Ecology – Page 21 – Conservation Sense and Nonsense

Xenophobia is Killing Our Planet

We are publishing a guest post from South Africa with mixed feelings. We are glad to welcome another like-minded person into our effort to prevent the pointless destruction of the plants that have been members of our communities for generations, solely because they are not considered “native.” On the other hand, we are saddened to learn that other communities are experiencing the same destruction that we are witnessing here in the San Francisco Bay Area. This guest post is an article that was published by The Witness, which the author describes as “South Africa’s oldest daily newspaper.”

Xenophobia is Killing Our Planet

Xenophobia (both human and ecological) is raging worldwide. Yet we are all Earthlings and life on Earth has always migrated. The Khoisan are the first known inhabitants of Africa, and African elephants and lions once roamed North America; America’s bison, bear and deer immigrated from Eurasia, while horses, which evolved in the States, radiated outwards, returning home to be shot as aliens.

Historically, the mass hysteria of rhetoric-spurred xenophobia has sucked reason and compassion from sections of whole countries. Propaganda supporting Hitler’s racial-purity infected Germans to hate Jews who were vilified as pigs. In Rwanda, the genocide of the Tutsi tribe began with the Hutus defaming them as cockroaches. In South Africa, foreign nationals have been slandered as lice and ticks. While in ecological warfare, exotic plants are demonized as cancers and monsters. Those brainwashed by this illogical prejudice, tend to overlook their own ancestral origins and their personal culpability about the very things they fear and denounce in more recent arrivals in our war-torn world now over-flowing with desperate refugees.

Essentially we are all settlers at any given time. Definitions of nativeness are changed at whim by invasion biologists who measure other creatures via a creed they themselves do not exemplify. ‘Alien’ plant species are destroyed country-wide, drastically disrupting ecosystems for the slightest inconvenience to native species or commercial interests. South Africa’s multi-billion rand [1 US $ = 12.64 S. African rand] Working for Water, the world’s largest ever tree-cutting campaign, is a terrifying example. Levelling countless rain-drawing trees on a planet already suffering from tree-loss-induced global warming, is tantamount to blood-letting an already haemorrhaging patient. Far from saving water, the dire rainfall deficit has devastated South Africa with widespread drought causing a conservatively-estimated R400 million loss to livestock and crops in KwaZulu-Natal alone.

Unprecedented ferocious winds, fires, floods, heat waves, violent storms and catastrophic disasters are battering our over-populated planet, our ice caps melting faster, its creatures dying. And it is no wonder: armed with poisons, the world’s chemical corporations have dressed themselves in Xenophobia, using it as a front to motivate and mask their hugely-profitable, unceasing nature destruction. In a study published in the journal Science this year, 18 international researchers found that human abuse has so disrupted complex interactions between oceans, land and atmosphere that the earth is becoming inhospitable to life. Johan Rockstrom, professor of environmental science at Stockholm University, gravely concluded that, for the first time in human history, we risk destabilizing the entire planet.

Only enough ecosystems, essential for regulating Earth’s climate, keep our civilization from extinction, and scientists estimate we’d have to return as much as 40% of all land to nature to regain long-term stability. Britain’s James Lovelock says we can all help by letting portions of our gardens go wild. Forest ecologist at Stellenbosch University, Dr Coert Geldenhuys, explained in an article how alien infestations repair forests when indigenous trees can’t fill the pioneering role, rehabilitating the soil before dying out, allowing natives to return. This Earth-healing is harmless, sustainable and free, yet fanatics continue mutilating and polluting, with depraved indifference leaving countless creatures, (both native and alien, seen and unseen) homeless, poisoned and dying – as recently verified by scores of dead baby weaver birds strewn amid an axed casaurina forest. Yet ever more prominent ecologists the likes of David Theodoropoulos, Mark Davis, Matthew Chew, Ken Thompson and Dov Sax, see a bigger picture with the role of invasive aliens far more complex and beneficial than generally believed. Fred Pearce (author of THE NEW WILD) puts it all in a nutshell: invasives re-boot Earth’s man-damaged ecosystems to help nature withstand global warming.

AT WAR WITH NATURE, a powerful exposé by New Zealand conservationist W F Benfield (available on AMAZON) reveals that the chemical industry in league with blindly-believing invasion followers who manufacture the crises needed to justify saturating our planet with poisons, are now offering their lethal services to the uninhabited islands of other lands. They were recently enlisted to rid our own Marion Island of mice. But this ‘extinction industry’ as Benfield succinctly describes it, uses deceit, staged photographs and chemicals to do far more harm to resident wildlife than any pest explosion ever could. (Watch POISONING PARADISE on YouTube.) The shockingly inhumane poison 1080 (banned in most countries) is regularly released over New Zealand where corporate conservation plans to render the entire country predator-free. Naturally, once predators are eradicated, their prey will multiply to plague proportions – creating unending opportunities for ever-hungry chemical corporations.

Man’s agriculture is presently eating away so much of the planet’s diminishing wilderness that the European Union and United Nations called for a global shift to a vegan diet to alleviate global warming caused by livestock farming and chemical poisoning. Recently the World Health Organization finally verified a study linking Roundup to cancer after hundreds of studies with similar findings were skewed or suppressed for 30 years. This tumour-causing herbicide was also connected to a mystery kidney disease which killed up to 20,000 farmworkers labouring in extreme heat in Central America, India and Sri Lanka. Scores of Argentinean farmers are suing Monsanto over their infant children’s birth defects, including cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, psychomotor retardation, missing fingers and blindness.

Roundup leaches nutrients from the soil, damages micro-organisms, kills earth worms and stimulates unstoppable super weeds. In Australasia it has killed 3 frog species, and, according to World Health statistics, the mere careless use of glyphosate-containing herbicides sickens and kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide annually. Besides damaging the digestive tracts of animals and humans, incidences of once-rare diseases have soared since its use, linking it to Alzheimer’s, attention deficit disorder, autism, asthma and infertility. Workers spraying from backpacks are at risk simply by breathing in spray drift. Destroying harmless naturalized vegetation with chainsaws and deadly carcinogens, xenophobia, in bed with the chemical industry, is a danger to all life.

Jacaranda street trees in bloom in Pakistan. Creative Commons - Share Alike — Jacaranda street trees in bloom in Pakistan. Creative Commons – Share Alike

Pietermaritzburg’s beloved Art in the Park has to move next year because the original river-side site has been so degraded by felled trees, and everywhere gracious Jacaranda trees lining our streets stand tragically ring-barked and dying. In the decades since this merciless ethnic cleansing started, our bees have been poisoned to the edge of extinction, our butterflies, birds, rare frogs and chameleons as well as common-place insects and microscopic organisms essential to planet life, vanishing from our shrinking vegetation, while our polluted waterways and seas have vast chemical dead-zones, and scores of fish suffocate when poison-sprayed water-plants suck oxygen from the water whilst dying en masse.

Ring-barked (AKA girdled) jacaranda tree in South Africa.

Bamboo before it was killed with herbicide.

In Pietermaritzburg, magnificent five-storey tall bamboo in the once-beautiful stream-side park behind the Beacon Hill apartment block, were recently hacked and poisoned, risking the stream and its life-forms and resident geese and ducks, as well as the city’s ground water. Helicopters dropped clouds of poisonous herbicide on dagga growing amid hill-side food crops belonging to impoverished KwaZulu-Natal villagers. In the US, tons of chemicals dumped into Lake Michigan to kill one ‘alien’ fish, killed hundreds of thousands while brain-washed con-servationists and scientists cheered. American animal advocate, Nathan Winograd, reflected that in the hopeless battle to return America to a mythical ecological state, slaughter without end has been proposed.

Bamboo after being killed with herbicide.

The effects of removing everything arbitrarily judged to be foreign are incalculable. Migrating thousands of miles, the incredible monarch butterfly – a precious natural wonder – has dropped an astounding 90% in numbers since milk weed was killed by herbicides. The worldwide massacre of plants and creatures sometimes just miles ‘out of place’ have evoked unlikely alliances between hunters and vegans who fear Earth’s animals are being wiped out. Andrew Tyler, Britain’s Animal Aid director, believes that the growing appetite for ‘alien’ blood is driving the slaughter of animals scapegoated for human-committed environmental abuses.

America’s Agricultural Department recently revealed that since 1997 it has destroyed a staggering 27 million animals by aerial snipers, poisons and traps, to help dessert bighorn sheep, deer and pronghorn. This alien killing mania spread quickly to unwanted natives. Elk, cougar, fox, bobcats, coyotes, badgers, prairie dogs, bears, wolves, wild longhorn, burros and horses – creatures which once filled us with wonder – among those left to rot that. Alien disdain is worldwide: mustangs are killed lest they damage native plants, Britain’s grey squirrels destroyed to bring back the red, its deer culled to protect wildflowers, Canada Geese shot for dropping scat on pathways, while South Africa’s own shameful hit list includes the endangered black Kenya rhinoceros. Are purist’s any better than rhino poachers?

This madness, instigated and exonerated by invasion biology, is done at the unknowing tax-payer’s expense. With our living green world turning into a dead planet there have been increasing calls from the public, social sciences and ecology itself, for invasion biology to end. It is the only ‘scientific’ field ever doubted, and this, as they themselves admit, via a virtual ‘cottage industry’ of critical scientific articles, and even death-wishing obituaries in well-respected publications. Many regard this unproved discipline as money-making deceptive hype, xenophobic, immoral, cruel, nonsensical, climate changing and earth endangering. An English review of the book LA GRANDE INVASION explains the inspiring perspective of French ecologist, Jacques Tassin, who adjures conservationists to reconcile man to a new alliance with the living world, including invasives, which he believes are symptoms of pollution testifying to ‘ a richness for tomorrow’.

Invasion Biology has given chemical corporations an excuse to devastate our beautiful planet on a scale never seen before. We’ve become a world at war with itself. If this anti-life pseudo-science is not abolished, Earth’s millions of life-forms are doomed. Humanity has forgotten the spirit and intelligence innate in the wild: before it is too late we should unshackle nature to help heal itself. It’s time we all denounced what we’ve unknowingly allowed to happen. Mahatma Gandhi said: ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ We should empathize with terrified foreign nationals and innocent creatures persecuted and killed through xenophobia’s ugly ethos, and remember that Christ himself identified with the alien Samaritans of this world, declaring: ‘What ye do unto the least of these my brethren, ye do also unto me.’

Gloria Keverne is a South African environmental activist and the international bestselling author of A MAN CANNOT CRY and BROKEN WINGS. In xenophobic riots in South Africa this year seven foreign-national human beings tragically lost their lives, while for decades countless trees, animals and insects have perished, poisoned and deprived of habitat by this prejudiced mind-set. She can be emailed at glory@chrysalis-dreams.co.za. If you agree with her viewpoint, please take a minute to thank her for defending her local landscape and wish her good luck in preventing its needless destruction.

More public comments on FEMA projects in the East Bay Hills

We are publishing a few more of our favorite public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the FEMA projects in the East Bay Hills which will destroy nearly a half-million trees if implemented as presently described.

Over 13,000 public comments were submitted to FEMA. FEMA estimates that 90% of the comments are opposed to the project. We have selected a few which demonstrate expertise as well as knowledge of the areas that will be irreparably harmed by the destruction of hundreds of thousands of trees and the spraying of toxic herbicides. All of the comments are in the public record and can be read HERE.

You can help to prevent this project from being implemented as presently planned by making a contribution to the suit of the Hills Conservation Network. Visit the HCN website HERE to make a contribution.

From: [Name redacted by Million Trees]

To: EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX

Subject: Berkeley Hills

Date: Friday, June 14, 2013 11:52:35 PM

I am a resident of Berkeley, California. I oppose the use of FEMA funds to cut trees in the Berkeley and Oakland Hills. I am an environmental science teacher at Berkeley High School. We know that these trees provide important habitat for many kinds of wildlife, and cutting them down will not prevent fires. Clear-cutting in the Berkeley and Oakland Hills is a very bad idea. It may cause mud slides, destroy the landscape, harm wildlife, destroy hikers’ aesthetic enjoyment of our wildlands; the planned use of pesticides is unconscionable. Please do not fund any of this clear-cutting. It is a waste of money, will not prevent fires, and will cause harm.

From: [Name redacted by Million Trees]

To: EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX

Subject: FEMA “fire hazard reduction” NO!!!!

Date: Friday, May 17, 2013 11:45:15 AM

Hello,

As a trained wildlands firefighter, I am familiar with the management techniques of wildland fires. Clear-cutting is not one of them. I could potentially support implementing a permanent firebreak of the standard size: about the width of a road. Cutting more than that is unnecessarily destructive, and destroys natural heritage which belongs to our children. Applying herbicide is likewise completely unrelated to standard, approved wildlands fire management, and presents unknown environmental dangers. I recommend consulting the county fire department for their recommendations, which based on my experience, will likely consist of bringing out a CCC or convict crew to cut a firebreak seasonally.

My family and I STRONGLY OPPOSE the current plan.

[Name redacted by Million Trees]

Berkeley resident

From: [Name Redacted by Million Trees]

To: EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX

Subject: Halt the land clearing!

Date: Friday, May 17, 2013 2:30:22 PM

Absolutely do not go forward with plans to clearcut the Strawberry and Claremont Canyons. These trees provide far more beneficial ecosystem services, like cooling, attracting moisture, and providing beauty, oxygen and habitat.

Do not use Round up on this land, it is an extremely hazardous toxic pollution.

The proposed management is extremely misguided and very irresponsible destruction, and would cause far greater ecological harm. The loss of this forest would be a great impoverishment to all the surrounding communities. Leave these trees alone!!

[Name redacted by Million Trees], Natural Areas Manager

A retired university planner critiques the FEMA projects in the East Bay Hills

We recently finished reading all of the 13,000 public comments on the FEMA draft EIS. FEMA says that about 90% of the comments are opposed to the project and having read the comments that seems about right.

It was a very rewarding experience to read the comments and we recommend it to anyone who is discouraged or doubtful that we can prevent the destruction of our urban forest in the East Bay (available HERE).

There were many excellent comments, many from people with specific expertise and knowledge of the issues that inform our opposition to these projects. We plan to publish a few of them, as we obtain permission from their authors. Today, we publish the public comment of Christopher Adams, with his permission. We hope you are as impressed with his astute analysis as we are.

Comments on Hazardous Fire Risk Reduction, East Bay Hills, CA,

Draft EIS

Prepared by Christopher Adams

Introduction:

My comments here are made solely in my capacity as a private citizen, but I think it is germane to state my background. I am a retired university planner, and for several years I directed the office which was responsible for review of every environmental document prepared by all the campuses and other facilities of the University of California. In addition, I was directly involved with the drafting, the public hearings, and the response to comments and preparation of two major Environmental Impact Reports, prepared under the California Environmental Quality Act for a UC campus. I also live near the EB Hills in an area subject to wild fires and share the concerns of others about the risk of fire.

Summary:

The Hazardous Fire Risk Reduction, East Bay Hills, CA, Draft EIS is a deficient document, beginning with its basic premise. While purportedly for the purposes of fire management, the proposed actions appear to be mostly motivated by a dream of a restoring the EB Hills to some imagined Eden prior to the European and American colonization of California. Instead of applying scientific and policy analysis to the impacts of the proposed actions the DEIS authors appear to have decided that the proposed clear cutting and herbicide measures are the right ones for fire protection and then cherry‐picked evidence, whether in the description of existing conditions or the possible alternatives solutions, which supports this conclusion. The DEIS rejects out of hand fire management alternatives that do not involve clear cutting and massive application of herbicides. In so doing the DEIS is a classic example of post hoc rationalization. Unless the DEIS is re‐issued with corrections and additions responding to the comments below, I believe that FEMA is seriously exposed to potential litigation. More significantly, if FEMA does not consider other less draconian and less expensive fire management measures, it will not be serving the interests of the citizens most impacted by fire danger, not to mention the taxpayers who will ultimately foot the bill.

Specific Comments:

The DEIS fails to note the existence of native trees which are specifically susceptible to the effects of one of the herbicides proposed for use. Section 4.2.2.2.1 notes that the native trees in the woodlands include madrone (Arbutus menziesii). However, in Section 3.4.2.1.1 Strawberry Canyon‐PDM there is no mention of madrones in the list of trees in the “native forest” (first paragraph of section). This is a significant omission, because there are madrones in Strawberry Canyon, yet in the third paragraph of this same section one of the two herbicides proposed for use to stifle stump regeneration is Stalker (imazapyr) which has been identified elsewhere as being used specifically to eliminate madrones. According to the EPA Reregistration Eligibility Decision for Imazapyr: “Imazapyr use at the labeled rates on non‐crop areas when applied as a spray or as a granular to forestry areas present risks to non‐target plants located adjacent to treated areas.” (1)

The DEIS fails to acknowledge the growing threat of French broom in the UCB area.

While the presence of eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and acacia is repeatedly discussed, there is almost no mention of the rapid invasion of French broom. It is mentioned only in passing and without its scientific name in the discussion in Section 4.2.2.2.3 under “Northern Coastal Scrub.” While French broom has been rapidly increasing in the upper slopes of the Strawberry Canyon PDM and Claremont PDM areas, there is no mention of it at these locations in the DEIS. This plant is an active pyrophyte which chokes out native vegetation, can be poisonous to livestock, and is of limited benefit to native animals. The increase in sunlight from the proposed removal of large amounts of eucalyptus will encourage its spread. There is no mention of the fire risk from French broom in the discussion of fire risk in Northern Coastal Scrub, Section 4.3.3.2.5, and I could find no mention of its removal anywhere in the document.

The UCB project description does not explain if a fuel break is planned in the UCB areas and if so to describe it.

Section 1.1.1 UCB states that it will follow the “same general approach…which is included in Oakland’s grant application (see Section 1.1.2 below).” In Section 1.1.2 it is stated there the Oakland PDM would “create a fuel break on the west side of Grizzly Peak Boulevard north and east of the Caldecott Tunnel [presumably this means the west entrance to the tunnel].” UCB Strawberry Canyon properties also abut Grizzly Peak Boulevard, so the statement of “the same general approach” implies that UCB also proposes a “fuel break,” but none is described. Since the term “fuel break” implies clearing to the bare soil, with potential significant environmental impacts, this is a serious omission.

The DEIS fails to consider the impact on global climate change by the wholesale destruction of trees. The DEIS states that for UCB Strawberry Canyon alone 12,000 trees will be destroyed. Because trees absorb CO2 at an average rate of 13 pounds per year, this represents a potential loss in CO2 absorption of 78 tons per year. Given the growth patterns of native trees in Berkeley, which tend to be riparian or to grow on north facing slopes in a widely scattered pattern, the number of replacement trees will not come close to compensating for those destroyed. The difference should be estimated and calculated.

The DEIS fails to consider an actual and accomplished fuel management program when dismissing the alternative described in Section 3.3.1.1.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is located on 175 acres on the north side of Strawberry Canyon immediately adjacent to the UCB and EBRPD areas described in the DEIS. LBNL, which is managed by the University of California, employs more than 4,000 persons on this site in laboratory buildings and with equipment that is worth several billion dollars. LBNL has recently completed a fire management program which is essentially what is described in Section 3.3.1.1 of the DEIS, Removal of Brush, Surface Fuels, Lower Limbs and Small Trees. The entire project was completed within the LBNL maintenance budget without special grants and has given the laboratory a great deal of fire security, according to its professional fire personnel. Yet there is no reference to this in the DEIS. The LBNL program is further described in the following links. This first links to a powerpoint slides; the second to a video discussion of the slides. http://www.lbnl‐cag.org/docManager/1000000159/Berkeley%20Lab%20Fire%20Safe%20Vegetati on%2C%20Lab%20Fire%20Marshal.pdf

http://www.lbnl‐cag.org/Content/10024/preview.html

The links convey much more effectively than my comments how an alternative to massive clear cutting and massive application of herbicides will effectively accomplish the goal of managing fire in the East Bay Hills.

The DEIS is incomplete and verging on the dishonest about the use of herbicides.

“Management of resprouts without herbicides is expensive….and thus was removed from further study.” This ignores the management of resprouts used successfully by LBNL as described in the above referenced powerpoint and video. There is no study about the use of herbicides at the scale proposed, e.g. 12,000 trees in Strawberry Canyon alone, on human populations, let alone native plants and animals.

The DEIS fails completely to discuss the realities of encouraging native plants after the clear cutting and heavy and repeated application of herbicides.

1) Restoration ecology is barely in its infancy, yet this DEIS expects us to accept on faith alone that when the clear cutting is done and the slopes sprayed with herbicides the native vegetation will miraculously reappear.

2) At the present time live oaks and bays are common on the north side (south facing side) of Strawberry Canyon under eucalyptus. This is probably because the fog drip from the eucalyptus and the shade encourage their growth in what would otherwise be a very dry area. Compare, for example, on slopes of similar aspect in portions of the EB Hills behind El Cerrito or Fremont. There is nothing in the DEIS to explain how native trees will increase or survive after the clear cutting has destroyed their source of water and shade.

3) Because of the abundance of deer in Strawberry Canyon and adjacent areas, small trees need to be protected against browsing. (See the LBNL powerpoint for an illustration of wire protective cages. http://www.lbnl‐ cag.org/docManager/1000000159/Berkeley%20Lab%20Fire%20Safe%20Vegetati on%2C%20Lab%20Fire%20Marshal.pdf) The DEIS says nothing about preventing deer browsing.

4) California native oaks of several species, including Quercus agrifolia are subject to the fungal disease Sudden Oak Death Syndrome (SODS), which has been found in the East Bay Hills. The DEIS fails to discuss the existence of SODS or its impact on replacement vegetation after the clear cutting and application of herbicides.

5) The DEIS states that “alleopathic oils” in the leaves and bark of eucalyptus suppress the growth of other vegetation. Yet the DEIS fails to state how covering slopes two feet deep with eucalyptus slash will not inhibit growth of new “native” plants.

6) Native California bunch grasses have largely been supplanted by European annual grasses, many of which form mats which choke out other plants. Similarly native shrubs such as coyote bush (Baccharis species) are being supplanted by invasive plants such as broom. The DEIS fails to explain how native plants will succeed in competition for sun and water with these plants.

The DEIS fails to consider the aesthetic impact to views from the trails and roads within the canyon and from houses near it after the clear cutting.

Section 4.12.2 of the DEIS states that a goal of the UCB LRDP (2005) is to “Maintain the visual primacy of the natural landscape in the hill campus” but there is no mention of the impact of clear cutting on this natural landscape. The north side of the lower portion of Strawberry Canyon forms the main campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). While individual buildings at LBNL are attractive in design, the overall effect of the site is essentially industrial, similar to an office park one might see along a freeway. The views of LBNL from the fire road that winds through the canyon are now largely screened by the large trees which will be destroyed by clear cutting. The trees also offer cooling shade to those using the area for recreation. The fire road is a major recreation amenity for UCB students, employees, and neighbors, used daily by hundreds of hikers, joggers, dog walkers, and mountain bikers. Removal of most of the trees as proposed will completely change the views enjoyed from the fire road. The DEIR provides absolutely no analysis of this impact either verbally or by providing illustrations of any viewing point in Strawberry Canyon. Most of the discussion of Section 5.8 is oriented to views over the hills from high points to the bay, which indeed may be improved by clear cutting. There is no discussion of views from within the areas to be clear cut and no reference to Strawberry Canyon.

The DEIS bases its list of plant species slated for destruction on incomplete and inaccurate botanical and fire danger information.

The authors of the DEIS seem not to understand the difference between “native” and “endemic” and they seem to have arbitrarily selected some “native” plants to extirpate while keeping others based on criteria having little or no relationship to fire hazards. Section 3.4.2.1.1 states that “Non native trees, including all eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and acacia would be cut down.” The Jepson Manual (2), which is the definitive source for California plants divides the state into geographic areas. According to Jepson Monterey pines (Pinus radiata) are native to California, and while not endemic to the EB Hills, they are native in the geographic area CCo, which includes both portions of Monterey County and the EB Hills with similar climatic conditions. Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are also found in Strawberry Canyon but not as an endemic. They are also native to the geographic area (CCo). In contrast to Monterey pines, however, Coast Redwoods appear to escape destruction by clear cutting; at least there is no mention of such action in the DEIS. Another native and Strawberry Canyon endemic, California Bay (Umbellularia californica), is specifically listed in the DEIS to be retained. But in a publication of the University of California Cooperative Extension (3) it is listed as a “High Fire Hazard Native Tree.” Note that these comments are not meant to imply favoring destruction of redwoods or bay trees but to further illustrate the inaccurate information and the arbitrary nature of the DEIS conclusions. Similarly cypress species which grow in parts of Strawberry Canyon are also listed as pyrophites in this UC document, but the DEIS does not propose their extirpation.

The DEIS fails to consider the impact on Strawberry Creek of run‐off from the predicted massive amounts of slash, from the standpoint of hydrology and flood control or the impact on the biota of the creek.

Section 3.4.2.1 of the DEIS states within Strawberry Canyon there will be clear cutting on 56 acres and that the downed trees will be chipped and left on 20% of the site at a depth of 2 feet. Based on these numbers the cumulative amount of material on the ground will be 975,744 cubic feet (.2 x 56 x 43,560 x 2). If merely 1% of this material is washed away in a storm, which seems a very conservative estimate considering the slopes where the material would be placed, there could be more than 1,000 cubic yards of slash material washed into Strawberry Creek. The DEIS does not discuss the impact on the biota of the creek of this potential massive amount of new material. Nor does the DEIS discuss the impact of this material on stream flow in storm conditions. Given that the culverts in the lower levels of the creek, near the Haas Clubhouse and the University Botanic Garden, are only about 9.5 square feet in cross section (See Figure 1.), there is a strong likelihood that the slash material would block the culverts and cause flooding. Section 3.4.2.1 states that “if the site yields a large number of large tree trunks,” some “may” be removed or used for other purposes than left on the site; however, the DEIS fails to state the criteria for determining what the “large number” is that would trigger such action. The hydrologic and ecological impacts are presumably left to the loggers to evaluate.

Figure 1, Culvert on lower fire trail, near Botanic Garden

The DEIS implies that trees other than eucalyptus, Monterey pines, and acacias will not be cut, but current actions in Strawberry Canyon suggest that UCB will cut anything at any time regardless of environmental regulations. The DEIS must be amended and re‐issued to include other UCB actions as part of cumulative impacts.

During the past week (June 6‐13, 2013) I have personally observed the cutting of at least six healthy, mature California live oaks, bays, and cypresses in Strawberry Canyon. (See Figures 2 and 3.) The oaks were particularly magnificent, and their destruction is tragic. I am familiar with the needs for passage of fire trucks as I own woodland property on a narrow privately maintained road. None of the trees just cut would have prevented passage of trucks, but I was told by one of the tree cutters that the excuse was “Fireman.” To my knowledge this cutting was done without any compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which is the state equivalent of NEPA and applies to all UCB actions. This cutting constitutes a violation of the CEQA Guidelines Section 15304, which states that exemptions from CEQA apply only to actions “which do not involve the removal of healthy, mature, scenic trees.” If UCB is flagrantly cutting trees now, while the DEIS is out for public comment, what can we expect once the NEPA process is completed?

Figure 2. Bay stump on lower fire trail, cut on or about June 11 2013, diameter +/‐42”

Figure 3. Live oak stump on lower fire trail, cut on June 10, 2013, diameter +/‐ 38”

(1) EPA 738‐R‐06‐007, 2006

(2) The Jepson Manual of Vascular Plants of California, 2nd Edition, UC Press, 2012

(3) Pyrophytic vs. Fire Resistant Plants, FireSafe Marin in Cooperation with University of California Cooperative Extension, October 1998

Thank you, Mr. Adams, for taking the time and trouble to write this excellent public comment on the FEMA draft EIS.

Saving our Urban Forest: A small step forward

The San Francisco Forest Alliance (SFFA) has announced (see below) the successful conclusion of a year-long process of developing a policy for the management of San Francisco’s urban forest by the city’s Urban Forestry Council (UFC). If you have not been closely following the development of this policy it may be difficult to appreciate the importance of this accomplishment. Native plant advocates made every effort to prevent the UFC from adopting a policy that would make a commitment to the preservation of the urban forest. As our readers know, native plant advocates want the entire urban forest to be destroyed because it is non-native, so they can attempt to recreate native grassland and scrub that existed at the end of the 18^th century, prior to the arrival of Europeans. Native plant advocates tried several different strategies to make the case to the UFC for the destruction of the forest. This is the sequence of the many bogus narratives they attempted to sell to the UFC:

They started with the claim that the forest is diseased and dying and must be destroyed. With the help of arborists and our usual independent research, we were able to disprove this particular story line.
Then they claimed that forest health would be improved by radical thinning of the forest. Again, our research was able to prove that mature forests do not benefit from thinning because mature trees are unable to respond positively to increased light and wind. The trees that remain are actually more vulnerable to windthrow because they are not adapted to increased wind.
Then they claimed that the forest is dying of drought and must be destroyed to prevent the dead trees from becoming a fire hazard. Again, our research was able to prove that our eucalyptus forest is drought-tolerant and is actually more likely to survive the drought than the native plants which will not precipitate as much fog drip as tall trees. However, the final document contains an erroneous claim that the drought has “serious negative effects to mature trees.” In fact, young trees require more water than mature trees.

In December 2014, after listening to six months of these horror stories, it seemed that the UFC was headed in the wrong direction. Their questions and comments, as well as the meetings we were able to arrange, seemed to indicate they were prepared to endorse the destruction of our urban forest. In January 2015, the first draft of the UFC policy confirmed our worst fears. They endorsed “land conversion” from forest to native grassland and scrub and the use of herbicides to prevent the resprouting of the forest.

Having done everything we could to prevent this outcome, we despaired. And then the UFC produced a revised draft in April 2015 which was a 180-degree turn from the first draft. We will never know what turned the UFC around, but we surely had a hand in it. Even if there was some unseen influence operating in the background, our viewpoint was confirmed and vindicated by the final outcome.

The UFC then postponed approval of their document, saying they were waiting for public comments from one of the stakeholders. I presume this delay was requested by the Recreation and Park Department, because the final revision of the document accommodated its so-called Natural Areas Program by stating that “management priorities and decisions for some of the mature and historic tree stands [within the “natural areas”] may be different from management practices for other areas of the urban forest.” However, written comments from the Recreation and Park Department were not visible to us.

We are taking the time to tell you about this accomplishment because we hope you will be encouraged by it. Sometimes the odds seem overwhelmingly against our efforts to save our urban forest. But with tenacity and commitment, it is possible to prevent bad things from happening. We are deeply grateful to those who participated in this successful effort to prevent the development of an official city policy that could have endorsed the destruction of our urban forest.

Much remains to be done. Do not give up hope that we can save our urban forest. Please renew your commitment to our efforts

Greetings to SFFA Supporters and Members

This week the Urban Forestry Council of the Dept. of Environment accepted a document now called “Guidelines for Managing Mature and Historic Tree Stands,” which had originally been called “Best Management Practices for Urban Forests.” It was written largely by John Leffingwell of HORT Science who sits on the Council, with assistance from Mei Ling Hui, staff member from Dept. of Environment; John Flanagan, Chair of the Council; and Igor Lacan, who also sits on the Council and works for the San Mateo-San Francisco Cooperative Extension service.

The document went through several iterations, starting back with its first draft in January 2015, which followed six months of meetings and presentations in 2014. By April 2015 it had been completely revised and had moved away from its earlier endorsement of restoration ecology and the native plant agenda of destroying blue gum eucalyptus forests. Unfortunately, it was passed including one section called “Competing Land Use Priorities” that provides a disclaimer for the Natural Areas Program to treat its trees differently than other urban forests in the name of “protecting San Francisco’s ‘remnant fragments’ of its original landscape.” That section could, at some later date, be used by Rec and Park as endorsement of their destructive plans in the Natural Areas.

However, there is much in the document that would mitigate against that destruction, including a section called “Protect and sustain iconic forest stands.” This section argues that our mature and historic tree stands “are character defining features of the city that provide unique experiences to those who enjoy them” and should be “protected and managed for their cultural and social benefits to residents and visitors.” Their importance is “evidenced by community groups formed around the protection and management of these sites” [Note: that would probably mean the SF Forest Alliance and Concerned Citizens for the Maintenance Alternative.] Although this document may not sound important, it is. It will be used as a guideline by the Urban Forestry Council whenever issues or plans related to the urban forests are brought before them. Potentially, the Board of Supervisors might refer to it as well when there is an appeal of the EIR for the Natural Areas Program’s management plan.

It took a year’s worth of volunteer hours from SF Forest Alliance leaders who attended meetings, made comments and presentations. Additionally, others, including Dr. Joe R. McBride and members of the Hills Conservation Network made presentations before the Council supporting our point of view. We see it as a small step in the right direction.

Thanks for your continued support!

San Francisco Forest Alliance

STAYING IN TOUCH

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We welcome your interest and support!

Retreat from invasion biology becomes a stampede

The New Wild by Fred Pearce (1) is the third book to be published in three years which challenges the conventional wisdom that native species are inherently superior to non-native species and the closely related corollary assumption that all non-native species are competitors of native species. These are the assumptions that underlie invasion biology. Each book has been progressively more pointed in its criticism of this ideology, masquerading as a scientific discipline.

Rambunctious Garden

The first book to be published in 2011—Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris (2)—was timid in its approach in comparison to The New Wild. Ms. Marris visited “restoration” projects all over the world. She described unsuccessful efforts to eradicate non-native plants and animals as well as extreme attempts to “rewild” that are often a mishmash of plant and animal species from different native ranges and time periods. She implied that these projects were futile as well as artificial, but she was not explicitly critical. Despite her cautious approach, she has been subjected to intense criticism from both academics and practitioners of invasion biology. The following excerpt of a reader’s review of Marris’s book found on Amazon.com is typical of the criticism:

“Earth as cookie jar”

“Emma Marris, the author of Rambunctious Garden (RG), loves the nature hiding in back street alleys and along the highway median strip. Marris believes it’s time to abandon (or de-emphasize) what she sees as outdated and naïve conservation strategies such as creation of national parks and wilderness reserves. She feels the biggest obstacles to a bold new world of “designer” and “novel” ecosystems is the “wilderness cult” that naively wants to preserve “natural” landscapes–which she says do not exist anymore.

Marris espouses the anthropocentric perspective that the Earth is more or less a resource cookie jar for humans–to be used carefully to be sure–but she doesn’t really question whether ethically or ecologically this is ultimately a good idea…

However, by moving the goalposts to vacant city lots as an acceptable desired future condition of the landscape, she implicitly, if not explicitly, provides cover for all manner of environmental degradation.”

Most of the 35 readers’ reviews about Rambunctious Garden on Amazon.com are equally critical. This particular review was rated as “helpful” by 141 other readers and 21 comments were also posted in support of the critical review. Marris and her book have been thrashed in many other venues, including conferences where she is called out by name as an enemy of nature by invasion biologists.

Where do camels belong?

The second book, which challenges the assumptions of invasion biology, was published in September 2014. Where do camels belong? by Ken Thompson, a British academic, (3) is much more explicit in its criticism of invasion biology. One of its strong suits is the examples of the ambiguity and absurdity of the often muddy distinction between native and non-native. As we might expect, this distinction is less clear in Britain because it has a much longer history of “invasion” than North America (only because invasion biologists have chosen to define “native” in North America as any species that precedes the arrival of Europeans). Professor Thompson offers some comic examples of how status as a native has been conferred in Britain and the contortions that are required to provide preferential treatment to these “natives.”

Despite kicking up the level of criticism of invasion biology a notch, reviews of Professor Thompson’s book are far more positive than those of Ms. Marris’s book.

The New Wild

The New Wild was published in the US in April 2015. Fred Pearce does not pull his punches in The New Wild. He methodically lays out all the reasons why invasion biology no longer deserves the status of a scientific discipline. The readers of Million Trees are familiar with all of these arguments, so we will summarize them here and provide links to articles on Million Trees that illustrate each issue:

There is very little empirical evidence that supports the assumptions of invasion biology:
- Native animals quickly adapt and/or evolve to use new introduced plants.
- There is no measurable loss of biodiversity resulting from the newly introduced plants. In fact, biodiversity has consistently increased all over the globe as a result of introduced species.
- No extinction of a native plant has occurred in the continental US as a result of an introduced plant.
There is usually some underlying reason why an introduced plant has become invasive, such as pollution, changed climate, etc. Eradicating plants does not reverse underlying conditions and therefore does not result in the return of native plants that are no longer adapted to changed conditions.
Non-native plant species are often performing valuable ecological functions, such as improving the soil or feeding and sheltering other plants and animals.
There are often negative unintended consequences when attempts are made to eradicate non-native species, such as damage or deaths caused by pesticides and trophic cascades resulting from eradicating one species that has been performing a role in the ecosystem, which was not known or understood.
The “new wild,” the unmanaged novel ecosystems with a rich and diverse mix of native and non-native species working out their own arrangements, is nature at work. In novel ecosystems, vigorous evolution and adaptation to new circumstances produce self-sustaining ecosystems that are truly wild. The carefully tended restoration and re-wilding projects of “invasion biologists” will be theme parks, gardened forever; there is nothing wild about them.

Although The New Wild is a full frontal assault on invasion biology, it has been very favorably received by reviewers on Amazon.com. Here is a review by a reader for whom the book was an epiphany:

“An important—even essential—look at our global challenges”

“Let me cut to the chase: read this book. I want to follow that statement with several exclamation points, but I’m trying to control my enthusiasm. Perhaps the book seems so important to me because I was so ignorant when I first started reading it. Perhaps my level of ignorance is extraordinary, but I just checked the websites of several environmental organizations I respect and it looks to me like they too need to read the book. Certainly it is provocative, controversial, and challenging. It will anger some, but it is not an ad hominem attack against anyone. Whatever you think of Fred Pearce, Daniel Simberloff, and others on either side of this debate, it is clear that the debate is important, even urgent. It made clear to me that I have put too much faith in environmental organizations to ferret out the facts and explicate the issues for me. Clearly, I have allowed myself to be misled. Even more important, scientific standards are not being rigorously followed. Have you noticed the headlines about all the “invasive” species that “need” to be eradicated? About the billions of dollars that are required to do this purportedly important work? I have been asking why so much killing is necessary. Pearce states that it isn’t. In fact, he goes further and suggests that the species targeted for eradication may be our salvation precisely because they have the adaptability and resilience to survive in environments disturbed and dramatically changed by mankind. His arguments are articulate and persuasive.

Environmental writers and organizations sometimes make conclusory and inflammatory claims about the damage done by those species they choose to characterize as invasive. And supporters such as myself accept those claims unquestioningly. As Pearce points out in his eye-opening treatment of the subject, too often one environmentalist repeats or even amplifies the unsubstantiated claims of another, and when this happens again and again with no one questioning the science along the way, dangerous, counterfactual conclusions are spread and soon become gospel. Pearce’s probing, incisive exploration into several of those claims in his seventh chapter, “Myths of the Aliens” is alone worth the price of the book.

Pearce woke me up. I respect the scientific method and believe it must be adhered to without fail in environmental writings. I have naively accepted that other environmentalists feel the same. We cannot make intelligent decisions if we are uninformed about true facts. False allegations have no value for any of us. “Invasive” species need new, clear-eyed, unbiased consideration by environmentalists. We need to look again at our underlying assumptions. What does “native” really mean? Which species are natural to an area? Which can survive in the “wild”? Pearce asserts that there is a “New Wild” and that we will do better to respect it sooner rather than later, to work with it rather than against it. I learned so much from Pearce not only about the facts of our situation, but also about new ways of looking at our extremely challenged world. I highly recommend this book and hope you get the opportunity to read Pearce’s insightful and creative ideas.”

This reader understands for the first time that the environmental organizations he/she had previously trusted had misled him/her into believing that non-native species are the cause of environmental damage rather than symptoms of that damage. He/She was always uncomfortable about all the killing that was motivated by that viewpoint, which is perhaps what opened his/her mind to Pearce’s message. This sequence of realizations describes my own journey to the other side of invasion biology. I was initially appalled by the killing, but I did not realize that the justification for the killing was entirely bogus until I began to do my own research. I initially assumed that they knew what they were doing. After reading innumerable books and studies, I began to understand that there is little evidence supporting their claims that non-native species are damaging the environment. Quite the opposite is true. We hope that Pearce’s book will start many other readers on the same journey of discovery.

(To be fair, the first critique of invasion biology was Invasion Biology: Critique of a Pseudoscience by David Theodoropoulos, published in 2003. Although it was ahead of its time, virtually every criticism of invasion biology in that book remains true to this day. However, at that point in time there were few empirical studies testing the hypotheses of invasion biology and few “restorations” based on those hypotheses. It was therefore more difficult to make the case against invasion biology. Theodoropoulos foretold the fate of invasion biology as a discredited ideology based primarily on his personal observations in nature.)

Progress!!

In just three years, three hard-hitting books have been published which confront the unfounded assumptions of invasion biology. Although each book is progressively more aggressive and explicit in its criticism, the reaction of the public has been progressively more positive.

We admired all three of these books, so we are reluctant to conclude that the more favorable reaction to the more recent books is because of improved quality. Perhaps the more explicit criticism of the more recent books makes it easier for readers to appreciate the strength of the argument. Although we are deeply grateful to Emma Marris for leading the way, Rambunctious Garden requires the reader to reach the conclusion she only implies. The New Wild makes no such demands on the reader’s judgment.

However, we have our own optimistic theory about why readers are welcoming The New Wild. The more experience the public has with the destructive projects which attempt to eradicate non-native species, the more likely they are to understand the futility and the damage being done to the environment. We choose to interpret the positive reception for The New Wild as an indication that the public is ready to abandon the fantasy of returning our public lands to some mythical ideal landscape.

Fred Pearce, The New Wild, Beacon Press, April 2015
Emma Marris, Rambunctious Garden, Bloomsbury, 2011
Ken Thompson, Where do camels belong?, Greystone Books, 2014

“Drought-Adapted Eucalyptus NOT Dying by the Thousand”

Native plant advocates in the Bay Area have always had trouble convincing the public and their elected representatives that it is necessary to destroy every non-native tree in our urban forest. They have therefore resorted to fear-mongering to convince the public that it is necessary to eradicate all non-native trees for public safety.

Fear of fire has been effective in the East Bay where there have been fires, although claims they were caused by non-native trees are a distortion of the facts. For the past year, native plant advocates in San Francisco have been using a variation on that theme to support their demands to destroy all non-native trees. They now claim our eucalyptus forest is dying of drought and must be destroyed before it causes a disastrous fire. You can read that story line in Jake Sigg’s Nature News (here) or in his recent public comments to San Francisco’s Urban Forestry Council (here), which is in the process of developing Best Management Practices for San Francisco’s urban forest.

It is our pleasure to republish this post from Save Mount Sutro Forest, responding to those claims. As usual, it is meticulously researched and documented. We only wish to add this small bit of common sense: The drought is hard on all plants. If the drought were capable of singling out one species of tree to kill, it would not be the drought-tolerant eucalyptus.

Jake Sigg, retired San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (SFRPD) gardener who is considered the doyen of the Native Plant movement in San Francisco, has a widely circulated email newsletter. In it, he has been pushing the argument that thousands of eucalyptus trees in San Francisco are dying of drought, as evidenced by epicormic growth on these trees: “2015 is the year of decision, forced upon us by 20,000 to 30,000 dead trees.” He is suggesting they will be a fire hazard and that SFRPD must act, presumably by cutting down the trees. In a recent post, he published a picture of a tree covered in young blue-green leaves, and predicted it would be dead within a year.

But he’s mistaken.

Eucalyptus trees are drought-adapted, and the shedding of mature leaves followed by sprouting of juvenile leaves (epicormic sprouting) is one of their defense mechanisms. These trees survive in areas far drier than San Francisco, where fog-drip provides an important source of summer moisture.

EUCALYPTUS RESPONSE TO DROUGHT

Eucalyptus trees are adapted to drought. They shed mature leaves and twigs so they don’t lose water through transpiration (the tree version of breathing, which takes place mainly in the leaves.) Later, they can replace the lost branches and leaves through “epicormic sprouting.”

Blue gum eucalyptus trees have buds buried deep under their bark. When the tree is stressed, they may shed adult leaves and later sprout new leaves along their branches. When you see a eucalyptus tree that seems to have shaggy light bluish-green new leaves along its branches or trunk – that’s epicormic sprouting.

Here’s what Jake Sigg said in a recent newsletter: “According to arborists, the trees produce these abnormal shoots from epicormic buds when their lives are seriously threatened. In this case, the tree is expected to be dead by the end of 2015. On Bayview Hill, barring heavy unseasonal rain, hundreds of the trees will be dead this year. Yet the City continues to not see a problem.”

We asked UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus Joe McBride and California’s leading expert on eucalyptus for his opinion. He’s observed this condition in trees along the edge of the Presidio forest and explains, “This response is common in blue gum as a mechanism to reduce transpiration rates in order to survive drought years.”

He continues: “I am not convinced that the trees will die in large numbers.”

THE GIRDLED TREES OF BAYVIEW HILL

As an aside, we find it ironic that Mr Sigg should be so concerned with dead trees on Bayview Hill, given that’s where nativists girdled hundreds of healthy eucalyptus trees to kill them.

(This is done by cutting around the tree, thus starving it of nutrients that are carried only in the outer layers of the tree-trunk.) It’s clearly visible in the two photographs here, both taken on Bayview Hill.

EUCALYPTUS ADAPTS

In fact, one of the reasons eucalyptus is so widely planted – including in climates both hotter and drier than in San Francisco – is that it adapts to a wide range of conditions.

Eucalyptus globulus thrives in Southern California, Spain, Portugal, India – all places hotter and drier than San Francisco.

Here’s a quote from R.G. Florence’s textbook, Ecology and Silviculture of Eucalyptus Forests:

From p.121 of the same book: “… they regulate their water usage in hot dry summers by closing their stomata [breathing pores in the leaves] during the day and lowering their rates of gaseous exchange. They adapt by their elastic cell structure to water stress.”

EPICORMIC SPROUTING IS IMPORTANT IN EUCALYPTUS

Mr Sigg describes “how to identify a dying blue gum” as follows: “Look for trees with thinning foliage and copious juvenile leaves (called coppice shoots) hugging the main stems. These coppice shoots are easy to see because of their blue color and tight clustering, as opposed to the adult leaves, which are 6-8 inches-long, dull-olive-colored and sickle-shaped and which hang from the ends of long branches. These coppice shoots are the give-away that the tree is in trouble and is destined to die soon…” (He later corrected “coppice shoots” to epicormic growth.)

But again, this is not actually true.

In fact, epicormic sprouting allows eucalyptus to survive not only drought, as described above, but even fire. The epicormic sprouting grows into new branches to replace the ones that have been damaged in the fire. This is from Wikipedia: “As one of their responses to frequent bushfires which would destroy most other plants, many Eucalypt trees found widely throughout Australia have extensive epicormic buds which sprout following a fire, allowing the vegetative regeneration of branches from their trunks.[4][5] These epicormic buds are highly protected, set deeper beneath the thick bark than in other tree species, allowing both the buds and vascular cambium to be insulated from the intense heat.[4]”

(The references are: [4] “Effects of fire on plants and animals: individual level”. Fire ecology and management in northern Australia. Tropical Savannas CRC & Bushfire CRC. 2010. Retrieved 27 December 2010. [5] “Learn about eucalypts”. EUCLID – Eucalypts of Australia. Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research. Retrieved 27 December 2010.)

And sometimes, dead branches and leaves and epicormic growth don’t even indicate stress – it’s part of the normal growth cycle. R.G. Florence’s book on eucalyptus says: the “mature crown of a eucalypt maintains itself by the continual production of new crown units, which die in turn. There will always be some dead branches in a healthy mature crown.” He goes on to say an “undue proportion of dead branches is an unhealthy sign” but a “reasonable proportion of death of crown units should be accepted as normal.” He also discusses the “epicormic shoots from dormant buds on the top and sides of the branch develop into leaf-bearing units of the mature crown.” (p.13) Eucalypts go through stages of development that include extensive self-thinning, particularly in younger trees. (p. 194)

Another reason for epicormic sprouts on eucalyptus is increased light. From Wikipedia, with references: “Epicormic buds lie beneath the bark, their growth suppressed by hormones from active shoots higher up the plant. Under certain conditions, they develop into active shoots, such as when damage occurs to higher parts of the plant or light levels are increased following removal of nearby plant. Epicormic buds and shoots occur in many woody species, but are absent from many others, such as most conifers.” [The Wikipedia article references the Encyclopedia Britannica.]

We have seen these epicormic sprouts in eucalyptus trees around the clubhouse in Glen Canyon after many trees were removed.

We also saw them on Mount Sutro near where 1,200 trees were removed for “fire safety.”

MISTAKING DEFENSES FOR DEATH THROES

In summary, then, epicormic sprouting does not indicate that the tree is near death. It may indicate that the tree is responding to drought (or even to other stresses like pesticide use or damage to its root systems) with defensive measures. It’s like declaring that everyone who has a fever is bound to die of it. The trees below are the same ones featured in the picture at the start of this article – one year later, they’re surviving, not dying.

In some cases, epicormic sprouting may indicate nothing at all, except that the tree is going through a normal growth phase, or changed light conditions following removal of nearby trees.

LIVING WITH A FEW DEAD TREES

We asked Dr McBride if it made sense to cut down these trees. “I do not think the city would be justified in cutting trees down as a fire prevention action,” he says. “Cutting down drought-stressed trees at this point would be much more costly, sprouting would be difficult to control without herbicides, and the litter on the ground would have to be removed to decrease the fire hazard.”

“The problem as I see it is the accumulation of leaves, bark, and small branches on the ground. This material presents a serious fuel problem when it dries out sufficiently.” However, he points out that “In many eucalyptus stands in San Francisco the eucalyptus ground fuel (leaves, bark, and small branches) seldom dries to a point that it can be ignited because of summer fog and fog drip.” In dry areas, the best course is to “launch a program of ground fuel reduction by removing the litter from beneath eucalyptus stands.”

The eucalyptus-tree nest hole of the red-shafted flicker - San Francisco. Janet Kessler — Eucalyptus-tree nest hole of red-shafted flicker – San Francisco. Copyright Janet Kessler

A few trees may indeed die, with the drought or without it. If you think of a forest as a normal population, you expect to find some trees that are thriving and some that are hanging on, and some that are dying – just like in any population. And dead and dying trees are very valuable to wildlife: They’re more likely to have cavities that are suitable for nesting (and are easier to excavate for woodpeckers and other cavity-building species). They also have bugs that come to feast on the decaying wood, and that’s bird-food.

“Restoration is just horticulture dressed up to look like ecology”

Peter Del Tredici was invited to speak at a conference sponsored by the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, “Bridging the Nature-Culture Divide Conference by the Cultural Landscape Foundation,” January 23, 2015. Professor Del Tredici recently retired as senior research scientist at Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum after 35 years of service. He is an Associate Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he teaches courses on soils, plants and urban ecology. He advocates for a pragmatic approach to urban landscapes, which values novel ecosystems for the functions they perform and their sustainability in stressful environments.

Professor Del Tredici’s presentation at the Presidio Conference was entitled, “Saving Nature in a Humanized World.” The presentation is available on YouTube.

We attended his presentation, which was warmly received by an audience of about 180 people. We paraphrase some of his key points.

Update: Professor Del Tredici has requested that the following statement be added to this post: “Professor Del Tredici has graciously allowed us to paraphrase–for educational purposes only–some of his key points in his lecture. In no way should his permission to reprint the lecture on this website be considered an endorsement of the political or ecological agenda of “Death of a Million Trees”

Professor Del Tredici began his presentation by complimenting the Presidio for what it has accomplished in the past 20 years and congratulating the Presidio for “…what it has become. But I’m going to do something very different today. I hope you’re ready for this.”

Professor Del Tredici spoke about spontaneous urban nature, some of which we control but a lot we do not control. What does spontaneous nature look like? The reason why this is important is because it’s about the future. What is the world going to look like 20 years from now? The answer to that question is in urbanized nature.

Detroit is a depressing place from a sociological standpoint. It is so economically depressed that the land has lost its value. Forty percent of the land is no longer occupied or managed by public or private entities. From the standpoint of a botanist, it is a fascinating place because we can see how nature develops without human interaction. Detroit is a case study for urban ecology.

Globalized Ecology

The vegetation of most cities is as cosmopolitan as its human population. Asa Gray’s “Manual of Botany” reports that 10.7% of plant species in Northeastern United States were non-native in 1856. By the 1990s, 25-35% of plant species were non-native. This number is not going down. It’s a strongly upward trend over the past 150 years. We can create little islands of native plants by eradicating non-native species, but the reality is that our ecology is becoming as globalized as our economy. These changes mirrored the changes in the ethnic and racial composition of American cities. The same forces that produce socio-economic changes in cities are also changing the biological environment.

Urbanized Environment

A significant portion of land area in the Northeast is fully urbanized. Urbanization in the West is just as rampant as the Northeast. Looking at an aerial view of Los Angeles, you can see that it is completely developed. You can talk about what used to grow there, but the concept that there is a vegetation that is native to these current conditions, Professor Del Tredici said, “Personally I find that an absurdity. I hate to be so harsh, but nothing is native to LA as it now exists.”

Cities have distinctive environmental characteristics, such as the urban heat island effect. Cities are significantly warmer than rural adjacent areas, which means they are important predictors of the impact of climate change because they have already warmed as much as other places are projected to in the future.
Urbanized areas can also be defined by the amount of impervious surface they contain. When 25% or more of the land is covered with an impervious surface such as roads, parking lots, houses etc., the environment is urbanized from the standpoint of the vegetation because impervious surface fragments the environment, compacts the soil, and interrupts the hydrology. Using the definition of 30% impervious surface, urbanization describes not only our cities, but also many of our suburbs.
Glaciation is analogous to the urbanized environment because the heavy equipment that is used to clear the land leaves in its wake compacted glacial till. What you find after the glaciers recede is barren land; the vegetation has to come back from nothing—a condition known as primary succession.

One-sixth of the city of Boston is built on land fill. What is the native vegetation of filled soil? There is no going back when you’re talking about filled urban landscapes. Not quite as much of San Francisco is built on landfill, but most of the eastern and northern edges of the city are on landfill.

There is a huge difference between native soils and fill soils. Fill soils support the development of novel ecosystems. Native ecosystems cannot be created without native soils. There are some native species that are adapted to urban conditions, such as roadside areas. Urbanized vegetation is a cosmopolitan mix of native and non-native. Urbanization favors species that grow well in soils that are relatively fertile, dry, sunny, and alkaline.

Where it snows, the roads are repeatedly salted to prevent dangerous, icy conditions. This creates alkaline conditions along roadsides to which many plant species are not adapted.

Urban Ecology

Professor Del Tredici studies modern urban ecology which was born in post-war Germany, where urban environments were reduced to rubble and ecologists began to study what was growing in that rubble. That was the birth of modern urban ecology. It’s important to study, not for what it used to be, but for what it is now and what it can become in the future. Nature reclaiming the urban environment on its own terms is an interesting process, an evolutionary process that we should pay attention to. Post industrial succession—the process of rebuilding ecology in an intensively urban environment– should be studied with the same level of academic intensity as we studied the post-agricultural succession in the Northeast.

Novel Ecosystems

When native forests are converted to urban ecosystems and then abandoned—as seen in Detroit– they don’t go back to their original state, rather they become novel ecosystems. There is no going back. Once we achieve the level of compaction and impervious surface of an urbanized environment we have limited what the landscape can become in the future. Some of these changes are permanent. There are long term disturbances caused by chronic stress factors that permanently alter ecological conditions. Professor Del Tredici said, “These conditions are not reversible. Invasive species aren’t going anywhere. If you remove invasive species you are gardening. When you garden you are deciding who lives and who dies. You are just playing god. This gives you the illusion of control, but it is a never-ending effort to control a process that can’t be controlled.”

In 1996 the Arnold Arboretum was given a 24 acre parcel of derelict land, called Bussey Brook Meadow. In 2011, Del Tredici succeeded in preserving it as a site for research on urban ecology by leaving it alone. The land had a 300 year history of use and abuse, all left more or less alone. Plant species—both native and non-native–have sorted themselves out and restored a functional wetland in the middle of the site. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t a native landscape if it is providing the necessary ecological functions.

The Bottom Line

Ecology is not about stasis, it’s about flux. Stasis is achieved by maintenance, but the natural state is flux. Evolution is based on competition, which species is the best adapted to current conditions. Sustainability is about reducing maintenance in order to promote ecology. Landscape architects look at the Bussey Meadow site and ask, “When are you going to fix it?” Professor Del Tredici’s answer is, “I’m not sure this site needs to be fixed. It has value just the way it is.”

We have quoted Professor Del Tredici’s work in previous articles and we consider it important everywhere, but we bring this presentation to your attention today primarily because of where it was delivered. The Presidio Trust has engaged in some of the most aggressive “restorations” in the San Francisco Bay Area and some of the most successful: Inspiration Point, El Polin Spring, Thompson Reach, etc. All fish in Mountain Lake were recently poisoned in order to “restore” the lake to exclusively native species. Pacific chorus frogs were recently reintroduced. The intention is to reintroduce the Western Pond Turtle to Mountain Lake, a species that is notoriously easily disturbed and being considered for endangered status. It is also a species that requires hundreds of meters of unshaded nesting habitat in proximity to its water source.

Tennessee Hollow “Restoration” is 270 acres, 20% of the Presidio. Presidio Trust photo.

These projects have required the destruction of thousands of trees because the native vegetation is grassland and scrub. However, the Presidio has also made a commitment to the preservation of its historic, non-native forest which was planted by the military over 100 years ago. Major investments have been made in reforestation of the aging forest with similar tree species.

The San Francisco Presidio, painting by Richard Beechey, 1826

In other words, the Presidio Trust seems to have assigned itself a schizophrenic mission to simultaneously destroy an existing landscape in order to re-create it and preserve that same landscape: the re-creation of an idealized landscape vs. preservation of the novel ecosystem within the historic forest. We suppose that is one definition of “balance.” However, we would like to believe that the invitation to Professor Del Tredici to speak of the sustainability of urbanized novel ecosystems is an indication that the Presidio Trust will assign more value to what exists and less effort to attempts to re-create an historic landscape that may no longer be adapted to the real world.

“Five Reasons it’s Okay to Love Oxalis – and Stop Poisoning It”

The San Francisco Forest Alliance has published an excellent article about the pointless and harmful attempt to eradicate oxalis in San Francisco’s so-called “natural areas.” We are grateful to SFFA for their outstanding research and permission to republish the article.

The oxalis season is over, and the perky yellow flowers have vanished for another year. These Bermuda buttercups will be back next year to herald the spring, bringing joy to those who love them, irritation to those who hate them, and Tier I herbicides targeted at them in San Francisco’s so-called “Natural” Areas.

THOSE WHO HATE OXALIS AND WANT TO POISON IT WITH GARLON

These flowers are so visible in spring that Bay Nature magazine did an article about them in March 2015: A Natural History of the Little Yellow Flower that’s Everywhere Right Now. It quoted Jake Sigg, the retired SF Recreation and Parks gardener who is considered the doyen of San Francisco’s native plant movement. He hates oxalis pes caprae, which he considers extremely invasive. The article quotes him as saying that, without intervention, “in X many years Twin Peaks would just be one solid mass of yellow, and there wouldn’t be any other plants there…” The article suggested that an oxalis-dominated landscape “drives away coyotes, hawks and owls that feed on grassland foragers, and the situation is especially dire for endangered Mission blue butterflies, which depend heavily on native wildflowers.” Most of those ‘facts’ about oxalis are mistaken as we’ll explain below.

Mr Sigg’s theories align with those of the Natural Areas Program (NAP) of the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (SFRPD), which uses the herbicide, Garlon (triclopyr) to battle oxalis despite its dubious efficacy for the purpose. San Francisco’s Department of the Environment classifies Garlon 4 Ultra as Tier I: Most Hazardous. It’s listed as HIGH PRIORITY TO FIND AN ALTERNATIVE (their caps). Since oxalis is the main reason NAP uses Garlon, the alternative we propose is – don’t use Garlon or anything else on oxalis.

An article on SaveSutro.com, based on a detailed study by the Marin Municipal Water Department, describes some of the issues with Garlon:

Garlon “causes severe birth defects in rats at relatively low levels of exposure.” Baby rats were born with brains outside their skulls, or no eyelids. Exposed adult female rats also had more failed pregnancies.
Rat and dog studies showed damage to the kidneys, the liver, and the blood.
About 1-2% of Garlon falling on human skin is absorbed within a day. For rodents, it is absorbed twelve times as fast. It’s unclear what happens to predators such as hawks that eat the affected rodents.
Dogs may be particularly vulnerable; their kidneys may not be able to handle Garlon as well as rats or humans. Dow Chemical objected when the Environmental Protection Agency noted decreased red-dye excretion as an adverse effect, so now it’s just listed as an “effect.”
It very probably alters soil biology. “Garlon 4 can inhibit growth in the mycorrhizal fungi…” (soil funguses that help plant nutrition)
It’s particularly dangerous to aquatic creatures: fish (particularly salmon); invertebrates; and aquatic plants.
Garlon can persist in dead vegetation for up to two years.

Natural Areas Program uses Garlon on oxalis

First, a little about the actual natural history of oxalis. This plant doesn’t set seed in California, and spreads entirely by sending out roots and forming little bulbils (like tiny potatoes) underground. It’s usually found where the soil has been disturbed by activities such as road-building, gardening, or trail-building. In some cases, the disturbance comes from landslides or something similar. It can’t stand frost. If we do nothing, it would tend to die down rather than spreading uncontrollably.

In disturbed landscapes, it can spread fast. For this reason it can be a nuisance in gardens. People don’t want to leave their gardens alone for years to let nature take its course with the oxalis, and not every garden design includes brilliant yellow as the dominant color for a few weeks. The only way to eradicate it in the short term is to dig it out carefully every time you see it, and make sure you get most of the bulbils. Or use strong herbicides, which may not work.

In a natural landscape, though, it’s a different story and here’s why.

1) OXALIS IS GOOD FOR BEES AND BUTTERFLIES

Oxalis is actually an excellent plant for bees and butterflies. When blooming, it provides “copious nectar.” In fact, it generously gives away its nectar. Since it doesn’t set seed, it doesn’t benefit from pollinators – but it’s a food source for honey bees, bumblebees and butterflies. (You can read a rather technical description of the plant HERE in a 2-page PDF note from UCLA’s Barry A. Prigge and Arthur C. Gibson.)

In fact, a recent 2014 study shows that plant communities with exotic plants had more plant species as well as more pollinators, that pollinators didn’t prefer native plants, and that even some specialist pollinators depended on introduced plant species.

It’s true the Mission Blue butterfly needs (native) lupine as its nursery plant. (It doesn’t depend on any other native wildflowers – only three varieties of lupine. Incidentally, one of the key nectar sources for the Mission Blue butterfly is an invasive non-native Italian thistle: Carduus pycnocephalus).

Lupine has been planted on Twin Peaks as NAP attempts to reintroduce the Mission Blue butterfly there. But lupine is also a plant of disturbed areas, which means that NAP must maintain it or it will die out as the area stabilizes. They have to keep planting it, weeding, and trimming the grass around the lupine patches to make it attractive to the butterfly. An SFRPD report on the reintroduction project said “unmanaged habitat deteriorates quickly.” Presumably, they don’t use Garlon near the lupine patches, since it would likely kill that too. Despite what is implied in the Bay Nature article, it’s not oxalis that’s the issue. The real problem is another native plant, the coyote bush which takes over grasslands in a natural succession.

2) OXALIS IS GOOD FOR WILDLIFE

Oxalis bulbils are a food source for wildlife. Gophers and other rodents eat them. In fact, the Bay Nature article says, “Their spread is abetted by pocket gophers and scrub jays, which have been spotted carrying the bulbs and caching them in the ground—effectively planting them in new areas.”

Since gophers are a foundation species in the food web, being dinner for predators from hawks to coyotes to great blue herons, these plants actually provide habitat benefits whether or not they’re flowering, because the bulbils are there all year.

Where there are gophers, the predators follow. Like the coyotes in these pictures, which clearly haven’t been driven away by a landscape dominated by oxalis.

coyote pouncing in oxalis field. Copyright Janet Kessler

coyote in oxalis field. Copyright Janet Kessler

3) OXALIS DOESN’T LEAVE THE GROUND BARE

The article says that oxalis leaves “bare ground during the six months of the year oxalis doesn’t flower.” That’s not true either.

The spectacular yellow bloom of the oxalis – valuable because the mass of color attracts honey bees and bumblebees – gives the impression that it’s the only plant there. But though it visually takes over the landscape when it’s in bloom, it naturally grows interspersed with grasses and other plants. Like in the picture above.

In fact, oxalis tends to enrich the soil with phosphorus, which is good for grass.

So when it finishes blooming, as it has by now – you don’t get bare ground. The picture below shows the same area as the first picture in this article – but it’s after the oxalis bloom is over. It’s grassland.

4) OXALIS HAS LITTLE IMPACT ON “NATIVE” PLANTS

One argument – related to the ‘bare ground’ argument – is that oxalis takes over grasslands and destroys them, particularly the native grasses. However, grasslands in most of California including San Francisco are dominated by non-native grasses. The change occurred over 100 years ago, when these grasses were planted for pasture. So the grassland that NAP is defending with herbicides is primarily non-native anyway.

But anyway, what’s the evidence that oxalis is actually damaging native plants?

It’s true some European studies do suggest that an increase in oxalis is associated with a decrease in native plants diversity –though whether it’s a cause is unclear. It may just be benefiting from human activities that disrupt the landscape. Another study put oxalis head-to-head with a native annual grass, lolium rigidum. The native grass tended to dominate. Their conclusion: “Oxalis is a poor competitor. This is consistent with the preferential distribution of Oxalis in disturbed areas such as ruderal habitats, and might explain its low influence on the cover of native species in invaded sites.”

The California Invasive Plant Council rates its invasiveness as “moderate,” considering it as somewhat invasive in sand dunes and less so in coastal bluff areas.

In San Francisco, every place where oxalis grows is already a disturbed environment, a mix of non-native grasses and plants with native plants (some of which have been artificially planted). Here, oxalis appears to grow happily with other plants – including, for instance, the native California poppy in the picture above.

5) KIDS LOVE IT AND IT’S EDIBLE

Children love oxalis, both for its pretty flower and for the sour taste of its edible stems.

Even small children love gathering posies of Bermuda buttercups (though picking flowers is technically prohibited in Natural Areas). The flowers are surprisingly hardy for wildflowers, and in a glass of water last quite well as cut-flowers.

The plant is edible, and its tart leaves make a nice addition to salad. People enjoy snacking on its sour stems. Besides Bermuda buttercup, it’s also called ‘sourgrass’ and ‘soursob.’ It does contain oxalic acid (as does spinach, for instance), and so you probably wouldn’t want to make a meal of it. Though in South Africa it’s made into soup.

Adding Garlon to it is probably a bad thing.

Photo credit: Badjonni (Creative Commons – Flickr)

CONCLUSION

From our current evidence, there’s no sign that oxalis has a negative impact on wildlife, and plenty of evidence it’s already part of the ecological food web of our city. The evidence also suggests it’s not having a negative effect on other plants in San Francisco either. Lots of people find this flower attractive; one writer described it as the city smiling with Bermuda buttercups.

In any case, even Doug Johnson of the California Invasive Plant Council doesn’t think it’s worth attacking at a landscape level: the payoff isn’t worth the expense. Removing it from the hundreds of acres in Natural Areas isn’t as simple as eradicating it from a small yard where it’s clashing with the garden design. It requires a lot of work, a lot of powerful herbicides, a multi-year effort – and for what?

The justification for using strong pesticides like Garlon to control it is weak. We call on NAP to stop using Tier I and Tier II herbicides altogether.

Science in the National Parks

We were so encouraged by our reader’s report about the conference of the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) that we decided to attend the conference of the National Park Service (NPS), “Science for Parks, Parks for Science” at UC Berkeley, March 26-27, 2015. As we have reported many times, the National Park Service is heavily engaged in native plant “restorations.” Their projects are some of the most aggressive in the Bay Area and some of the most successful, because they seem to have greater resources than other local managers of public land. Therefore, we were curious about their assessment of those efforts. Are they starting to have doubts, as expressed by some of the presentations at the CNPS conference? This is a brief summary of what we learned.

The angry old guard

The keynote speaker was E.O. Wilson, the granddaddy of “biodiversity.” He spoke of his desire to safeguard biodiversity by preserving one-half of the Earth as “protected areas” and the closely related goal to connect all protected areas. This lofty goal should be compared to the current figure of 13% of the earth which is presently protected and the internationally agreed-upon goal of 17%, according to the second speaker, Ernesto Enkerlin, Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas.

The moderator, Steven Beissinger, Professor of Conservation Biology at UC Berkeley, asked Professor Wilson a few pointed questions:

“Can working landscapes play a role in conservation?” Professor Wilson said. “That is a stupid, dangerous way of looking at conservation. Parks cannot be evaluated in terms of their value to humanity. The natural world is valuable in its own right. Emma Marris and Peter Kareiva of the Nature Conservancy are pushing this; they have the least experience with studying the natural world. This dangerous thinking must be countered immediately.” Granted, Emma Marris is a science journalist, but Peter Kareiva was an academic scientist at University of Washington for decades before becoming Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy.
“Must protected areas be devoid of people?” Professor Wilson said “Of course not. Indigenous people might be included.” In fact, indigenous people have been evicted from many protected areas around the globe. Furthermore, virtually the entire population of the US is not indigenous. Where does that leave us?
“Given the challenges faced by conservation, is triage necessary to prioritize projects to focus on the most important and threatened species?” Professor Wilson said with some feeling, “That’s ridiculous! We CAN bring them all back, we must SAVE THEM ALL!”

Professor Daniel Simberloff, the well-known invasion biologist, was another speaker who believes it is necessary and possible to eradicate all non-native plants and animals in our public lands. He also called out by name Marris, Kareiva and others for their criticism of invasion biology. Frankly, we think these personal attacks are unseemly in the context of what should be considered a scientific debate about the most effective methods of conservation. The moderator, Professor Holly Doremus (UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall), asked Professor Simberloff a few tough questions as well:

“In a time of climate change, is it time to blur the line between native and non-native?” Professor Simberloff said the line is clear: Non-natives are those species that have been brought by humans to a “discontinuous range, not those range changes that occur because of climate change. If the species is spreading because of climate change it should not be managed.” Unfortunately, many native plants and animals are being killed because of the nonsensical definition of “non-native” by many of these projects.
“How can we tell the public that biodiversity is good except for certain species?” Professor Simberloff said, “We must do a better job of communicating with the public by informing them of the impact of non-native species.” Perhaps Professor Simberloff is unaware that there is little evidence of negative impact of plants he considers non-native. We don’t feel the need to be educated about harm that is more theoretical than real.

Most other speakers at the conference had a less sanguine view of our ability to “save every species” and “eradicate every non-native species.” The need for “triage” was repeated in many presentations and descriptions of past and present projects were often pessimistic about the prospects of success. Climate change and its impact on the environment was the dominant theme of the conference.

All loss, no gain

Mission Blue butterfly. Wikimedia Commons

The endangered Mission Blue butterfly exists only in a few locations in the San Francisco Bay Area: Twin Peaks, San Bruno Mountain, Milagro Ridge in San Mateo County, and the headlands of Marin County. We recently reported that the 32-year effort to restore butterfly habitat on San Bruno Mountain has been plagued by natural succession to native coyote brush that competes with the butterfly’s host plant, 3 species of lupine. The status of the butterfly population on San Bruno Mountain is unknown because of inadequate monitoring. Save Mount Sutro Forest has reported that the butterfly population on Twin Peaks remains very small despite repeated attempts to move butterflies from San Bruno Mountain. We learned at the NPS science conference that the effort to restore butterfly habitat in the Marin Headlands in order to increase the butterfly population there has experienced its own difficulties.

The restoration of butterfly habitat to the Marin Headlands was controversial because about 500 Monterey pines were destroyed to make way for the lupine scrub required by the butterflies. The pines had been planted by the military over 100 years ago. They were heavily used by raptors during their annual fall migration through the Bay Area. The Marin chapter of the Audubon Society was therefore opposed to their destruction. As usual, this opposition was ignored by the National Park Service, which manages that property, and the trees were destroyed in about 2009.

NPS has been engaged in the effort to restore the habitat needed by the Mission Blue since the trees were removed. Those engaged in that effort presented a poster at the NPS science conference which reported:

In 2010, NPS and its collaborators attempted to promote the growth of the 3 species of lupine required by the Mission Blue by removing all vegetation mechanically and with prescribed burns, then seeding with lupine.
Neither burn nor mechanical treatments resulted in increased lupine species cover after one or three years. In fact, both mechanical and burn treatment resulted in increased cover of non-native forbs and grasses after three years.

In other words, 500 trees were destroyed, which were heavily used by migrating raptors, but Mission Blue butterflies did not benefit from the destruction of these trees because efforts to restore the habitat they require have been completely unsuccessful. This is a familiar scenario: all loss and no gain.

Karner blue butterfly - USFWS — Karner blue butterfly – USFWS

We also heard a presentation about a 20-year effort to “restore” the habitat required by an endangered butterfly (Karner blue) at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The complete failure of that effort is attributed to changes in the climate, considered “abnormal:”

“Despite advances in our understanding of habitat needs of the Karner blue, and extensive management to meet those needs, Karner numbers at Indiana Dunes have fallen more than 99% over the past fifteen years, with precipitous declines associated with historically abnormal weather in 2012. We have documented a role phenological [seasonal] mismatching between the butterfly and its host plant plays in this population decline and the sensitivity of this species to habitat fragmentation.”

One wonders what “abnormal” weather means during a time of extreme changes in the climate, which are not expected to return to “normal.” The speaker predicted that the likely outcome for the Karner blue at Indiana Dunes is its complete disappearance and probable replacement with a different butterfly species which is better adapted to the new climate.

Reality Check

Doug Johnson, Executive Director of the California Invasive Plant Council, made a presentation about new digital tools to identify populations of plants considered “invasive:” CalWeedMapper and WHIPPET. These tools will enable land managers to set priorities for attempts to eradicate these plants. Using a thistle species as an example, he showed a map that indicated this “invasive” plant is present everywhere in northern California, but there are isolated pockets of it south of there. These small, isolated populations represent potential opportunities to prevent its spread before it is so widespread that eradication is impossible. This is an example of triage, which was the dominant theme of the conference.

Oxalis in Glen Canyon Park, San Francisco

Mr. Johnson was recently interviewed by Bay Nature about a non-native species of oxalis, which San Francisco’s so-called Natural Areas Program has been attempting to eradicate for many years by spraying it with Garlon. Garlon is the most hazardous pesticide used by the Natural Areas Program. Mr. Johnson expressed his opinion to Bay Nature that it is futile to attempt to eradicate oxalis: “‘It’s not a target for landscape-level eradication because it’s way too widespread.’”

On March 13, 2015, the California Invasive Plant Council published its final reassessment of Blue Gum Eucalyptus (available HERE). Cal-IPC has downgraded its rating of invasiveness and ecological impact from “moderate” to “limited.” Although the detailed assessment is less than perfect, the overall rating itself is an improvement. We are grateful to our readers who sent comments to Cal-IPC on its deeply flawed first draft of the reassessment.

In other words, the California Invasive Plant Council seems to have entered a new era of realistic expectations. This looks like a BIG step forward to us, because if that viewpoint is adopted by land managers it should mean less destruction and less use of pesticides.

The Take Away

The old guard is unprepared to compromise their firm belief that it is possible to save every species of native plant and animal and that every non-native plant and animal must be killed to achieve that lofty goal. They defend their indefensible opinion by attacking those who are looking for a more realistic approach to conservation. However, climate change is bringing more and more converts to this viewpoint, which was best expressed by one of the plenary speakers, Hugh Possingham, Professor of Mathematics and Ecology, University of Queensland in Australia. He was asked how his model of “ecological parks” fits with the mission of the National Park Service to preserve the parks “unimpaired.” We paraphrase Professor Possingham’s answer:

“The Australian conservation ethic is similar to the United States’. We yearn for pre-invasion days. When I grew up in Adelaide we had 7.5 hectares of pristine vegetation for the entire city, which had 750 species at one time and now there are 500 species left. It’s a museum. It isn’t a functioning ecosystem. So, we have got to embrace the creation of ecosystems that are not particularly natural. However, I’ve learned that the birds don’t care where the plants come from. Where weeds have been ripped out, bird diversity has plummeted. I have been converted to the European viewpoint of disturbed landscapes: that is, these new plants have value. Australia is completely over-run with non-native plants and animals. Australians would be willing to shoot all the feral cats, but the fact is it’s not possible because we don’t have the resources to attempt it, let alone succeed at it.”

Thank you, Professor Possingham, for your frank acknowledgement of the value of new species to wildlife and your acceptance of more realistic goals for conservation in the 21^st Century.

Videos of the plenary speakers are available on the conference website, as well as abstracts of posters and presentations.

Conference of the California Native Plant Society

In January 2015, the California Native Plant Society (CNPS) celebrated its 50^th anniversary by holding a gigantic conference. About 700-1,000 people attended. There were several hundred short presentations and many posters describing research and “restoration” projects. The abstracts of these presentations are available on the CNPS website. We are publishing a brief description of a few of the presentations sent to us by one of our readers who attended the conference. We publish with permission but without attribution, on request. We have added a few edits in brackets and italics as well as a few links to relevant articles on Million Trees.

I was very impressed with the quality of the presentations at the CNPS conference. Some were given by academic scientists or their graduate students. Many were given by land managers and managers of “restoration” projects. There were about 225 presentations in 5 simultaneous sessions, so it was possible to hear only about 45 of them. There were also many short “lightning” presentations and nearly 50 posters. Please consider this an impression of the conference, rather than a comprehensive report.

Michael Soulé was the opening speaker. You might recognize his name as one of the proponents of invasion biology who is angry about growing acceptance of “novel ecosystems” and the ecological functions they perform. [Million Trees has posted articles about this debate among academic scientists. Soulé is one of the invasion biologists who demanded that the Nature Conservancy abandon their support for novel ecosystems.] His objection to any acceptance of non-native plants was the main focus of his presentation. He closed by saying that he “cannot live” without wild nature. Since his definition of “nature” seems to exclude non-native plants, one wonders how he will manage to survive. Perhaps he lives in an alternate universe populated solely by native plants.

Jared Farmer was the speaker at the conference dinner. His subject was the history of eucalyptus in California. His presentation was similar to his treatment of the subject in his book, Trees in Paradise. [Million Trees has posted articles about Farmer’s book.] Like his book, his presentation was even-handed in its treatment of eucalyptus. That enraged the audience, which booed every time he said something positive about eucalyptus. One wonders why he was invited to speak to this audience. Were the organizers of the conference interested in promoting a more balanced view of eucalyptus? Or did they just want a provocative speaker to wake up a sleepy audience after hours of a fund-raising auction?

Many of the presentations were surprisingly frank about the difficulties experienced by “restoration” projects. CNPS deserves credit for inviting speakers who described some stunning failures of their effort to “restore” native landscapes. I’ll describe just a few of the themes of speakers I heard.

San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission

I was surprised to learn that San Francisco’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) is heavily engaged in native plant “restorations.” The PUC is responsible for managing thousands of acres of open space in the watershed that supplies San Francisco’s drinking water. Common sense suggests that the PUC’s top priority would be the purity and safety of the water supply. The PUC presentations at the conference suggest otherwise. The PUC’s commitment to native plant “restorations” seems to trump the goal of clean water.

The PUC attempted to “restore” 100 acres of wetland and riparian habitat in San Mateo, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties by planting over 500,000 native plants, obtained from several different nurseries. They claim to have followed a strict protocol which theoretically should have prevented the introduction of diseased plants. Their protocol obviously failed. The fact that many of the plants were infected with Phytophthora was not discovered until they were planted in the ground. Phytophthora is the pathogen that is causing Sudden Oak Death. The PUC is now faced with the difficult—if not impossible—task of trying to contain the spread of a fatal pathogen for which there is no known cure.

This project was funded by a “mitigation” grant for capital projects elsewhere in San Francisco. Environmental laws require the builders of new development to “mitigate” for the impact they have on the environment by funding projects elsewhere, which are considered beneficial to the environment. This often looks like legalized extortion to me. It also increases the cost of infrastructure improvements, which limits the number of improvements we can make. In this case, there clearly was no benefit to the environment. It was both money down the drain and a poke in the environment’s eye.

As pointless as that project seemed, the other project presented by the PUC seemed even more pointless. They presented a poster describing an experiment intended to determine the most effective application method and type of herbicide to eradicate coyote brush. They used several different methods and types of herbicide, including Garlon (triclopyr) [which is known to be very toxic to aquatic life] and Milestone (aminopyralid) [which is banned in the State of New York because it is persistent and very mobile in the soil].

Detail of poster about PUC project, CNPS Conference

As you know, coyote brush is a native plant, so one wonders why it was necessary to eradicate it. According to PUC’s poster, it’s another example of trying to prevent natural succession from grassland to scrub. You might ask why the PUC is obligated to maintain grassland? You might also ask how the PUC can justify using toxic herbicides in our watershed? I can’t answer those questions. It doesn’t make sense to me.

San Bruno Mountain

There was also a discouraging presentation by the folks who have been engaged in the effort to “restore” San Bruno Mountain in order to preserve and maintain a population of several species of rare butterflies, including the endangered Mission Blue butterfly. This project officially began 32 years ago when the Habitat Conservation Plan was created by federal environmental protection laws. The goal was to restore native grassland required by the rare butterflies. The speaker said this goal remains largely unfulfilled. As for the butterflies, their current status is largely unknown because monitoring efforts are not sufficient to determine the size of the population.

While non-native plants considered “invasive” are a part of the problem in achieving the goal of this project, the biggest problem is, in fact, a native plant. Once again, natural succession from grassland to native scrub, dominated by coyote brush, is the main reason why grassland continues to shrink on San Bruno Mountain:

“Although the last mapping effort in 2004 reported 1296 acres of grassland, we believe that many of these areas are in imminent threat of scrub encroachment and could be converted to scrub after a good coyote brush recruitment year. Large patches of contiguous grassland with less than 2% scrub cover are quickly vanishing…Baccharis pilularis (coyote brush) accounts for the majority of the scrub encroachment observed on San Bruno. It seems to follow the well documented pattern of episodic establishment in wet seasons when roots can more quickly tap into needed soil water. Once seedlings have survived the first critical year, mortality drops quickly and full establishment plays out over the next 5-7 years (Williams et al. 1987). During this process of establishment, grassland resources decline and eventually disappear. Soil changes such as increased nitrogen and allelopathic compounds often follow scrub encroachment (Zavaleta and Kettley 2006, Weidenhamer and Callaway 2010) reducing the ability of grasslands to successfully re-establish without an intermediate disturbance such as a fire or intensive browsing (Hobbs and Mooney 1986).” (1)

San Bruno Mountain from Daly City. Wikimedia Commons

It’s seems almost comic that when all is said and done, the main threat to native grassland “restoration” is apparently a native plant that is just doing what comes naturally…”invading” grassland in the absence of fire or grazing.

Hybridization: Friend or foe?

Dieteria canescens variety canescens, native to Wyoming and other western states. Photo by Stephen Perry. — Dieteria canescens variety canescens, native to Wyoming. Photo by Stephen Perry.

I also attended the presentation of a native plant advocate from Mammoth Lake, on the eastern side of the Sierras. She is engaged in a futile crusade to prevent the hybridization of a new plant, which she considers non-native, with a closely related native plant. When this new plant arrived in her neighborhood, she recognized that it was different, but she was unable to identify it. It wasn’t easy to find someone who could identify it. Eventually, she found a botanist in Wyoming (where it is native) who was able to tell her that the new plant is a variety of a plant that is native at Mammoth Lake. These plants are in the aster family. The native is Dieteria canescens. The new plant considered a non-native invader is Dieteria canescens var. canescens. In other words, they are the same species!

From a horticultural standpoint, the new plant is superior to the native in every way: it is a bigger plant with more flowers; the flowers are bigger with more rays; the flowers are a deeper color. So, why must it be eradicated? Because native plant advocates fear that it will hybridize with the native aster and “swamp” it genetically, i.e., wipe it out. Would that be such a terrible thing? That is a matter of opinion.

Dieteria canescens, native to Mammoth Lake. Photo by Steve Mason

One person in the audience asked why the new plant was not being accepted as an adaptation to climate change that would probably increase the likelihood of the survival of the species. The speaker’s answer was that she could not accept the loss of the variety she considers native. Another person in the audience asked this rhetorical question: “What is our narrative here? How can we expect the public to understand that it is necessary to eradicate a plant that is the same species?” The speaker agreed that it is not an easy sell. I was encouraged by these questions. They seem to be a glimmer of common sense. I hope they are prophetic of the future of the native plant movement.

On that happy note, I close with an invitation to visit the CNPS website to read the abstracts of the hundreds of posters and presentations at this excellent conference.

“Assessment of the past 30 years of habitat management and covered species monitoring efforts associated with the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan (Draft),” Creekside Science, October 21, 2014.