Update and Invitation to December 15 Meeting!

THANK YOU for coming to the rescue of the Mt. Davidson Forest and for all of your incredible signatures, comments and support! I wanted to let you know the good news that your voices are making an important difference. They are focusing a spotlight on the deforestation numbers, toxic herbicides, bogus replacement rate, and need for tree protection and conservation. The Urban Forestry Council adopted a resolution on Friday, December 9, 2016 at City Hall that included recommendations for a 3:1 replacement rate with real trees and an annual monitoring system. That is a hopeful sign. DECEMBER 15, 2016: The big day is coming up soon! On December 15 at 1 pm at SF City Hall in Room 400, there will be a joint session of the SF Planning Commission and SF Rec and Park Commission to decide the fate of all of the Natural Areas including Mt. Davidson. The public is invited. If you feel strongly about this issue and are feeling brave, please come to the meeting and speak! What will happen on December 15? First, Planning will either certify the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) or not. The agenda says, "Preliminary Recommendation: Certify the Final EIR" so you can guess what that means. The EIR is likely to be approved even though it is incorrect and subjective in places. For example, Table 21 says that the impact on Forest Resources would be the SAME and less than significant across all of the options, from the most deforestation (18,448 trees) to the least (0). Second, the SF Rec and Park Commission will decide whether to adopt the EIR findings or not. Then, they may vote on the full Natural Areas Plan. This would give them the ability to kill 1,600 trees on Mt. Davidson and over 18,000 trees in total over time. The latter is 16% of the urban forests covered (18,448 trees out of 117,433 per Table 5). PUBLIC COMMENT: On December 15, the public can attend and make comments. If you come, please know that this joint meeting appears orchestrated for approval despite public outrage, unless a miracle happens. The head of Natural Areas, Lisa Wayne, implied this on December 9 at City Hall with a slide that said, "Planning Commission to certify EIR. Rec & Park Commission to adopt the EIR Findings and approve the Management Plan." They will be sending folks to speak on behalf of deforestation. That being said, you can still come to the hearing and speak for the trees. It seems important for the public to bear witness to the day when San Francisco potentially gives itself the ability to cut down over 18,000 trees in popular urban forests and use Roundup. The public can still stand up respectfully for the forests, the truth, the preservation of nature, public safety, climate resiliency and more. Moms can still ask SF Rec and Park to downsize a plan that requires applying toxic herbicides in parks where children play. Each public speaker will have up to 3 minutes. Recently, I have seen that time get cut to 2 minutes. 1 minute is a real possibility. The meeting starts at 1 pm and will go from there. Bringing something to drink is highly recommended. If the EIR is approved and its findings adopted on December 15, I sincerely hope that the SF Rec and Park Commission will chose the Maintenance Alternative only. Per the EIR, this is the least harmful and the environmentally-superior alternative. SF Rec and Park recently renamed the Natural Areas Plan and is now calling it the Natural Resource Areas Management Plan by the way. It is the same plan from 2006. PUBLIC SAFETY: We are concerned that the Natural Areas Plan harms public safety because it uses toxic Roundup in popular recreation areas, it threatens homes with erosion and landslides, it harms the lungs of our city, it creates air pollution, it raises the risk that trees will fall on people from the wind, it removes shade protection from skin cancer, it poisons groundwater with pesticides, and it weakens one of our last best defenses against climate change – large stature trees. If San Francisco cuts down 18,448 trees, it is shooting itself in the foot. HOW DID WE GET HERE? SF Rec and Park ignored the public outcry about its Natural Areas Plan including Mt. Davidson in 2005, 2006, 2011, and 2012 and soldiered on. Now in two weeks, this petition has received over 5,600 signatures from amazing people like you asking SF Rec and Park to please spare one important Natural Area, Mt. Davidson, from deforestation. Once again, SF Rec and Park acts like the public is a nuisance. These 1,600 trees were not here in the 1700s, and so they are targets for elimination and habitat conversion. Environmentalists with chainsaws and pesticides. It is a sad situation for San Francisco, a city that is supposed to be bastion of sustainability. What was a well-meaning idea in 1995 has turned into a large-scale deforestation and pesticide experiment. The crux of the whole debate is – which nature is better? The nature that is here now – the wooded urban forests that people love, that are home to wildlife, and that are providing so many human health, air quality, and climate benefits. Or the nature that was here in the 1700s. The public seems to vastly prefer the nature that is here now. Some San Francisco government officials and employees favor the nature from the 1700s. That is the heart of the matter. SF Rec and Park seems to view part of the City’s historic wooded urban forests like Ebola, as something to eradicate over time. The Natural Areas department of SF Rec and Park currently has at least one Director and 8 staff members who are committed to going back in time. I am open to ideas on to how to resolve this debate. It is a conversation worth having. Everyone involved on both sides loves nature as much as we do. Perhaps it needs to go to a public vote. The Natural Areas Plan written in February 2006 states in Appendix F-1 that its long-term goal is to convert some of San Francisco's most iconic urban forests into "native scrub and grassland" resembling San Bruno Mountain. I encourage you to Google San Bruno Mountain and tell your Supervisors if this is the new terrain you want or not. Be careful with the word "restoration" because it can sometimes be a code word for tree annihilation. As expressed by your wonderful comments, one of the things that makes San Francisco so special is the fact that we have these wooded urban forests in the middle of our urban environment. We don’t have to drive for hours to find a forest. We are so lucky. People rely on these green refuges to maintain their physical and mental health. Why destroy these unique assets needlessly. In the case of Mt. Davidson, the obvious thing is that the mountain already has a large meadow. So the question would be, why can’t San Francisco just leave the exiting two ecosystems -- the meadow and the forest -- be to thrive, except for basic maintenance. SF Rec and Park has already been cutting down trees and converting habitat before the EIR and Plan have been approved. In December 2016, Natural Areas staff showed before and after slides of a Glen Canyon section where trees were cut down and the area was "revegetated" with grasses. How has this been possible? I don’t know all of the details about Glen Canyon. One mechanism possibly stems from a loophole created in a Board of Supervisors resolution in 2002. Resolution 653-02 said, "Further Resolved, that until the Natural Areas Management Plan is completed and approved by the Board of Supervisors, the Natural Areas Program may continue to preserve and maintain genuine remnants of San Francisco's native flora and fauna so long as those activities do not include: removal of healthy trees that pose no safety hazards." So net net, if you say that trees are unhealthy and hazards, you can cut them down and convert them to scrub or grasslands with impunity. An emergency exemption under CEQA is another possibility. More research is needed. Natural Areas staff says that "80% of the eucalyptus trees in the natural areas are in poor-to-fair condition and need to be removed." When we stress-tested this assumption on Mt. Davidson, it didn’t hold up. The only dead trees found by the Presidio Chief Forester on the western slopes were ones that had been deliberately vandalized. He declared the majority of the interior trees to be healthy and recovering well from the drought. Protecting the public from unsafe situations including truly hazardous trees is of the utmost importance. This is why I am so concerned about the Roundup use for instance. Tank Hill is a cautionary tale of a Natural Areas experiment. Healthy trees were cut down. Native plants were put in and mostly died. Today, there are no oak trees or other native trees in place of the eucalyptus trees that were killed. Six weeks ago, I thought that SF Rec and Park staff were environmentalists. That broad assumption seems false now. Our urban forests are not perfect, and so the trees must be cut down to make nature perfect again. I don't know, and I would love to understand this more. These new gardens will take a significant amount of maintenance, work and water in order to survive, and there is no guarantee. There are significant downsides to this plan. You are destroying people’s sanctuaries from city life, you are poisoning the environment with pesticides, and you are causing climate change. On December 9, 2016, SF Rec and Park graciously promised me, "We are not in the business of taking down healthy trees." That is wonderful news, and I appreciated this reassurance greatly. It would be helpful if this could be codified in the official Natural Resource Areas Management Plan. I also hope that SF Rec and Park, the Urban Forestry Council, the Chief Administrator now in charge of resilience, and other important bodies will create a robust accountability mechanism for Natural Areas to ensure that 1) healthy trees are not being removed, 2) trees are actually being replanted, and 3) Roundup is not being used in parks where children play. This monitoring system does not exist right now. I have the greatest respect for the SF Rec and Park Department and everyone who works there. I went into this process with an open mind and an open heart and still have both as we continue this journey. Please keep spreading the word and let your friends and neighbors know what is going on. THANK YOU immensely for standing up for the Mt. Davidson Forest and for nature! Aerial Photo of Mt. Davidson