Close to one half million living healthy trees to be cut down around San Francisco!!

[underahedgerow]

34. When I was managing the urban forest (15,000 trees) in a small city in LA, Eucalyptus were

our number 1 most fragile and dangerous trees. They're not native to the USA and are very susceptible to literally exploding during any type of radical temperature changes and during storms. When we lost them to attrition we certainly would not replace them with more Eucs, but with trees that are more stable, native and more suitable for an urban habitat. We had some 200 gigantic Eucs in the city, and eventually, nearly every single one, in spite of being regularly maintained, caused damage to property and roadways.

Wiki has good info, but in short 'a eucalyptus forest tends to promote fire because of the volatile and highly combustible oils produced by the leaves, as well as the production of large amounts of litter which is high in phenolics, preventing its breakdown by fungi and thus accumulates as large amounts of dry, combustible fuel.'

Many other species are actually fire resistant, including the mighty oak. They're very slow growing however. Noting the horrific Oakland fire it has been estimated that 70% of the energy released through the combustion of vegetation in the Oakland fire was due to eucalyptus. In a National Park Service study, it was found that the fuel load (in tons per acre) of non-native eucalyptus woods is almost three times as great as native oak woodland.

The bottom line is that park service people don't act on random indiscriminate acts of tree violence. They have a very good basis of knowledge, and the primary focus is to protect lives and property. I hope you realize that most urban forest managers and parks and open space people are literally conservationists, not logging & real estate companies.

Sorry to put a damper on your very noble efforts, but if I could gently suggest that your activism is imparted with genuine objectivity, and with providing solutions and alternatives rather than just saying 'no no no no no', that you could make a lot more difference.

When the general public speaks up about important issues they are concerned with, elected officials listen to effective and logical solutions. They want solutions that are beneficial to the general public, cost effective, long range, meaning 50-100 year solutions, and sensible. Chances are though, if you can't think of it, they can't either, and it's possible in this case, considering the massive drought encroaching on California, that this is actually the most viable solution for this area, at this time.