminary resultsof their study: “The results of the short-term pilot study showed that glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) were able to alter certain important biological parameters in rats, mainly relating to sexual development, genotoxicity and the alteration of the intestinal microbiome, at the ‘safe’ level of 1.75 mg/kg/day set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).”[4]  In other words, at doses deemed safe by the US EPA, significant negative health effects were found in animals used in testing.
  • The German Agriculture Minister announced on April 17, 2018 that she was finalizing a draft regulation to end use of the weed-killer glyphosate in household gardens, parks and sports facilities, and to set “massive” limits for its use in agriculture.[5] Germany is one of 25 countries that have issued outright bans on glyphosate, imposed restrictions or have issued statements of intention to ban or restrict glyphosate-based herbicides, including Roundup  Countless US states and cities have also adopted such restrictions. [6]
  • Marin Municipal Water District quit using all pesticides in 2015. In a letter to East Bay Municipal Utilities District, a member of the Board of MMWD explains why that decision was made.  (Attachment 2)  MMWD hired scientists at UC Davis to conduct a study of the biological persistence of glyphosate.  They found that glyphosate persisted for at least 84 days when applied to foliage, and perhaps longer after the study ended.

Garlon with the active ingredient triclopyr is more toxic than glyphosate.  Garlon is the herbicide that is used to prevent eucalyptus and acacia from resprouting when the trees are destroyed.  Its use was also specifically allowed for that purpose by Oakland City Council Resolution 79133.   Although the DVMP does not mention its use, we assume—unless specifically told otherwise by the final version of the VMP—that Garlon will be used to control resprouts.

  • Triclopyr is an organochlorine product, in the same family of pesticides as DDT, which was banned in the US in 1972. Organochlorine products bioaccumulate and are very persistent in the environment.  Nearly 50 years after it was banned, DDT is often found in the ground, in the water, and in people’s bodies.[7]
  • Organochlorine products are endocrine disrupters. The Pesticide Research Institute did a risk assessment of triclopyr for the California Invasive Plant Council.  They reported that triclopyr “poses reproductive and developmental risks to female applicators.” [8]
  • The Pesticide Research Institute did a risk assessment of triclopyr for Marin Municipal Water District in which they informed MMWD that birds and bees are both harmed by triclopyr and mycorrhizal fungi in the soil are damaged by triclopyr.[9]

More research has been done on Round Up than on Garlon because it is more widely used.  It is more widely used, partly because it is actually less dangerous than Garlon (it is also a non-selective plant-killer).  Because of the toxicity of Garlon, several public land managers in the Bay Area have made a commitment to controlling resprouts without using herbicides: ******** Marin Municipal Water District,  Marin County Parks and Open Space, UC San Francisco, and East Bay Municipal Utilities District (the supplier of our drinking water).

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There is no evidence that eucalyptus is inherently more flammable than native trees. ******** Eradicating non-native trees and shrubs will not reduce fire hazards because they are not inherently more flammable than the native vegetation that will remain.  Therefore, the reduction of fuel loads must be based on flammability, NOT the nativity of the flammable species.  The nativity of plant species is irrelevant to reducing fire hazards and must be abandoned as criterion for destroying plants and trees.

Vegetation that burned in the North Bay fires of October 2017 was almost exclusively native. Source: Bay Area Open Space Council

I support the thinning of eucalyptus, acacia, Monterey pine and cypress to reduce fuel loads, as long as the canopy is intact.  ******** When the canopy is intact, the forest floor is shaded which retains moisture that retards ignition and suppresses the growth of easily ignited weeds. The DVMP proposes to thin the targeted non-native trees to distances of 35 feet, creating gaps in the canopy of 10 feet within the 300-foot “buffer zone.”  The distance between the trees must be reduced to 25 feet to maintain the canopy.  In addition to reducing fire hazards, maintaining the canopy will also be less destructive and will reduce the amount of stored carbon released into the atmosphere.

Tilden Park, October 2016. East Bay Regional Park District has thinned this area to distances of 25 feet between remaining trees. The forest floor is still shaded because the canopy is intact.

My greatest disappointment in the DVMP is its proposal to remove all individual non-native trees where they presently exist in native vegetation outside the “buffer zone.” ******** Removing non-native trees in riparian areas and in redwood groves as proposed by the DVMP is not fire hazard mitigation because fire hazards in those areas are minimal.

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Furthermore, destroying healthy trees damages the trees that remain because the herbicide that is used to prevent eucalyptus and acacia from resprouting is mobile in the soil and it is known to damage mycorrhizal fungi in the soil that is essential to the health of the native trees.  ******* It is not possible to destroy isolated trees without damaging neighboring trees in close proximity. ****** Studies show that eucalyptus trees in native forests are not doing any damage to neighboring trees. ********

If individual non-native trees within native vegetation are not doing any environmental damage and do not increase risk of fire they should not be destroyed because destroying them WILL damage native vegetation.  Please leave them alone!

 Putting the DVMP into the long-term big picture

Finally, I suggest that we all take a step back from the details of the DVMP and consider the proposal in the context of the entire environment.  The final VMP must minimize damage to the environment while mitigating fire hazards because:

  • The climate has changed and it will continue to change. When the climate changes, the vegetation changes.  That is one of the axioms of ecology and it will continue to be.  If non-native plants and trees are better adapted to the current and anticipated climate, we should abandon futile attempts to force plants to live where we want them to live.
  • If we want trees in California, we must look to the future, not the past. 130 million native conifers have died in California since 2010. 5-10 million oaks in California have been killed by Sudden Oak Death. The future of redwoods in California is in jeopardy because they require a lot of water and they don’t tolerate wind.

********************

A climate change specialist at the US Forest Service tells us in a recent study that native tree species are the most vulnerable to climate change. USFS found that native trees are more vulnerable to the changes in temperature, precipitation, growing season, and other effects of accumulating greenhouse gases. The assessment found that 88 percent of invasive tree species are expected to prove resilient in the changing climate, ranked with low vulnerability, compared to 20 percent of natives.[10]

  • We are contributing to climate change by destroying healthy trees that are storing tons of carbon that will be released into the atmosphere as the destroyed trees decay. The primary reason why wildfires are more frequent and more intense is because of the warmer, drier climate.  Therefore destroying more trees than necessary increases fire hazards because we are exacerbating climate change by destroying more trees than necessary.
  • It is a fiction that destroying trees will release less carbon than the wildfires imagined by those who demand their destruction. According to a recently completed study at Oregon State University, “wildfire is not the biggest source of climate-warming carbon dioxide in Oregon forests—logging and wood products are.”[11]

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The trees that will be destroyed in Oakland will not be used as lumber, which means they will contribute even more carbon to the atmosphere.  Timber that is used for building retains its stored carbon until the building deteriorates or is destroyed.

  • The herbicides that are used to destroy vegetation and prevent trees from resprouting damage the soil and pose serious health risks to animals and humans. The more vegetation and trees the VMP destroys, the greater the damage caused by herbicides.  Therefore, we must minimize the amount of vegetation that is destroyed as much as possible if herbicides are used.

We achieve nothing if the damage we do to the environment and to ourselves is greater than real or imagined reduction in fire hazards.

Thank you for your consideration.

Resident of
Oakland, California
June 2018

[1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hanson-miller-governor-fire-orders-20180525-story.html

[2] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/State-can-label-widely-used-herbicide-as-possible-12849147.php

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/08/weedkiller-tests-monsanto-health-dangers-active-ingredient

[4]https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/05/22/monsanto-in-epic-fail-with-attempted-attack-on-global-glyphosate-study/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gmos_and_pesticides_global_breaking_news&utm_term=2018-05-23#.WwhUfkgvyUl

[5] https://sustainablepulse.com/2018/04/17/germany-moving-ahead-with-plans-to-restrict-weed-killer-glyphosate/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=gmos_and_pesticides_global_breaking_news&utm_term=2018-04-18#.WwhWWUgvyUl

[6] https://www.baumhedlundlaw.com/toxic-tort-law/monsanto-roundup-lawsuit/where-is-glyphosate-banned/

[7] https://www.sciencealert.com/ddt-consistently-found-in-humans-study

[8] https://www.pesticideresearch.com/site/pri-resource-centers/weed-management-resource-center/herbicide-risk-comparisons/workers/

[9]http://www.marinwater.org/DocumentCenter/View/254/HRA_Chap4_Triclopyr_1_1_2010

[10] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/04/15/hug-your-native-trees-goodbye-thanks-to-climate-change/#4ad4a4176abd

[11] https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-change-timber-is-oregons-biggest-carbon-polluter

Nativist fantasies about oaks

San Francisco Bay Estuary Institute is promoting a “restoration” project they call “Re-Oaking California.”  The project is planning to plant oak trees in California cities, in particular.  They have published an elaborate brochure describing their project and they have published a brief description in the quarterly newsletter of California Releaf, the biggest non-profit advocacy organization for California’s urban forest.  Locally, they have made a presentation to Oakland’s Urban Forestry Forum and to the Bay Area Open Space Council.  The Open Space Council convenes meetings of hundreds of public land managers from all over the Bay Area.  In other words, the re-oaking project is being aggressively sold to those who determine the future of our public lands.  Therefore, it is a project that deserves our attention.

First, I must say that I love oaks.  I decided to buy the home I now live in before I stepped inside, because of the beautiful coast live oak in the front yard.  The loss of that tree would be devastating both emotionally and to the value of my home.

However, my opinion of the re-oaking project is based on the reality of climate change and its implications for the future of California’s urban forest.  Although the project brochure acknowledges that Sudden Oak Death has killed many oaks in California, it does not accurately reflect the scale of that epidemic.

Sudden Oak Death

Sudden Oak Death (SOD) killed 5 million oak trees in California from 1994 to 2015, when that number was reported by a study. (1)  The study also said that the SOD epidemic could not be stopped and would eventually kill all oaks in California.  More recent estimates are that 5 to 10 million oaks have been killed by SOD. (2)

Tan oaks killed by SOD. US Forest Service

SOD is caused by a pathogen that is spread by rain and wind.  We had a great deal of rain in 2016 and 2017, which greatly increased the spread of SOD infections.  In the past, SOD has been mostly confined to wildlands.  Now it is found in many urban areas, including San Francisco and the East Bay.  In the most recent SOD survey done in spring 2017, new infections were found on the UC Berkeley campus, the UC arboretum, and the San Francisco Presidio. (2)

The scientist at UC Berkeley who conducts the annual survey of SOD infections reports that “A dramatic increase this year in the number of oaks, manzanita and native plants infected by the tree-killing disease known as sudden oak death likely helped spread the massive fires that raged through the North Bay…” (3)

Brice McPherson, Associate Specialist in Organisms and the Environment at UC Berkeley, has been studying SOD infections in Marin County and the East Bay.  He made a presentation in November 2017 about the current status of SOD infections in East Bay parks.  Wildcat Canyon is the park in which Mr. McPherson has most recently inventoried infected and dead trees.  In 2017, Mr. McPherson found that 16.2% of coast live oaks were infected and 20.5% were dead.  The number of dead and dying oaks in Wildcat Canyon is staggering:  18,750 oaks are infected and 21,360 oaks are dead.  McPherson predicted that 50% of all oaks in East Bay parks would be dead within 20 years, depending upon the amount of rainfall.

Native bay trees are considered the main vectors of the pathogen that causes SOD.  The re-oaking project therefore suggests that SOD infections in urban areas can be avoided if bay trees aren’t planted in proximity to the oaks.  However, the source of the SOD infection recently found in the Presidio in San Francisco is said to have been rhododendrons, which should remind us that bays are not the only vectors of the SOD pathogen.  In fact, the USDA reports 46 confirmed hosts for the SOD pathogen, including both native and non-native shrubs and trees. (4)  Many of the hosts are commonly found in urban gardens.

Climate change kills oaks in Southern California

Sudden Oak Death infections have not been found south of San Luis Obispo.  However, that does not mean that oaks in Southern California are any less threatened by changes in the environment.  Several land managers in Southern California made presentations at the recent conference of the California Native Plant Society in Los Angeles about massive die-offs of oaks in Southern California.  Here is an example from the Santa Monica Mountains:  “Over 9,000 coast live oak and 114,000 riparian trees died from [2014 to 2017]…” (5) These deaths were caused by extremely high temperatures to which the trees are not adapted, associated drought and new insect predators, such as shot-hole borer.

The unsuitable climate conditions in Southern California are the anticipated climate conditions of Northern California.  Carbon storage in our urban forest is one of the few tools we have to combat climate change.  Although coast live oaks store carbon, they are not particularly long lived.  Their life expectancy is from 125 to 250 years in suitable conditions. (6) Planting trees with no long-term future is not a responsible response to climate change.  The US Forest Service predicts coast live oaks will be virtually gone in California by 2060:

Wildlife in our urban forest

Although oaks are clearly useful to wildlife, they are not significantly more useful than other urban trees.  Here are three studies conducted in the East Bay that compare the biodiversity of animal life in oak woodland to other tree species:

Dov Sax (Brown University) studied six forest plots of about 1 hectare each in Berkeley, CA, three of eucalypts and three of native oaks and bays.  The sites were not contiguous, but were selected so they were of similar elevation, slope, slope orientation, and type of adjacent vegetation.  He conducted inventories of species in spring and autumn.  He counted the number of species of plants in the understory, species of invertebrates (insects) in samples of equal size and depth of the leaf litter, species of amphibians, species of birds, species of rodents.  This is what he found:

“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.”  (7)

In 1975, Professor Robert Stebbins (UC Berkeley) was hired by East Bay Regional Park District to conduct a survey of vertebrate animals living in several parks (Sibley, Chabot, and Tilden). The forest types that Professor Stebbins studied were redwood, Monterey pine, eucalyptus, and oak-bay woodland as well as grassland and dry chaparral. Here is how he described his findings:

  • “Redwood and Monterey pine habitats are notably depauperate in vertebrate species.
  • “Eucalyptus habitat is far richer in vertebrates than either redwood or Monterey pine and vies with ‘dry’ chaparral and grassland in species diversity and ‘attractiveness.’
  • “Oak-bay woodland is the richest in both species and ‘attractiveness.’
  • “Grassland is a little less rich in species and ‘attractiveness’ than the other native habitats, but only slightly richer than eucalyptus habitat.” (8)

A wildlife study of Angel  Island prior to the removal of most eucalyptus trees found:

“The total number of birds observed in native stands was similar to that observed in eucalyptus stands…Few small animals were caught in any stand; captures were in native stands five Norway Rats…in eucalyptus stands one Norway Rat…in grassland one Norway Rat and six California Voles…about three times as many salamanders were located in eucalyptus stands compared to native stands.” (9)

As David Ackerly said in response to a question at the recent conference of the California Native Plant Society, “There are few mutually exclusive relationships in nature.”  It is a risky evolutionary strategy.  If an animal is dependent upon a single plant species, it won’t survive in the absence of that plant species unless it is capable of adapting to available vegetation.  Despite the handful of examples given in the re-oaking brochure, wildlife in California is using non-native vegetation as often as native vegetation.

California’s urban forest is not native

The suggestion that California’s cities could be “refugia” for our threatened oaks is wishful thinking.  As Matt Ritter tells us in his book about California’s trees (A Californian’s Guide to the Trees Among Us), only 6% of California’s urban trees are native to California.  Thirty-three non-profit tree advocacy organizations in California (including California Releaf) told us why in their letter to California’s Natural Resource Agency about the Urban Greening grant program:  “Native trees are generally not suited to urban conditions.  They have difficulty adapting to the urban environment, thereby substantially reducing survivability…As an example, the approved list of street trees for the City of San Francisco includes no trees native to San Francisco.  In Oakland, two of the 48 allowed species are native.”

The future of California’s urban forest

So, what is the future of California’s urban forest?  Scientists with sufficient knowledge of trees are trying to answer that question and we would be wise to pay attention to their advice.  Greg McPherson gave a presentation in Davis on March 10, 2018 about “Growing Resilient Forests.”  McPherson’s research at the US Forest Service about the economic value of ecosystem services provided by urban trees (carbon storage, reduction of energy use for heat/cooling, increased property values, removal of particulate pollution, etc.) has been vital to those who defend our urban forest.

McPherson lives in Davis, where he is conducting a 20-year study about the urban forests of the future, i.e., those that will survive predicted changes in the climate. Three years into the study, his research team has made some preliminary recommendations for the trees that are likely to survive anticipated changes in the climate.  None is native to Northern California. Most are foreign, particularly Australian.  (10)

Nativists deny reality of climate change

When the climate changes, the vegetation changes, moves, or dies.  That has been one of the few axioms in nature since life has existed on Earth and we would be wise to assume that it will continue to be true.  The future of California’s urban forest depends on our willingness to plant trees that are adapted to the climate and to the anticipated climate.  Climate change is killing California’s trees and nativism is preventing us from replacing them with suitable trees.

  1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160502161111.htm
  2. “Disease killing oaks spreads,” East Bay Times, October 24, 2017
  3. “Disease in trees pointed at in fires,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 20, 2017
  4. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/pram/downloads/pdf_files/usdaprlist.pdf
  5. http://www.rcdsmm.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Drought-and-Invasive-Beetle-impacts-RCDSMM-1.2.18.pdf
  6. http://ucanr.edu/sites/oak_range/Californias_Rangeland_Oak_Species/Coast_Live_Oak/
  7. 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. http://elkhornsloughctp.org/uploads/files/1109813068Sax2002.pdf
  8. Robert Stebbins, “Use of Habitats in the East Bay Regional Park by Free-living Vertebrate Animals,” August 1975. In “Vegetation Management Principles and Policies for the East Bay Regional Park District,” June 1976 (this unpublished study is available on request)
  9. “Focused Environmental Study, Restoration of Angel Island Natural Areas Affected by Eucalyptus,” California State Parks and Recreation, July 1988, pg 96-97.
  10. http://climatereadytrees.ucdavis.edu/

Nativist fantasies about redwoods

I love redwood trees.  I doubt there is anyone who doesn’t.  So, you might wonder why I am going to tell you why planting more of them in our public parks in the San Francisco Bay Area isn’t a good idea.  Read on…

History of redwoods in California

The native range of redwoods is very small.  According to the US Forest Service, “The redwoods occupy a narrow strip of land approximately 450 miles in length and 5 to 35 miles in width.  The northern boundary of its range is…in the Siskiyou Mountains within 15 miles of the California-Oregon border.  The southern boundary of redwood’s range is…in the Santa Lucia Mountains of southern Monterey County, California.” 

Many redwoods were destroyed for timber and many to clear land for other purposes, such as roads, agriculture, and development.  However, the primary reason for its small native range is the demanding horticultural conditions required by redwoods.  They don’t tolerate wind, particularly salty wind from the ocean.  They require a lot of water.  Where there isn’t enough rain, summer fog compensates for inadequate water.  They need well drained soil and plenty of space to grow to their prodigious size of over 200 feet.

Because of these horticultural requirements, there weren’t many redwood trees in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to settlement by Europeans in the 19th century.  There were no redwoods in San Francisco where the soil was sandy and strong wind from the ocean is salty.  In the East Bay, the pre-settlement redwood forest was less than 5 square miles. (1) In fact, only 2.3% of pre-settlement Oakland was forested and redwoods were a small fraction of the tree cover. (2)

Trying to defy nature

Despite their demanding horticultural requirements and the historical evidence of these limitations, redwoods are often planted where they cannot survive because they are beautiful, popular, and “native” to California.  As the climate changes, rising temperatures and drought have killed many of the redwoods that were planted in the past.  As the climate continues to change, the future of redwoods in California becomes even more doubtful. 

San Francisco’s 2017 Annual Report of the Urban Forestry Council reports that redwoods planted on public land in San Francisco are dying:

“Agencies such as SFO [San Francisco Airport], Zuckerberg General Hospital, and SFSU [San Francisco State University] reported concerns with declining health of redwood trees under their care.  This iconic California native tree is not drought tolerant and current research shows that specimens planted in landscape settings outside their native areas are suffering from water restrictions and irrigation with non-potable water throughout the Bay Area.  Redwood trees’ water and other cultural needs should be considered when planning future plantings since periods of extreme drought are expected to continue as the climate continues to change.”  (page 11)

Dead redwoods, Lake Temescal, March 2018

We see similar examples of planting redwoods in East Bay Regional Parks, where they are dying.  Redwoods were planted at Lake Temescal about 5 years ago.  Despite the fact that many of them are dead, the Park District continues to plant new redwood saplings adjacent to their dead relatives.  Although it is a relatively sheltered area, the trees may have been killed by salty irrigation water.

The growing gap between science and public policy

On March 10, 2018, I attended a conference about resiliency in Davis, California: “Deepening our Roots:  Growing Resilient Forests.” I went to hear Greg McPherson speak because I have read many of his scientific publications and I admire his work.  McPherson’s research at the US Forest Service about the economic value of ecosystem services provided by urban trees (carbon storage, reduction of energy use for heat/cooling, increased property values, removal of particulate pollution, etc.) has been vital to those who defend our urban forest.

McPherson lives in Davis, where he is conducting a 20-year study about the urban forests of the future, i.e., those that will survive predicted changes in the climate. Three years into the study, his research team has made some preliminary recommendations for the trees that are likely to survive anticipated changes in the climate.  None is native to Northern California. Most are foreign, particularly Australian.

McPherson also showed photos of trees being planted now that are destined to die in the near future. One was a densely planted row of redwoods in a median strip in Davis. Professor Arthur Shapiro, who lives in Davis, made this comment when I told him about McPherson’s presentation, “Redwoods are the walking dead here. I’ve known that forever and a year.”  McPherson said redwoods have no long-term future in most of California. None of the public land managers in the Bay Area seems to know that.

East Bay Regional Park District ignores reality

East Bay Regional Park District is making a big investment in expanding redwood forests into places where redwoods did not exist in the past and where they are unlikely to survive in the future.  They are clear-cutting non-native trees and creating visual screens on the periphery of the clear-cuts by planting redwoods along the trails.  This photo was taken in Sibley Volcanic Reserve in March 2018 (the area is larger than shown in this photo):

Sibley Volcanic Reserve. Photo by Larry Danos, March 2018

These are areas that were a part of EBRPD’s “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan.”  The Fuels Management Prescription for this Recommended Treatment Area was supposed to thin the eucalyptus trees to spacing of 25 feet by removing only small trees with trunks less than 10 inches in diameter.  The original plan for this area did not include any replanting of trees.

The recent implementation of this project suggests that EBRPD’s strategy for tree removals has changed.  At least in this instance, the trees have been clear-cut, not thinned.  And redwoods were planted where none were originally planned. 

It is always risky to speculate about the motivations of other people, but I will venture a guess about this new strategy.  The Park District’s commitment to destroying non-native trees seems to have escalated from thinning to clear-cutting.  And the public’s opposition to the destruction of trees seems to have convinced the Park District that they must plant native trees to replace the trees they have destroyed.

Unfortunately, the Park District does not seem to have taken the changing climate into consideration.  The redwoods may survive long enough to placate the public, but they are unlikely to survive in the long-term.  It is a good public relations strategy, but not a good strategy for a landscape in transition in a changing climate.  It is also not a responsible strategy, given that the carbon stored by the trees being destroyed will contribute to the changing climate and won’t be replaced by dead redwood trees. 

(1) Sherwood Burgess, “The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay,” California Historical Society Quarterly, March 1951.

(2) Nowak, David, “Historical vegetation change in Oakland and its implications for urban forest management,” Journal of Arboriculture, 19(5): September 1993

Highs and Lows of the 2018 Conference of the California Native Plant Society

I am pleased to publish the following report of one of our readers who attended the conference of the California Native Plant Society in Los Angeles at the beginning of February 2018. 

Million Trees

I attended the last conference of the California Native Plant Society in San Jose in January 2015.  It was interesting to note a few significant new themes in the recent conference in 2018.  Both fire and climate change were much more prominent themes in the recent conference.  While both are relevant to the future of native plants, neither seemed to have any effect on the “restoration” goals of the native plant movement.  For example, there were several presentations about massive die offs of native oak trees, resulting from higher temperatures, drought, and disease.  These presentations ended with urgent pleas to plant more oaks.  That seemed a fundamental contradiction and a denial of the reality of climate change.  When the climate changes, the landscape changes, but native plant advocates are not willing to acknowledge that.  In fact, the greater the threats to native plants, the greater the commitment to their preservation and “restoration.”

Beautiful pictures support nativist ideology

The conference began on a low point for me, but a high point for most attendees of the conference.  The keynote speaker was Doug Tallamy.  He was introduced as a “rock star” of the native plant movement, and indeed he is.  His presentation was very effective in delivering his message, which is that most insects are “specialists” with mutually exclusive relationships with native plants that evolved over “tens of thousands of years.”  If you believe that claim, you also believe that the absence of native plants will result in the absence of insects and ultimately the collapse of the entire food web.

Doug Tallamy’s closing photo, CNPS Conference 2018

Most native plant advocates believe that gloomy scenario, but few scientists still do, which creates a tension within this community of native plant advocates composed predominantly of amateur “botanists” and a smattering of academic ecologists.  For example, one of the first presentations after Tallamy’s keynote was an academic ecologist from UC Berkeley who advocated for accommodating the movement of plants outside of historical native ranges to accommodate climate change. (1) He said that restoring only with local natives is “maladaptive” and that a bioregional perspective is needed to create sustainable landscapes.  Allowing Monterey pines to grow in the San Francisco Bay Area, where they have grown in the past and are presently deemed “native” just 150 miles away, seems a good example of such a broader definition of “native.”  An amateur nativist, parroting Tallamy, asked this hostile question: “But if we move the plants how will wildlife survive?”  The academic delivered this tart dose of reality: “There are few mutually exclusive relationships in nature.  Wildlife will also move and will adapt to changes in vegetation.”

Science debunks a myth about eucalyptus

The high point of the conference for me was a presentation by Jennifer Yost, Assistant Professor at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.  She and her graduate student studied the claim that nothing grows under blue gum eucalyptus trees because of allelopathic chemicals emitted by eucalyptus that suppress the germination of other species of plants.  Two studies of this hypothesis were done in the 1960s, but the analytical methods used by those studies were misleading.

CNPS Conference 2018

Rigorous methods used by Yost’s team included planting seeds of 5 native plant species in the soil of eucalyptus forests and comparing germination rates of seeds planted in the soil of oak woodlands.  They also tested the effect of blue gum volatile leaf extracts, and water-soluble leaf extracts on germination and early seedling growth.

They concluded, “In these experiments, we found that germination and seedling growth of the species tested were not inhibited by chemical extracts of blue gum foliage, either at naturally-occurring or artificially concentrated levels.” (2)

CNPS Conference 2018

Yost observed that the lack of allelopathic effects of blue gum on the soil implies that blue gum forests theoretically can be successfully planted with native plants after removal of the trees.  However, she cautioned that those who destroy the blue gums should carefully consider what will replace them.  Will an aggressive non-native weed quickly colonize the bare ground?  If so, what is the benefit of destroying the blue gums? 

I had a conversation with one of the most influential nativists in the San Francisco Bay Area after Yost’s presentation.  This new scientific information does not alter his commitment to destroying blue gum eucalyptus in the Bay Area.  After all, there are many more negative claims that remain unchallenged by scientific studies.  For example, there are no studies that prove that blue gums use more water than native trees, as nativists claim.  Nor are there any studies that prove that eucalyptus leaves contain less moisture than the leaves of native oak or bay laurel trees, which theoretically makes eucalyptus more flammable, as nativists claim.  The lack of scientific evidence enables the persistence of speculation justifying irrational fear of blue gum eucalyptus.

Nativism dies hard because of lack of scientific studies

There appeared to be three distinct groups of people in the crowd of about 900 conferees.  There was a large contingent of grey-haired volunteers who are the backbone of every native plant “restoration.”  They are the dedicated weed pullers.  There is an equally large contingent of young people who are making their living writing the “restoration” plans and directing the activities of the volunteers.  The smallest contingent is a few academic scientists who study the underlying issues in their ivory tower.  The goals and conclusions of these three groups are increasingly divergent as scientific studies disprove the assumptions of the citizen “scientists.”

The tension between science and the citizenry is as evident within the native plant movement as it is in American politics at the present time. The general public rejects scientific evidence at its peril.  The rejection of science will not end well.  In the case of uninformed nativism in the natural world, the result will be a barren, poisoned landscape.

  1. “Climate change and open space conservation: Lessons from TBC3’s researcher-land manager partnerships in the San Francisco Bay Area,” David Ackerly1, Naia Morueta-Holme5, Sam Veloz3, Lisa Micheli2, Nicole Heller4 1University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA, 2Pepperwood, Santa Rosa, CA, USA, 3Point Blue Conservation Science, Petaluma, CA, USA, 4Peninsula Open Space Trust, Palo Alto, CA, USA, 5University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  2. Abstracts of CNPS conference presentations are available here:  CNPS Conference abstracts

Stevie Nicks, Naturalized Species, and the future of the biosphere

Professor Arthur M. Shapiro, at work, UC Davis

Art Shapiro is no stranger to the long-time readers of Million Trees.  Professor Shapiro is Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolution at UC Davis, and a renowned expert on the butterflies of California.  He is the author of a seminal, frequently cited study of California butterflies that reported the results of 30 years of observing butterflies in his research transects. (1)  He summarized this study in his Field Guide to the Butterflies of the San Francisco and Sacramento Valley Regions:

“California butterflies, for better or worse are heavily invested in the anthropic landscape [altered by humans].  About a third of all California butterfly species have been recorded either ovipositing [laying eggs] or feeding on nonnative plants.  Roughly half of the Central Valley and inland Bay Area fauna is now using nonnative host plants heavily or even exclusively.  Our urban and suburban multivoltine [multiple generations in one year] butterfly fauna is basically dependent on ‘weeds.’  We have one species, the Gulf Fritillary that can exist here only on introduced hosts.  Perhaps the commonest urban butterfly in San Francisco and the East Bay, the Red Admiral is overwhelmingly dependent on an exotic host, pellitory. And that’s the way it is.”

 Professor Shapiro has given us permission to reprint his Amazon review of the most recently published critique of invasion biology, Inheritors of the Earth, by Professor Chris Thomas (University of York, United Kingdom).  We recommend Professor Thomas’s book to our readers.  Although it is learned, it is accessible to the general public.  This book is another step forward in the long march to acceptance of the reality of existing landscapes that are adapted to present climate conditions.

 Million Trees

2011 Chris Thomas published a paper in the journal “Trends in Ecology and Evolution” entitled “Translocation of species, climate change, and the end of trying to recreate past ecological communities.” I immediately e-mailed him (April 11, 2011): “I have been delivering the same message in my advanced courses in Community Ecology and Biogeography for years, and have found the students by-and-large highly receptive, especially when they have internalized the overwhelming evidence for wild fluctuations in climate and vegetation since the end of the Ice Age 10-20,000 years ago. But over and over I have been told ‘but of course that is not the Party line…restoration ecology,’ blah, blah….Thank you for giving me a respectable citation, since merely citing one’s self can never do.” He e-mailed back: “…the conservation community in Britain seems mainly to be treating me with bewildered patience! I think that it will take time for everyone to become re-programmed to accept change as a reality.”

But of course change is not only a reality, it is the norm in ecology. Belief in equilibrium states and a “balance of nature” has been a dogma without a rationale beyond sentimentalism for many decades. There are coevolved segments of communities that are intimately synchronized and interdependent (say, figs and fig wasps or yuccas and their moth pollinators), but a great deal of any community is the product not of coevolution but of what Dan Janzen calls “ecological fitting,” whereby things haphazardly thrown together by the vicissitudes of geology, climate or commerce just happen to click. We are surrounded all over the globe by functioning communities and ecosystems with little to no history in geologic time. For about 40 years I have asked my students on their final exam how one might go about telling the difference between coevolved communities and “communities” assembled by chance. It is an exceedingly difficult question.

So this book is an expansion of the TREE [Trends in Ecology and Evolution] paper, and its message is vital. Resources for conservation are limited, and one must prioritize. The vast majority of naturalized alien species are harmless and many may be potentially beneficial. The ones that are genuinely harmful should be fought tooth and nail, but of course we do that anyway–we call it “pest management” and “public health.” The blanket indictment of “invasive species” makes no more sense than the blanket condemnation of human immigrants. Of course, when we say this, Thomas and I and Fred Pearce and “that Marris woman!” are immediately called out as shills for the extractive industries or the nursery industry or the Bilderbergers or the Zelosophists (conspiracy theory villains!!) or some despicable cartel of nature-haters. Pure poppycock. Truth-tellers attract trolls. That’s just the way it is.

Quite a few years ago a group of us took a prominent visiting British ecologist (not Thomas) on a field trip to the Sierra Nevada. We had half a dozen grad students and a few faculty crammed in a van. On the way up, one of the students sort-of apologized for the predominance of naturalized alien plant species in the lower foothill landscape. Our guest demurred forcefully: “Why must you consider this some kind of tragedy? Why don’t you see it as an opportunity for all kinds of evolutionary novelty to arise?” Indeed.
Thomas asks (p. 104): “How long will it be before the environmental police force of ecologists and conservationists is prepared to step back and decriminalize introduced species that have had the temerity to be successful?” An excellent question.

Stevie Nicks got over her fear of change: “Time makes you bolder…children get older…I’m getting older too.” Maybe conservationists can mature after all.

Arthur Shapiro

Professor Thomas’s book is very much in the mainstream.  The Economist magazine included it in their list of important books published in 2017.  It is one of only a few books in the category of “Science and technology” and it is at the top of the list.  The Economist says of the book, “Humans have consigned species to extinction at an alarming rate.  But hybridization and speciation is happening quickly too.  An ecologist at the University of York shows how humans are bringing about a great new age of biological diversity.  Extinctions ain’t what they used to be.”

The New York Times published a review of “Inheritors…” on New Year’s Eve.  The reviewer summarizes Thomas’s main argument: “He argues that new species are arriving and evolving faster than old species are dying out globally…Instead of the sixth extinction, it’s a sixth genesis.”  The reviewer faults Thomas for not portraying the “wonder of nature” and for giving oceans short shrift.  But, the reviewer concludes with this observation about the unhelpful role that humans often play in conservation efforts: “It is human concerns that determine everything here on Earth now.  An animal that arrived in a particular location hundreds or thousands of years ago is fine with us, while a more recent immigrant, like garlic mustard, is cause for alarm and extensive campaigns to extirpate the interloper.  Nostalgia is deadly, as people kill to preserve or restore some ill-remembered but more natural past, and we disdain new species as weeds.”  That observation about human attempts to control nature says it all.  Plants and animals are not to blame for the damage we are doing to satisfy our ideological commitment to the distant past. They are symptoms of change, not the cause of change.

Happy New Year!

Million Trees

Update:  Professor Thomas gave a presentation to the Long Now Foundation in San Francisco on June 19, 2018.  HERE is a video of the introduction to his presentation.
And HERE is a presentation at the National Academy of Sciences, “Moving Times for the World’s Biodiversity.” If you haven’t read his book, his presentation is a good summary of the issues he covers in his book.  MT

Anise Swallowtail butterfly in non-native fennel. Courtesy urbanwildness.org
  1. Arthur M. Shapiro, “Exotics as host plants of the California butterfly fauna,” Biological Conservation,110, 413-433, 2003

Parks for the future, not the past

East Bay Regional Park District is preparing to put a parcel tax on the ballot in 2018 that will extend the funding of park improvements for another 15 years.  The public has been invited to tell the park district what improvement projects should be funded by the parcel tax in the future.  We are publishing a series of such public comments that we hope will inspire the public to submit their own suggestions to the park district. 

TO:         publicinformation@ebparks.org

CC:         Board of Directors

FROM:  Park Advocate

RE:          Suggestion for Measure CC Projects

Climate change is the environmental issue of our time.  The climate has changed and it will continue to change.  If park improvement projects are going to be successful, they must have realistic goals that take into consideration the changes that have occurred and the changes anticipated in the future.

The restoration of native grassland is an example of a project that is not realistic, given current environmental conditions.  Grassland in California has been 98% non-native annual grasses for over 150 years.  Mediterranean annual grasses were brought from Mexico to California by the cattle of the Spaniards in the early 19th century.

David Amme is one of the co-founders of The California Native Grass Association and was one of the authors of East Bay Regional Park District’s “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan” while employed by EBRPD. In an article he wrote for Bay Nature he listed a few small remnants of native grasses in the East Bay and advised those who attempt to find them, “As you go searching for these native grasses, you’ll see firsthand that the introduction of the Mediterranean annual grasses is the juggernaut that has forever changed the balance and composition of our grasslands.”   That article is available HERE.

The park district seems to understand the futility of trying to transform non-native annual grassland to native bunch grasses.  Here are two signs in two of the EBRPD’s parks that acknowledge the reality of California’s grassland.

Serpentine Prairie, April 2017
Tilden Park, Inspiration Point, October 2016

Yet, despite this acknowledgement, the park district continues to expand its efforts to transform the parks into native grassland.  Park visitors recently observed a failed experiment to introduce native grasses to one of the parks.  Six plots of ground were fenced.  Two of the plots were control plots in which whatever non-native weeds had naturalized were allowed to grow unmolested.  Two of the plots were mulch/seeded with native grasses and two of the plots were fabric/seeded with native grasses.  There was no observable difference in plant composition or abundance between the seeded and unseeded plots.  There was no observable difference in the outcome of the two different seeding methods that were used.  In other words, native grasses were not successfully introduced to this park.  My correspondence with the EBRPD employee who was responsible for this project is attached.

Albany Bulb, April 2017
Albany Bulb, April 2017

The park in which this experiment was conducted is Albany Bulb.  Albany Bulb is the former garbage dump of the City of Albany.  It was built on landfill in the bay.  The soil is not native and there were never any native plants on it.  It does not seem a promising candidate for a native plant “restoration.”  Unfortunately, Albany Bulb is not an atypical park along the bay.  There are many other parks along the bay that were built on landfill and in which the park district is attempting to establish native plant gardens.  This does not seem a realistic objective for these parks.

 

 

 

 

Albany Bulb April 2018

Update:  One year after the experimental planting of native wildflowers at Albany Bulb, there is no evidence of that effort.  The trail-sides are mowed weeds and the upslope from the trail is studded with blooming non-native oxalis and wild radish. 

Albany Bulb. Non-native wildflowers. April 2018

Albany Bulb will soon be closed to the public for a major “improvement” project.   Albany Landfill Dog Owners Group and Friends expects the park to be closed for about one year.  They are unsure if the park will allow dogs off leash when the park re-opens.  More information about the “improvement” project is available on their website:  http://www.aldog.org/announcements-2.  They suggest that you sign up on their website to be notified of the progress of the project and the status of the re-opening of the park.

 

 

 

This is not to say that there aren’t many worthwhile park improvement projects that are both realistic and needed.  Dredging Lake Temescal is an example of a worthy project.  As you know, Lake Temescal was a popular place for people to swim until recently.  In the past few years it often has been closed to the public because of toxic algal blooms.  The algal blooms are caused by two closely related factors.  The water is warmer than it was in the past because of climate change and the lake is shallower than it was in the past because of sediment deposited into the lake.

Black crowned night heron in algal bloom, Lake Temescal, April 2017

The park district has tried to address this issue by using various chemicals to control the growth of the algae.  Although that has occasionally been successful for brief periods of time, it is not a long term solution to the problem.  Furthermore, it is a good example of why the park district uses more chemicals than necessary.  If the park district would address the underlying cause of the problem—that is, the depth of the lake—it would not be necessary to keep pouring chemicals into the lake.  Dredging Lake Temescal should be a candidate for Measure CC funding.

And so I return to the point of this suggestion for Measure CC:  Please plan projects that take into consideration the reality of climate change, that address the underlying causes of environmental issues, and that have some prospect for success.

Thank you for your consideration.

Send your comments regarding Measure CC renewal to publicinformation@ebparks.org

Send copies to staff and board members of East Bay Regional Park District
Robert Doyle, General Manager rdoyle@ebparks.org
Ana Alvarez, Deputy General Manager aalvarez@ebparks.org
Casey Brierley, Manager of Integrated Pest Management cbrierley@ebparks.org

Board of Directors:
Beverly Lane, Board President blane@ebparks.org
Whitney Dotson wdotson@ebparks.org
Dee Rosario drosario@ebparks.org
Dennis Waespi dwaespi@ebparks.org
Ellen Corbett ecorbett@ebparks.org
Ayn Wieskamp awieskamp@ebparks.org
Colin Coffey ccoffey@ebparks.org

Measure CC: It’s not over ’til it’s over

The public meetings held by East Bay Regional Park District about the renewal of Measure CC are over. Thanks to everyone who attended.  Our viewpoint was well represented.  We patiently waited in line to get our wishes on their flip charts and when they were read to the crowd, our message was loud and clear:  “QUIT destroying healthy trees, DON’T use pesticides.”

If you weren’t able to attend the meetings, you can still tell the park district what you are hoping for in the renewal.  Voters will be given an opportunity in 2018 to vote to continue for another 15 years the parcel tax that has been used for park improvements.  The park district is inviting the public to submit written public comments about the projects they want to see funded by Measure CC.  We will publish a series of such comments that we hope will inspire you to write your own comments. 

Send your comments to publicinformation@ebparks.org.  Depending on the subject, copies to specific members of the Board or the staff are also appropriate.  You will find a list of staff and board members at the bottom of this post. 

TO:        Rick Seal, EBRPD Fire Chief rseal@ebparks.org

CC:        publicinformation@ebparks.org

FROM:  Park Advocate

RE:         Renewal of Measure CC

I understand that you are responsible for implementing the park district’s “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan.”  Much of that plan has already been implemented and most of it was funded by Measure CC.  Therefore, I am writing to ask that the plans to reduce wildfire hazards be revised, as required by the plan’s commitment to “Adaptive Management.”

Adaptive Management is the sensible strategy to make needed adjustments in plans as required by changes in conditions and in response to the results of completed portions of the projects.  There are two significant changes in conditions that require adjustments to the plans:

  • The consequences of climate change are significantly worse than were evident when the plan was written in 2009. For example, a severe drought killed 102 million native conifers in California.  Higher temperatures and other changes in the environment are altering our landscape.  Plants and trees that lived here prior to European settlement are no longer adapted to the changed climate and further changes are anticipated in the future.
  • Sudden Oak Death has killed between 5 and 10 million oak trees in California and the pathogen causing Sudden Oak Death spread exponentially in 2016 and 2017 because of heavy rain. There are significant SOD infections throughout the park district, including in urban areas.  HERE is a map of those infections in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

These changes in the environment require the park district to revise its strategies for fire hazard reduction because dead trees are significantly more flammable than living trees that contain more moisture. HERE is a San Francisco Chronicle article that explains how Sudden Oak Death contributed to recent fires in the North Bay.

Removing trees infected with or killed by Sudden Oak Death should now be a higher priority than continuing to destroy healthy trees, as the park district has done in the past.  Protocols for removing the dead wood must be developed because the wood is fuel when left on the ground; presently, the official protocol for the wood of trees killed by SOD is to leave it on the ground, in place.  That practice is not consistent with EBRPD’s commitment to reduce fire hazards.

Scientists tell us that wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense all over the world because of climate change.  Therefore, addressing the causes of climate change should be the top priority of a program designed to reduce fire hazards.  Since deforestation is the second greatest source of the greenhouse gases causing climate change, the park district should reconsider its program of destroying healthy trees storing carbon.  The park district should also plant more trees, which have a future in our changed and changing climate and that will sequester carbon and reduce air pollution.

Thank you for your consideration.  I will be looking for appropriate revisions of fuels management projects when making my decision about voting for renewal of Measure CC.

Send your comments regarding Measure CC renewal to publicinformation@ebparks.org

Send copies to staff and board members of East Bay Regional Park District
Robert Doyle, General Manager rdoyle@ebparks.org
Ana Alvarez, Deputy General Manager aalvarez@ebparks.org
Casey Brierley, Manager of Integrated Pest Management cbrierley@ebparks.org

Board of Directors:
Beverly Lane, Board President blane@ebparks.org
Whitney Dotson wdotson@ebparks.org
Dee Rosario drosario@ebparks.org
Dennis Waespi dwaespi@ebparks.org
Ellen Corbett ecorbett@ebparks.org
Ayn Wieskamp awieskamp@ebparks.org
Colin Coffey ccoffey@ebparks.org

Renewal of Measure CC is an opportunity to determine the future of parks in the East Bay

In 2004, voters in Alameda and Contra Costa counties approved Measure CC, a parcel tax, to provide additional funding to East Bay Regional Park District for “Park Access, Infrastructure and Safety Improvements, Resource-Related Projects, and Reserve for Unknown Events.”  Measure CC also stipulated that “the overall commitment to natural resources shall be no less than 30% of the revenue raised by the entire measure.” (1) Measure CC is projected to provide about $47 million in the 15 years of its life. (2)

The park district is planning to put Measure CC on the ballot for renewal next year.  It’s time to look at how the park district spent our tax dollars and decide if we want to continue to give them our tax dollars for another 15 years.  If you want Measure CC funding to be used differently, now is the time to tell East Bay Regional Park District what you want…BEFORE the ballot measure is written.

Fuels Management vs. Resource Management?

The park district budgeted $10.2 million of Measure CC funding for “fuels management,” about 22% of the total available funding from Measure CC.  To date, the park district has appropriated $8.8 million of that budget allocation and spent $6.3 million.

The park district describes “fuels management:”  “All vegetation/fuels management projects for fuels reduction are in coordination with the protection and enhancement of wildlife habitat in fuel break areas and are therefore considered to be resource related.” (2)  In other words, the park district considers destroying vegetation and cutting down trees a part of its “commitment to natural resources.”

These descriptions of Measure CC projects illustrate the close relationship between fuels management and resource management: 

  • “Assess and remove hazardous trees, promote native tree regeneration.” (2)
  • “Manage exotic plant species and promote fire resistant natives to reduce the risk of wildfires.” (2)
  • “Manage vegetation for fuels reduction in coordination with the protection and enhancement of wildlife habitat in fuel break areas to provide defensible space and meet Hills Emergency Forum flame length standard.” (2)

The park district’s policies and practices are based on mistaken assumptions:

  • There is no evidence that native plants and trees are less flammable than non-native plants and trees. In fact, available evidence suggests that native landscapes in California are highly flammable.
  • Most monarchs in California spend the winter months roosting in eucalyptus trees. These trees are being destroyed in East Bay parks where monarchs have roosted in the past, such as Point Pinole.

    There is no evidence that destroying non-native trees will “enhance wildlife habitat.” In fact, wildlife habitat is being destroyed by “fuels management” projects.

The destruction of non-native trees is also controversial because the stumps of the trees and shrubs that are cut down must be sprayed with herbicide to prevent them from resprouting.  The park district used an average of 26 gallons of Garlon each year from 2000 to 2015 and 39 gallons in 2016, for that purpose.

There is a wide range of opinions about the tree removals that the park district has done since their program began in 2011, after approval of the “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan” and the associated Environmental Impact Report.  At one extreme, some people want the park district to destroy ALL non-native trees on its property.  They consider “thinning” inadequate. The Sierra Club is in that camp and has sued to enforce their wishes.  At the other extreme, some people don’t want any trees to be removed, although most would make an exception for dead and hazardous trees.

Tilden Park, Recommended Treatment Area TI001, June 5, 2016. This in one of the projects of East Bay Regional Park District, in process

After observing the park district’s tree removal projects, I have reached the conclusion that they represent a middle ground that I can accept because in many cases the canopy is intact and the forest floor is still shaded.  The shade retains the moisture that retards fire ignition as well as suppresses the growth of weeds that ignite more easily during the dry season.  In the 20+ years that I have defended our urban forest, I was always willing to accept a compromise and the park district’s methods look like a compromise to me.  I still have concerns about tree removals and they are explained HERE.  You must reach your own conclusions.

So, what’s the beef?

Unfortunately, coming to terms with the park district’s tree removals has not resolved my misgivings about how Measure CC money has been used.  In a nutshell, I believe that the park district’s “resource management” projects are based on outdated conservation practices.  I believe the park district is trying to re-create historic landscapes that are no longer adapted to environmental conditions.  Their projects are often not successful because they do not take the reality of climate change into consideration, nor do they look to the future of our environment.  They are stuck in the past.

One of the projects funded by Measure CC is typical: the effort to eradicate non-native spartina marsh grass from all park properties. The park district has been participating in the effort to eradicate all non-native spartina marsh grass from the entire West Coast for 14 years.  In the first few years, EBPRD aerial sprayed from helicopters several hundred gallons of herbicide per year.  Now the quantity of herbicide is about 25 gallons per year.

California Clapper Rail

We have known for several years that the eradication of non-native spartina has decimated the population of endangered California rails.  In 2016, a paper was published in a peer reviewed scientific journal about the huge declines in the rail population that were caused by the eradication of spartina.

The reason why the rails have been harmed by the eradication of their habitat is that non-native spartina provides superior cover for the rail.  The non-native species of spartina grows taller, more densely, and it doesn’t die back in the winter as the native species of spartina does.  When the rail begins its nesting season, there is no cover for the birds.  They are therefore being killed by their many predators.

The fact that non-native spartina provides superior cover for the birds is related to a second issue.  Non-native spartina provides superior protection from winter storm surges compared to the native species which provides no protection, even when it grows and it is NOT growing.

The US Geological Survey recently reported that sea level on the Coast of California is predicted to rise as much as 10 feet in just 70 years.  USGS predicted that 67% of Southern California’s beaches are expected to be lost by the end of the century.  Marsh grass for coastal protection is more important than ever.

The third issue is that eradicating non-native spartina has not resulted in the return of native spartina.  Even when extensive planting has been done, native spartina does not provide habitat or storm surge protection in the San Francisco Bay Area.  We should be asking if pouring hundreds of gallons of herbicide on the ground might be a factor in the unsuccessful attempt to bring native spartina back to the Bay Area.

Finally, recently published studies that compared native with non-native marsh grasses and aquatic plants with respect to the ecological functions they perform.  These studies both say, “If you look at the role of exotic water plants in an ecosystem, you won’t find any significant differences compared to indigenous species.”

The spartina eradication project is an example of conservation that no longer makes sense.  It damages the environment with herbicides.  It destroys the habitat of rare birds.  It exposes our shoreline to strong storm surges and rising sea levels.  Native vegetation does not return when it is eradicated.

Looking forward, not back

The parks are very important to me.  I visit them often and I treasure those visits.  I would like to vote for Measure CC.  I hope that the measure on the ballot will give me a reason to vote for it.

I will be looking for a revised definition of “resource management” in the ballot measure, one that acknowledges that climate change is the environmental issue of our time and that conservation must be consistent with the changes that have already occurred, as well as look forward to the changes that are anticipated in the future.  Specifically, “resource management” must respect the landscape we have now, which means not trying to eradicate it, particularly by spraying it with herbicides.  Resource management projects must be based on reality, rather than on fantasies about the past.

Opportunities to tell EBRPD what you want from Measure CC

East Bay Regional Park District is holding public meetings about Measure CC to give the public the opportunity to provide input regarding future park needs and priorities:

November 4, 10-12, Harrison Recreation Center, 1450 High St, Alameda

November 8, 2:30-4:30 pm, David Wendel Conference Center, 1111 Broadway, 19th Floor, Oakland

EBRPD asks that the public RSVP by sending an email to Monique Salas at msalas@ebparks.org or call 510-544-2008.

If you can’t attend, please send written feedback here:  publicinformation@ebparks.org.  Please tell East Bay Regional Park District what you want Measure CC funding to pay for. 

  1. Full Text of Measure CC
  2. Agenda of Park Advisory Committee, June 26, 2017. Scroll down to Measure CC Renewal Spending Plan

Lessons learned from fires in the North Bay

Recent wildfires in the North Bay were devastating.  44 people were killed by the fires and over 8,000 structures were destroyed, including homes and businesses.  We don’t want to portray that fire as anything other than a tragedy.  However, for those with a sincere interest in fire safety, there are many lessons to be learned from that fire.  If people will open their eyes and their minds to the reality of those fires, there are opportunities to reduce fire hazards revealed by those fires.

What burned?

Watching videos of the fires is the best way to answer the question, “What burned?”  Here are two videos of the fires that we found on the internet by doing a search for “videos of wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties.”  If you weren’t watching the news during the fires, you might start by looking at these videos.  There are many more videos on the internet of those fires.

Here’s what we can see in these videos:

  • The fire front moved rapidly through native conifers and oaks as well as through grassland and chaparral. After watching hours of these videos, we did not see any eucalyptus trees on fire.
  • Many homes burned without igniting the trees and vegetation around them. If the photo was taken while the home was still burning, the vegetation is rarely engaged in the fires.  If the photo was taken after the home burned, much of the vegetation is burned as well.  In other words, the vegetation was ignited by the burning homes, not vice versa.
  • In videos of actively burning homes, the air is filled with burning embers. The source of those embers cannot be determined from the videos.

Nothing in these videos suggests that native vegetation is less flammable than non-native vegetation.  Nothing in these videos suggests that the vegetation is more flammable than the structures that burned. 

CalFire has identified the specific locations where four of the fires originated.  Two are in groves of oak trees and two are in grassland and chaparral.  Photos of those specific locations are available HERE.

UPDATE:  On November 16, 2017, the Bay Area Open Space Council held a symposium about the fires in the North Bay that was billed as a “Community discussion on the impacts of the recent wildfires.”  Bay Nature magazine moderated a panel of experts representing CalFire and 8 managers of public and private open space reserves. 

The Director of Conservation for the Bay Area Open Space Council showed a slide of the vegetation types that burned in the fires.  With the exception of vineyards, only 2% of the burned vegetation was “urban.”  All other vegetation was native grassland, chaparral, and native trees. 

Vegetation that burned in the North Bay files of October 2017. Source: Bay Area Open Space Council

The speaker from CalFire said that we must learn to live with fire.  He suggested that the way to accomplish that goal is with better land use planning, using fire and ember resistant building materials, creating defensible space, and improving the health of our forests. 

The slides of the presenters and an audio recording of their presentations is available  HERE. 

What role did the weather play in the fire?

All sources of information about the fire reported that strong winds were the biggest factor in the rapid advance of the fire.  The wind was associated with very high temperatures and it came from the east.  This type of wind is called a Diablo Wind in Northern California.  In Southern California it is called Santa Ana Winds.  In the Mediterranean, it is called Mistral Winds.

In coastal Mediterranean climates such as California and the Mediterranean regions of France and Spain, the wind ordinarily comes off of the ocean.  Because the ocean is cooler than the land, the wind is usually a source of moisture and cooler temperatures.  During periods of high summer temperatures, the wind sometimes shifts direction and starts to blow off the hot interior, drying the vegetation and increasing temperatures.

Such winds were also the main cause of the wildfire in the Oakland/Berkeley hills in 1991.  Jan Null was the lead forecaster for the National Weather Service in the Bay Area in 1991.  He recently said of the 1991 fire:  “At the time a fire starts, the really relevant conditions are the wind speeds, the temperature and the humidity. Again, the humidity goes to the dryness of the fuel. The temperatures also go to the dryness of the fuels and the wind speeds go to what the spread of the fire is. If we’d had that same Oakland Hills fire without any wind, we wouldn’t be talking about it now.”

Most wildfires in California are caused by strong, dry, hot winds.  Everything burns in a wind-driven fire.  Both native and non-native vegetation burns in a wind-driven fire.  Homes in the path of a wind-driven fire are more likely to burn than the vegetation that surrounds the homes because the vegetation contains more moisture.

Why are wildfires becoming more frequent and more intense?

Wildfires are becoming more frequent and more intense all over the world because of climate change.  Temperatures are higher, drought is more frequent, strong winds are more frequent.

Wildfires in the west have become more severe because of increased temperatures and lower humidity at night.  When it doesn’t cool off at night, the trees don’t have an opportunity to regain the moisture they have lost during the high daytime temperatures.  In the past, firefighters could count on wildfires to die down at night.  Now they can’t count on colder nights to make the fires less severe. (2)  Since the fires in the North Bay started in the middle of the night and did the most damage that first night, this observation about warmer nights is particularly relevant to those fires.

Deforestation is the second greatest source of the greenhouse gases causing climate change.  Every healthy tree we destroy releases its stored carbon as it decomposes.  Every tree that dies of drought releases its carbon as it decomposes.  Every tree that burns in a wildfire releases its carbon as it burns.

What role did power lines play in the fire?

The investigation of the recent wildfires in the North Bay is not complete, but early indications suggest that power lines probably ignited some of the fires.  Some power poles fell over in the strong winds, causing the power lines to break and spark ignitions.  Some trees were blown into the power lines, causing them to break or spark.

California State law requires that trees be pruned at least 4 feet from the power lines.  Although PG&E says they are inspecting thousands of miles of power lines to identify potential interference with trees, these inspections are apparently not adequate.  After the fires started, PG&E claimed they had removed 236,000 “dead and dying” trees and “destroyed or pruned” 1.2 million healthy trees in 2016.  These destroyed trees contribute to climate change.

California State law also requires that power poles are capable of withstanding winds of a certain velocity.  However, power poles fell over during the recent fires when wind speeds were below that standard set by State law.

Apparently PG&E’s efforts to inspect and maintain power lines were inadequate and State laws intended to ensure the safety of power lines are not being enforced.

Did Sudden Oak Death contribute to the fire?

Sudden Oak Death (SOD) killed 5 million oak trees in California from 1994 to 2016, when that number was reported by a study.  The study also said that the SOD epidemic could not be stopped and would eventually kill all oaks in California.  More recent estimates are that 5 to 10 million oaks have been killed by SOD. (2)

SOD is caused by a pathogen that is spread by rain and wind.  We had a great deal of rain in 2016 and 2017, which has greatly increased the spread of SOD.  In the past, SOD has been mostly confined to wildlands.  Now it is found in many urban areas, including San Francisco and the East Bay.  In the most recent SOD survey done in spring 2017, new infections were found on the UC Berkeley campus, the UC arboretum, and the San Francisco Presidio. (2)

The scientist at UC Berkeley who conducts the annual survey of SOD infections reports that “A dramatic increase this year in the number of oaks, manzanita and native plants infected by the tree-killing disease known as sudden oak death likely helped spread the massive fires that raged through the North Bay…” (3)

Dead trees are more flammable than living trees because living trees contain more moisture.  In addition to more than 5 million dead oak trees in California, 102 million native conifer trees in the Sierra Nevada foothills were killed by drought, warming temperatures and native beetle infestations during the drought years. All of these trees are native to California.  This is another indication that native trees are not less flammable than living non-native trees.

The ranges of native plants and animals are changing because of climate change.  They must move to find the climate conditions to which they are adapted.  Native plant “restorations” that attempt to reintroduce plants where they existed 250 years ago, prior to the arrival of Europeans, do not take into consideration that the plants may no longer be adapted to those locations.  That’s why many “restorations” are not successful.

If you haven’t seen the Sutro Forest, you should do so soon. The plans are to destroy about 50% of the trees and most of the understory.

Native plant advocates have their heads in the sand about Sudden Oak Death.  The recently published Environmental Impact Report for San Francisco’s Sutro Forest announced UCSF’s intention to destroy about 50% of the non-native trees on Mount Sutro and replace some of them with native trees, including oaks and bays.  Bays are the vector of the pathogen causing SOD.  The EIR said NOTHING about Sudden Oak Death, nor did it acknowledge the existence of the disease in Golden Gate Park and the arboretum, less than a mile away from Mount Sutro.  What’s the point of destroying healthy trees and replacing them with trees that are likely to die in the near future?

Where to go from here?

We are not powerless against bad decisions of public utilities and the forces of nature.  There are things we can do to address these causes of wildfires in California:

  • We must address the causes of climate change. We must stop destroying healthy trees and we must plant more trees.  We must choose species of trees that have a future in the changed climate.  The trees must be adapted to current and anticipated climate conditions.  We must quit destroying trees simply because they are not native.  Non-native trees are not more flammable than native trees and many are better adapted to current climate conditions.
  • We must regulate our public utilities and demand that regulations be enforced. The Public Utilities Commission initiated an effort to improve the safety of power lines in 2007, after destructive wildfires. The utility companies have been actively dragging their feet to prevent new regulations because they would increase costs, despite the fact that they would improve safety.
  • Improved regulation of utilities should minimize the need to destroy healthy trees, by undergrounding power lines in the most high-risk areas, improving insulation of the wires, replacing wooden power poles with metal and/or concrete poles, installing sensors that identify breaks in the power lines, etc.

Demonizing non-native trees is preventing us from addressing the causes of climate change and the closely related issue of increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires.  Let’s open our eyes and our minds to the reality of wildfires in California and develop the policies that will reduce fire hazards.

(1) “The Detwiler Fire is active at night, and a scientist says that’s relatively new,” Fresno Bee, July 22, 2017

(2) “Disease killing oaks spreads,” East Bay Times, October 24, 2017

(3) “Disease in trees pointed at in fires,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 20, 2017

The consequences of dune “restoration” in coastal California

It is my pleasure to publish a guest post about dune “restorations” in Humboldt County that began about 30 years ago.  Like most “restorations,” these projects are primarily destroying non-native plants.  More often than not, they don’t plant native plants to replace the plants they destroy, although the stated goal is to “restore” native plants.

 Uri Driscoll tells us why the non-native plants were planted over 100 years ago and the consequences of removing them.  According to Mr. Driscoll’s Facebook page, he has lived in Arcata, Humboldt County since 1983.  He has had a life-long interest in outdoor recreation, horses, organic farming, and conservation.  He is a member of Arcata’s Open Space and Agriculture Committee.

 If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you might think these projects are not relevant to us.  In fact, they have everything to do with us because there are many similar projects here and the issues with those projects are similar. 

Bird’s eye view of San Francisco in 1868. US Library of Congress

 The San Francisco peninsula was about one-third barren sand dunes when Europeans first arrived at the end of the 18th century.  About 30 years ago, native plant advocates decided they wanted whatever open space that still remains on the peninsula to be returned to pre-settlement conditions, including sand dunes where they existed in the past.

These are the sand dunes in San Francisco where Golden Gate Park was built by creating a windbreak by planting trees. The windbreak stabilized the sand dunes and made it possible to plant and sustain vegetation behind the protection of the windbreak. San Francisco Public Library, historical photo collection.
Pacheco & 32nd Ave, San Francisco, 1943. San Francisco Public Library, historical photo collection

As residential neighborhoods in San Francisco were developed, iceplant and European beach grass were planted on the sand dunes to hold the sand in place.  Native dune plants are not capable of stabilizing sand for long, before strong winds move the sand beneath them.  In fact, the long term survival of native dune plants is dependent upon these disturbances. 

Trees were planted on the windward side of residential areas to protect them against the wind.  Sand on the leeward side of the trees was stabilized by the windbreak.  One of the first dune “restorations” in San Francisco proposed to destroy about 4,000 trees in the Presidio in order to restore an endangered dune plant, Lessingia germanorum.  The purpose of destroying the trees was to enable the sand to move again, ensuring the long-term survival of a native dune plant that exists only on the San Francisco peninsula.

Iceplant has been removed from several sand hills in residential neighborhoods, dumping sand on the properties at the base of the hills.  The Great Highway, which separates Ocean Beach from the residential Sunset District is often closed because of drifting sand after removal of beach grass.

In fact, everyone living on the coast of California should have an interest in the preservation of our sand dunes because they are our first line of defense against rising sea levels and the intense storms associated with climate change.  If non-native plants and trees are needed to maintain the stability of our sand dunes, so be it.  Competing agendas must take a back seat to the safety of our coastal communities.

Million Trees

Stable Dunes or Native Plants?

The North and South Spits of Humboldt County are the physical barrier between Humboldt Bay and the Pacific Ocean.  After the introduction of European beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) in the early 1900’s there has been a substantial stabilizing effect on the dunes as they grew wider and taller.  Prior to the establishment of the grass our dunes consisted of wide expanses of unvegetated, open, moving sand. This is in sharp contrast to the variety of plant cover we have today.

Humboldt Bay

In the 1980s public land managers began removing European beach grass with the goal of restoring native vegetation.  This is the story of the consequences of their projects.

Foredunes (the sand ridges parallel to and closest to the shore) with open, actively moving sands have a very high potential for accelerated erosion.  The foredunes of the North Spit and South Spit are still extremely vulnerable to accelerated erosion caused by disturbances to the vegetation.  A beach and dunes management plan and Environmental Impact Report (EIR) was developed in 1993 to address such issues.

Of greater concern, waves have washed over the foredunes on both spits where waves have breached the foredune where vegetative cover had been removed.  Repeated overwash events would significantly and immediately impact the only access road to the South Spit and the municipal water main and water treatment facilities on the North Spit.

These dunes could again be set in motion by removal of the protective cover of native and non-native vegetation.  Indeed, the intention to remobilize dunes was identified in the Conditional Use Permit application Bureau of Land Management (BLM) submitted for vegetation removal at Table Bluff County Park, a portion of the South Spit.  However, those intentions are contrary to the local Humboldt Bay Beach and Dune Management Plan and accompanying EIR.

The danger is that the South Spit’s dune topography is characterized as typically low and narrow.  With erosion and subsequent lowering of the foredune that occurs following vegetation removal, the right combination of concurrent high-magnitude seismic subsidence and wave attack could cause collapse of the land barrier between the Ocean and Humboldt Bay.  With anticipated sea level rise we would see this risk multiply.  

Source: 2008-2014 BLM monitoring report

The problem is that the previous and on-going work to remove European beach grass from the North and South Spits (in the effort to restore natural conditions and processes) has not and does not provide for the immediate re-establishment of other comparable  vegetative cover to trap moving sand and prevent accelerated dune erosion.  By not including this mandated mitigation measure, there is a real, legitimate potential for significant, cumulative environmental impact.

Why was European beach grass introduced?

The important thing to understand is that this specific type of beach grass (Ammophila arenaria) was introduced in Humboldt County in the early 1900’s.  It was done in order to stabilize dunes to protect growing communities and infrastructure. It had the additional benefit of creating extensive coastal wetlands and wildlife habitat.  By collecting sand from the beach the grass builds protective and multiple parallel ridges and accompanying deflation planes. These depressions behind the ridges act as sheltered nurseries for new plant and animal life. This process can take several decades but is reversed rapidly after the grass is removed. Such an effect has happened not only in Humboldt County but also in Point Reyes where valuable wetlands and organic pastures have been smothered by destabilized sand.

Why was European beach grass removed?

When the efforts to remove the non-native, albeit naturalized grasses began in the early 1990’s invasive biology was in its infant stages. Not much was known about the impacts from the eradication efforts of dominant species.  But to some it was important to return coastal areas to the pre-beach grass era so native plants would not be out-competed.

Every movement needs a poster child.  About this same time a cute little shore bird named the western snowy plover became just that.  Even though it is registered as a threatened species on the west coast, other parts of the country and Mexico have significant and stable populations.   We were told by local biologist Ron LaValley that the non-native grass needed to be removed to recover the local plover’s population.  This claim contradicted his original report showing plover eggs nestled in the non-native grass.  He was later convicted and sent to jail for falsifying data and embezzling a million dollars from similar projects involving the spotted owl.

Recognizing that manual eradication was very expensive and time consuming, California State Parks decided to bulldoze 40+ acres of Little River State Beach to provide plover breeding areas. Unfortunately, as Humboldt State Professor Mark Colwell noted in his 2008 report “importantly, eggs often fail to hatch in restored areas.”  This is largely because ravens and crows find it easy to locate the nests in open sand areas.

The Lanphere-Christenson Dunes Refuge director Eric Nelson determined during a 2016 Climate Ready project that the foredunes were being excessively eroded by the 25 California Conservation Corp (CCC) workers who were digging out beach grass.  His decision to spray glyphosate and imazapyr instead of hand removal was carried out despite public opposition.  It remains unclear whether, despite acknowledging excessive erosion from manual eradication efforts, the refuge will return to using that method again.

Lanphere Dunes and Mad River Slough

The public takes notice of the consequences

Some of us who live near these project areas and use them for recreation started noticing native tree mortality and changes to the landforms caused by removing the stabilizing grasses.   We started doing some initial research.  We began looking into coastal development permits, beach and dunes management plans and monitoring reports.  Our findings revealed the project areas that actually had permits also had mitigation requirements.  Those included immediate replanting and strict monitoring to make sure topography and landforms were not altered.  When we inquired about the monitoring and replanting programs we found those to be significantly deficient and in some cases non-existent.

Taking action

Our next step was to approach the various regulatory agencies.  US Fish and Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the State Water Board should be interested in the freshwater wetland infill we were witnessing.  The Harbor District and the municipal water district have a major interest in securing the two 42-inch industrial water mains protected by the same beach grass that was being removed.  The Manila Community Service District maintains a waste water treatment facility on the dunes.  We thought the California Coastal Commission would certainly want to know that these unauthorized alterations to coastal landforms were taking place. We felt sure the County planning department that issued some of the permits would take enforcement action.

The town of Manila’s water treatment facility

We brought photo and research documents from Oregon and Washington (2 and 3), made presentations and had meetings, site visits and sent email communications to no avail.

We stepped back and took a look at the board of directors for the non-profit called Friends of the Dunes (FOD) that has been promoting the grass removal from the very beginning.  They had grown from a small, broken down 400 square foot building with a net worth of about $20,000 in 2004 to 60 + acres of ocean front property with a 3000 square foot building and a net worth of over $3.4 million in 2014.  The board of directors at the time consisted of employees of most of the agencies listed above.  We understood then why we were running into so many road blocks.

Our community is well known for environmental activism.  So why the hesitation of local environmental organizations like the North Coast Environmental Center (NEC), Environmental Protection Information Center, and Bay Keeper to call out such impacts caused by bulldozers, herbicide spraying and wetland infilling?  We can only presume that the banner of “restoration” has been used as a blindfold.

Some significant successes….more to do

We have had worthy successes.  Through our efforts the California Coastal Commission has asked the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for a new determination to address the impacts related to the Ocean Day activities involving 1000 school children digging grasses from the dunes.  So far, the BLM does not think it needs to provide that.  BLM puts on the event but the Coastal Commission bankrolls it.  We do not know yet what the Commission’s response will be to that refusal.

The town of Manila has stopped grass removal activities in its management area and has supported the planting of native pine trees (Pinus contorta, contorta) in the dunes, which we did last February.  The County planning department is engaged and acknowledges that there has been no contract with the California Conservation Corp or BLM for prior grass removal at the County Park and will not allow any more vegetation removal until a Memorandum of Understanding is developed.

The Coastal Commission has committed to reviewing the authorization allowances for BLM’s grass removal over the rest of the South Spit.  The existing Plan states a two-acre area would be subjected to grass removal strictly for monitoring purposes not the mile long area subjected to eradication to date.  BLM contends that authorization extends over the whole 800-acre Spit but have not been able to provide supporting documents.

The North Coast Environmental Center and even the Friends of the Dunes (FOD) took a position against spraying herbicides on the dunes.

Former board members of the FOD that are regulatory agency officials have resigned their director positions.

Communities around the country are hosting events to plant beach grasses like the ones that have been removed here.  Recognition of the incredible value of stabilized dunes is becoming more wide spread.  The “non-native” label is becoming more questioned.

Setting new goals and looking ahead

For us on the North Coast of California we need a much more cost effective and precautionary approach than tearing out plants that have beneficial attributes.  We need to allow the beach grass to do its job of stabilizing and protecting our dunes.  As we allow it to do that, the beach grass “declines in vigor” (4).  When that happens, other plant and animal species utilize those protections from the harsh winds and tides of the Pacific and establish heathy vibrant wildlife habitat. Our local and migratory wildlife depend on it. And so do we.

Uri Driscoll, Arcata, California

We commend the people of Humboldt County for paying attention to the damage that is being done to their public land and we congratulate them on the progress they have made to prevent further damage.  We are impressed with the methodical approach they have taken to convincing public land managers to reconsider the goals of the project and the methods being used to accomplish them. 

We wish them the best of luck with their efforts.  We are grateful to Uri Driscoll for taking the time and trouble to share this story with our readers.

Million Trees 

(1) South Spit Interim Management Plan 2002.

(2) Evaluating Coastal Protection Services Associated with Restoration Management of an Endangered Shorebird in Oregon, U.S.A.  Lindsey Carrol

(3) Sally Hacker, Oregon State University http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/106/20150017

(4) The Nature Conservancy Element Stewardship Abstract For AMMOPHILA ARENARIA,  Andrea Pickart