Summer Walk on Mt Davidson

June 18, 2013 Leave a comment

A group of 17 neighbors gathered for a summer walk on Mount Davidson …  in typical summer weather: super foggy. The group walked through the beautiful woods, shrouded in mist.

Mt D 6-17-2013

The paused on the road at the turn where 82% of the trees are planned to be clear-cut. It’s one of the loveliest areas of the forest.

Mt D 2 6-17-2013

One observer had never been there and was amazed at the wonder of the forest. No one could understand why 1600 trees should be cut down and the others more made vulnerable to wind-throw.  Instead SF Recreation & Parks Department  has plans for tree-felling, habitat destruction, and a vastly increased use of toxic pesticides under the “Natural Areas Program.”

Mt D 3 6-17-2013

Even the (native) Pacific Reed Grass growing there – that’s a native plant – is a forest species, and thrives in the shade and moisture of the eucalyptus. Nature is opportunistic, and native and exotic species are part of a web of life that’s adapted to the conditions of this site. Non-native plants have added bio-diversity; according to Peter Kareiva, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, California now has 25% more plant species than it had before.

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Action Alert TODAY: Comments Due on the East Bay Tree-Felling Plan

June 16, 2013 Leave a comment

The deadline for comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the East Bay Tree-felling plan is TODAY.  From the FEMA website:

Submitting Comments on the Draft EIS

Written comments must be submitted or postmarked by midnight on June 17, 2013. Oral and written comments may be made at any of the three public meetings. Written comments may also be submitted through:

  •     via email at EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX@fema.dhs.gov,
  •     via fax at FAX: (510) 627-7147, or
  •     via mail to P.O. Box 72379, Oakland, CA 94612-8579.

If you’re considering submitting a comment, please do so now.  The Draft EIS is available HERE; it’s a long document. The Executive Summary is quite short – and telling. It’s here as a 16-page PDF: Executive+Summary-East Bay

Please ask FEMA not to fund a futile Native Plant restoration project that will only increase the fire hazard by:

  • Destroying the wind-break;
  • Converting living trees into dead fuel on the ground;
  • Reducing landscape moisture from fog drip during the summer; and
  • Encouraging the growth of  more-flammable plants.

It will also use  thousands of gallons of toxic pesticides on steep hillsides where they can get into the watershed.  It will  release carbon emissions on a huge scale. This project is not only environmentally destructive, it is a huge waste of funds that should be used to actually reduce hazards, not increase them.

Ask them to approve the No Project alternative.

THE PROJECTS

The East Bay Hills projects include three related projects by UC Berkeley, the City of Oakland, and the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). They all seek money from FEMA to cut down trees as a “fire hazard.”

The first two projects (UC Berkeley/ Oakland Hills) will essentially clear-cut all the non-native trees in the projects areas: eucalyptus, Monterey Pine (yes, it’s “non-native”!) and acacia. This would be around 77,000 trees. They will chip the smaller trees and branches, leaving a mulch up to 2 feet deep on the ground. The larger branches and logs will be left unchipped. Pesticides – Roundup, Garlon, and Imazapyr – will be used to prevent re-sprouting and to kill non-native shrubs. They hope that native plants and trees will move into the treated areas, creating an oak-bay woodland.

The third project (EBRPD) is slightly different, in that it proposes to “thin” the forest and cut down some 409,000 trees  but leave around 60 trees per acre standing. It proposes chip the felled trees, spread the wood chips as mulch to a depth of 4-6 inches and burn the rest. It also plans to use prescribed burns to control the understory.

You can read about this plan and the tree removal calculations HERE.

Even though this has been positioned as a fire hazard reduction project, it is clearly targeted at native plant restoration – using Federal Emergency Management funds.  All the management actions are likely to increase fire hazard. Those pushing this plan have emphasized the flammability of eucalyptus (which isn’t actually more flammable than most trees) but avoided the more important comparison: Will the landscape that will replace a felled eucalyptus forest be even more flammable?

mg_ecowatch_3536 east bay express

East Bay Express article. Photo credit East Bay Express

There’s a good article about this in the East Bay Express, HERE

A LOSE-LOSE-LOSE PROPOSITION

In fact, this is a Lose-Lose (actually a Lose-Lose-Lose-Lose-Lose!) Plan. Here’s why:

  • Those seeking a reduction in fire hazard – which is, really everybody – will find that instead the fire hazard has increased, as we’ll explain below.
  • The Native Plant enthusiasts who hope that Native Plants and trees will recolonize the treated areas will be disappointed. There’s no plan to replant or to garden those areas; the only tools are a deep mulch of eucalyptus chips and non-selective pesticides. This article suggests that the most likely plant to move into such areas would be broom – which is non-native and considered invasive because it can actually deal with the kind of conditions that will result.
  • Anyone who loves trees and the environment, which will suffer from the loss of carbon storage and pollution control, not to mention the beauty of the trees. Actually, most of the residents of the Bay Area.
  • FEMA, which could have used the funds for competing projects that reduce, not increase, hazards.
  • The taxpayer who will be paying for this anti-environmental mess.

The worst of it is that it is essentially irreversible.  If the planners realize that most of what the opponents say is true, they cannot grow back trees that took decades to become what they are now. They cannot sequester the carbon they’ve released. They cannot cure the people whose health has been adversely affected by pesticides.  All they can do is declare victory and move on.

Is there a potential win for anyone? Well, maybe. It will empower the people who will be giving out the contracts, and benefit the contractors who actually do the work and the pesticides suppliers.

And UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan calls for building 100,000 square feet of additional space in the hills. It would undoubtedly be convenient to have the tree removal funded by FEMA.

PROBLEMS WITH THE PROJECT AND THE DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT

  • This plan will convert living trees full of moisture into fuel – dead wood and wood chips on the ground. These are much more flammable than any living tree. In fact, even one of the research papers the EIS quotes says as much: “Sites where the activity fuels piles had not been burned or where they had been masticated (mechanically chipped into small pieces and spread over the treatment area) were excluded from the study because research suggests these additional fuels increase fire severity.” (Malcolm North and Matthew Hurteau, “High-severity wildfire effects on carbon stocks and emissions in fuels treated and untreated forest,” Forest Ecology and Management 261 (2011)) 
  • The wood chips could take up to 20 years to decompose. According to the EIS, they have a “half-life” of 5 years, meaning that half of it will be gone in five years.  A pile that’s 2 feet high would be 12 inches deep in 5 years, and 6 inches deep in 10 years – leaving a fire hazard there for decades. And there’s also the potential for subsurface smouldering fires that can burst out under the right conditions.
  • Wind speeds will rise since the wind breaks provided by the trees would be gone. Fires in the East Bay are wind-driven fires, and eucalyptus and other tall trees actually fight fire by breaking the wind-flow. Even the EPA recommended preserving large and tall trees in place (according to Appendix K2 of the EIS).
  • The replacement landscape will be more flammable. Removing trees will encourage grasses and shrubs, making for a more flammable landscape of faster-moving fires that can reach structures more quickly. The forest shade tends to inhibit the growth of these plants. The plans intend to encourage the growth of native plants – but doesn’t provide for planting or tending them. They assume that the existing seed banks and seeds from adjacent areas will grow there. Actually, it’s more likely that  broom and other fast-growing non-native species will take over. When these dry out, they are much more flammable than the trees. In any case, the native chapparal is also very flammable.
  • The loss of shade and the moisture harvested from the fog will make for a drier, more fire-prone landscape. The EIS suggests that the harvested moisture is compensated by the trees using moisture from rain, so the net amount of water is the same. This is just silly: the fog comes in California’s dry season, and provides additional moisture at a time when the landscape is dry and thus lessens flammability.  During the rains, the landscape is green and not flammable.
  • If some of this acreage does actually become oak-bay woodlands, as the land managers hope, there’s another problem: Sudden oak death, which is spreading through California and could provide dead trees as fuel. The EIS ignores this threat entirely.
  • The Draft EIS significantly understates the effect on carbon sequestration. The trees will no longer store carbon; instead, they will be releasing thousands of tons of it into the atmosphere. But the EIS ignores the carbon stored in the branches, leaves, and roots of the felled trees, and in the soil. They also miscalculate the amount of carbon that will be released in the EBRPD section of the plan. They may have ignored 80% of the actual carbon emissions caused by the project.
  • Thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides will be spread over the East Bay.
  • Prescribed burns will further affect air quality, and could get away and cause wildfires and serious damage.
  • Erosion and landslides could occur on steep slopes when the tree roots no longer stabilize the slopes.
  • Increased wind speeds with the loss of wind-breaks will affect quality of life, and likely cause the wind-throw of non-targeted trees.

WHAT ELSE YOU CAN DO

sign for East Bay Hills

Sign a Petition

If you have not yet done so, sign the Hills Conservation Network petition. It has over 5500 signatures already.

Contribute. Hills Conservation Network are also raising funds for potential legal action. If you would like to contribute, their website is HERE and includes a Paypal button.

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Presentations: How it Became Mount Davidson

June 11, 2013 Leave a comment

Mount Davidson – our tallest hill, ringed by residential neighborhoods, graced with a forest and crowned by a landmark cross.  How did it get that way? How come it didn’t get swallowed up into the neighborhoods? Why’s it called Mount Davidson? Where did the cross come from, and who cares for it now?

Why is the mountain’s Eastern side bare of trees?

mount davidson forested 2009

If you took historian Jacquie Proctor’s hiking tour of Mt. Davidson for SFForest last year, these questions were answered.

the trees here would be clearcut (Photo credit Peter Earl McCollough)But whether or not you did: you are invited to her ALL NEW slideshow this summer about the history of the City Beautiful Movement-inspired neighborhoods on the slopes of San Francisco’s highest hill––Mt. Davidson––as well as the story of the unique City park and monument at its peak, as featured in her book, San Francisco’s West of Twin Peaks. See the following San Francisco Public Library locations and dates:

Tues., June 18 at 7 PM – Parkside Branch (1200 Taraval St at 22nd)
Tues., July 2 at 6:30PM – Anza Branch (550 37th Ave.)
Wed., July 10 at 7 PM – Merced Branch (155 Winston Dr.)
Sat., July 13 at 2 PM – Ingleside Branch (1298 Ocean Ave. at Plymouth)
Mon., July 29 at 7:00 PM – Sunset Branch (1305 18th Ave.)

(If you attended the walk – Jacquie has updated information and pictures.)

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Trees Fight Urban Pollution

June 3, 2013 1 Comment

We recently published an article on trees storing carbon. (You can read it HERE.)  Today, we’d like to talk about trees fighting air pollution. This is important to everyone in the vicinity of trees; as someone pointed out when requesting we address this issue, “We all need to breathe!”

Trees clean the air in two important ways:

    1. They absorb polluting gases from the air, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and sulfur dioxide. Some trees also emit “volatile organic compounds,” but overall, a grove of trees has a net positive effect.
    2. Perhaps even more important in a city environment, trees capture particulate pollution on their leaves, especially tiny particles under 10 microns. These otherwise can stay suspended in the air, and people breathe them in. The particles trapped on the leaves can become airborne again, but more often they are washed to the ground in rain or fog-drip, and become part of the soil.
Lost tree in Glen Canyon Park

Fought pollution for over 100 years, until felled in January 2013

As you might expect, large trees fight urban pollution more than do smaller trees. The chart below is based on a data in the USDA 2007 publication, “San Francisco’s Urban Forest.”   It shows the average amount of pollution (in ounces) removed by small, medium and large trees each year.

This is just one more reason that felling mature trees is bad for the urban environment. The small replacement saplings – even if they are planted in the same areas -  will not have the same effect on air pollution.

tree size and pollution removal

(You can download the entire publication here as a 26-page PDF: SF Urban Forest fs fed US)

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Birds, Bees, and “Natural Areas”

May 21, 2013 3 Comments

One of the concerns we have with the way our wild lands are being managed is the disrespect for habitat. Many of those who support these actions – felling ‘non-native’ eucalyptus trees, removal of trees that are dead or dying even if  they’re not hazardous, stripping away ivy and understory vegetation – don’t actually realize the impacts on the wildlife that call those habitats home. (All the photographs here are courtesy wildlife photographer Janet Kessler.)

EUCALYPTUS IS IMPORTANT AS HABITAT

Eucalyptus trees are hugely important as habitat trees. They provide cover and nest sites for birds as large as Great Blue Herons and Double-Crested Cormorants and hawks and Great Horned Owls – and as small as Pygmy Nuthatches.

[Edited to Add: For more pictures of heron and cormorant nests - and the story that goes with them - please see the latest article on the Coyote Yipps blog. ]

2013-05-14 great blue herons nest

Great Blue Heron Nests in Eucalyptus – Photo: Janet Kessler

2013-05-142 double-crested cormorants nest

Double-crested cormorants nest – Photo: Janet Kessler

2013-05-13 eucalyptus rookery herons cormorants

Rookery tree – Photo: Janet Kessler

Young Great Horned Owls being raised in Eucalyptus tree

Young Great Horned Owls being raised in Eucalyptus tree. Photo: Janet Kessler

Their branches and trunks provide a hunting ground for small birds like kinglets and Brown Creepers.

Brown creeper forages on eucalyptus

Brown creeper forages on eucalyptus. Photo: Janet Kessler

Since they flower in winter when few other food sources are available, they provide nectar for insects – and the birds that feed on the nectar, the insects, or both. Honeybees in particular depend on winter-flowering eucalyptus. Cavities provide nesting spot for some birds – and even bees, like Glen Canyon’s last remaining bee hive tree.

bees in euc

Beehive in eucalyptus tree (bees circled in red) – Photo: Janet Kessler

DEAD TREES ARE IMPORTANT

Dead or dying trees – of every species – are valuable habitat, for two reasons. 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.

2013-05-21 (2) hairy woodpecker

Hairy woodpecker in Glen Canyon Park. Photo: Janet Kessler

Unfortunately, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department – and now UCSF in its management of Sutro Forest – looks to remove ‘snags’ and dying trees.  They’ve been removed in Glen Canyon Park, and in Golden Gate Park, and this fall, massive removals could start in Sutro Forest.

2013-05-21 hairy woodpecker

Glen Canyon Park, Hairy Woodpecker. Photo: Janet Kessler

If that happens, it will have a negative impact on all the woodpeckers and cavity-nesting species of birds and even bats. It’s extremely important to leave these ‘in-decline’ trees as habitat, unless they are actually hazards.

THE VALUE OF IVY AND THICKETS

Smaller birds and animals in particular need the cover provided by ivy and understory plants to hide from predators – and to nest.

Here’s a picture of a tiny Bewick’s Wren outside its Glen Canyon nest, taken in 2012. The tree it’s nesting in is so ivy-covered you can’t actually see it. The nest is completely hidden.

2012-04-11 bewick's wren nesting

Bewick’s wren outside nest. Photo: Janet Kessler

Here’s the same tree this year. The ivy is gone, the understory mowed down. Is the wren coming back? Not too likely.

2013-05-19 no nesting spot for wren

This year there’s no nesting spot for the wren. Photo: Janet Kessler

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Most People Oppose the East Bay Tree-felling Plan

May 20, 2013 6 Comments

We’ve received some reports about the last public hearing (on May 18th at 10 a.m.) on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) of the East Bay plan to fell up to 500,000 trees – 86,000 in Berkeley and Oakland, and another 400,000 in East Bay parks.  There was overwhelming opposition to the Plans.

lake-chabot cropped Photo credit MillionTrees dot meTo recap: Three owners/ land managers are involved:

  • University of California at Berkeley (60,000 trees on 284 acres)
  • City of Oakland (26,000 trees on 126 acres);
  • East Bay Regional Parks District (400,000 trees on 1,650 acres).

They would use Garlon to prevent resprouting (which would require thousands of gallons of this very toxic herbicide), and glyphosate (Aquamaster or Roundup) to discourage the growth of non-native plants. The first two projects plan to remove all the non-native trees in the project areas. The third plans to “thin” the trees to about 60 trees per acre, removing around 90% of the trees on the project area, and using prescribed burns in addition to pesticide.

You can read about this plan and the tree removal calculations HERE.

MEETING REPORT

An estimated 160-175 people attended, and the meeting, scheduled for 2 hours, ran nearly twice that long. There was standing room only, with people crowding the sides of the room and sitting on the floor. Of the 56 people who spoke, 48 opposed the Plans to fell these trees. That’s over 85% of the speakers.

The themes:

  1. They didn’t know about these plans, even though they live nearby. They heard about them from friends and from social media. The outreach was poor.
  2. People were very concerned about the use of pesticides. Roundup in particular was criticized. (Most people are not familiar with Garlon, which is probably even more toxic than Roundup – and also included in the Plans.)
  3. They were also concerned about greenhouse gases, which are causing climate change. Trees store carbon; not only will they stop doing that, but felling and “mulching” so many trees will release carbon dioxide into the air.
  4. If the intention is to reduce the fire hazard, other alternatives should have been considered.
  5. Most people wanted to preserve the ecosystem and trees that are already there; it would be  unconscionable to wreck it.
  6. All the areas are on hillsides; speakers were concerned about soil erosion.
  7. They were also worried about contamination of streams/watershed.
  8. Some commenters felt Hills people were arrogant, more concerned about property than people.
  9. Some speakers declared we should stop interfering with nature, and keep as many trees as possible to protect us from the pollution we have created.
  10. Clear-cutting and spraying the ground with chemicals will create a wasteland.

There’s a report from The Berkeley Patch HERE: Plan to Cut 85,000 Trees in Berkeley and Oakland Hills Draws Crowd. In the photograph with that article, two people hold signs:

“FOLLOW THE MONEY“  and “WILLFUL DESTRUCTION OF AN ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM IS A CRIME AGAINST NATURE.”

Others reported signs saying things like “KILL THE PROJECT, NOT THE TREES” and “NO CHEMICALS IN OUR PARKS.”

STILL TIME TO COMMENT

Though all the public meetings are now over, you can still comment on the Plan in writing up to June 17th.

FEMA has published the Draft Environmental Impact Report for these projects, and will accept comments until June 17th, 2013. That is available HERE; it’s a long document. The Executive Summary is quite short – and telling. It’s here as a 16-page PDF: Executive+Summary-East Bay You may submit written comments in several ways:

  1. Via the project website:
    http://ebheis.cdmims.com
  2. By email to EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX@fema.dhs.gov
  3. By mail: P.O. Box 72379, Oakland, CA 94612-8579
  4. By fax: 510-627-7147

sign for East Bay HillsThe Hills Conservation Network’s petition is gaining momentum; it has over 1875 signatures as we write this. If you haven’t signed and would like to do so, this button will take you to the petition.

Hills Conservation Network are also raising funds for potential legal action. If you would like to contribute, their website is  HERE  and includes a Paypal button.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THESE PROJECTS

We bring you some of the criticism of these projects (this is based on a critique from the Hills Conservation Network). These projects would:

  1. Shift the ecosystem from trees to flammable dry brush. These projects would permanently alter the Berkeley/Oakland hills ecosystem, and make it much more – not less – flammable.  UC and Oakland plan to clear-cut mature, healthy trees, including huge 100-year-old trees taller than ten-storey buildings. You won’t see tall trees in the hills any more. What you will see, as soon as the rain stops, will be weeds and highly flammable brush, brown, dry, and ready to burst into flame. This easily ignitable chaparral (including scrub oaks), weeds, grass, hemlock, thistle and broom will burn more easily than trees. It’s lower, finer, and dry as kindling. Thick trunks don’t burn easily, and fire does not reach the crowns of trees unless there are ladder fuels (like weeds, grass, etc. under them).
  2. Waste our money. If you include the matching funds, this is going to be a $7 million plan to destroy forests miles from homes. Instead, that money could be used as originally intended: actually reducing fire hazards by, for instance, creating defensible space around houses and other structures.
  3. Slather the hills in herbicides. To prevent trees from resprouting, the hills would be drenched with massive amounts (30,000 + gallons) of toxic pesticides.  In addition, pesticides will be sprayed throughout the watershed to knock down the weeds, hemlock, poison oak, thistle and broom  that will emerge with the loss of canopy. Toxic sediments will seep into our creeks and could permanently alter the watershed. Garlon causes cancer and so does glyphosate (Roundup) when sprayed broadcast over large areas. Tons of pesticides will be needed to maintain the site—to kill the weeds—after the trees are removed.  Making matters worse, UCB has not posted signs when pesticides are sprayed.
  4. Use a two-foot mulch doesn’t work and raises ignition risk. They’re planning to chip the trees on site, leaving up to 24 inches of chip litter on the ground.  There’s danger of subterranean fire under the chips, as well as spontaneous ignition in the hot sun – as in a hay stack. Anyway, areas where it’s been tried have been invaded by hemlock, thistle, broom and poison oak.
  5. Release stored carbon and change the microclimate. As the chips decompose, they release carbon, adding to global warming. Nothing stores carbon like big trees; we’ll permanently lose the carbon storage these trees gave us. Tree loss will also cause local climate changes: more wind, more dry air, less fog, more air pollution.
  6. Cause Habitat loss and ecological imbalance. The plans would destroy an enormous amount of habitat; the tall trees favored by raptors such as owls and hawks would be lost forever. Without raptors to keep them in check,  the rodent population will undoubtedly increase. We saw this after the 1991 fire. And what about the federally protected Alameda whipsnake?  It’s unrealistic to believe they can be trapped and translocated until after completion.
  7. Cause erosion and landslides. Without tree roots to hold the soil in place, erosion and landslides will increase.
  8. Make for visual blight, daily road closures, and constant chainsaw noise for 3 years.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE DRAFT EIS

Comments that are specific about the flaws in the EIS will be most effective:

  1. The fire model is wrong. It compares the fire danger of standing forests with the fire danger (zero) after the trees are cut down to stumps. It does not consider the fire risk danger—much worse—of what will replace the trees.
  2. This is Native Plant gardening, not fire mitigation.  Fostering the growth of native plants such as bay trees, chaparral and oaks is native plant restoration.  It has nothing to do with fire risk mitigationFEMA funds were not intended to promote a particular plant ideology.
  3. It doesn’t adequately address impacts on Greenhouse Gases. It uses an inappropriate baseline, and also does not properly estimate the loss of ongoing carbon sequestration. The EIS needs to be reworked.
  4. It doesn’t properly address the costs and risks from the huge increase in toxic herbicide use.
  5. It does not adequately analyze reasonable alternatives proposed for fire risk mitigation. Far less costly, far less environmentally damaging, and far more effective methods have been proposed, but the EIS fails to consider them. The EIS needs to be reworked to analyze reasonable alternatives rather than simply dismissing them without any analysis.

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Forests Store Carbon and Fight Climate Change

May 19, 2013 3 Comments

HillSideViewClimate change is upon us. Recently, we crossed the threshold of 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere – higher than at any time since humans populated our planet.

Aside from reducing carbon emissions, trees are the only way to fight climate change. They pull carbon dioxide from the air and store the carbon in their wood, roots, and the soil around them. But instead of planting trees, Native Plant interests are trying to fell trees to recreate a different ecosystem of shrubs and grasses. Multiple projects now threaten our Bay Area trees, with different rationales but the same underlying objective – native plants.

San Francisco’s Natural Areas program may fell 18,500 trees; the Sutro Forest project – 30,000 trees; the East Bay Hills projects – 500,000 trees. In addition, SFRPD is felling hundreds of trees in Golden Gate Park as ‘urban forestry’ and there’s the ‘normal’ destruction of trees for construction and similar purposes.

For this reason, we think the article below – reprinted with permission from Death of a Million Trees – is extremely important.

CARBON STORAGE IN OUR URBAN FOREST

We believe that addressing climate change should be our highest environmental priority because it is the cause of many environmental problems. For example, a recent study found that changes in climate accounted for over half of the significant changes in vegetation all over the world in the past 30 years: “The climate governs the seasonal activity of vegetation…In humid mid-latitudes temperature is the largest influencing factor in plant growth. In predominantly dry areas, however, it is the availability of water and in the high altitudes incident solar radiation.” (1) Animals are affected by both changes in vegetation and climate, as exemplified by the shrinking home of the polar bear as Arctic ice melts.

The consensus amongst scientists is that increases in greenhouse gas emissions are the primary cause of climate change and carbon dioxide is the predominant greenhouse gas. Although the burning of fossil fuels is often considered the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, in fact transportation is responsible for only 10% of emissions. In contrast, deforestation is contributing 20% of greenhouse gas emissions because trees store carbon as they grow and release it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when the tree is destroyed. For that reason—and many others– we are opposed to the destruction of our urban forest.

Mount Sutro Forest is threatened with destruction because it is noy native. Courtesy Save Sutro Forest.

Mount Sutro Forest is threatened with destruction because it is not native. Courtesy Save Sutro Forest.

Because our urban forest is predominantly non-native, native plant advocates are committed to defending the projects that are destroying the urban forest, which puts them in the awkward position of claiming that its destruction will not contribute to climate change. Here are a few of the arguments used by native plant advocates and the scientific evidence that those arguments are fallacious:

  • Since the native landscape in the Bay Area is grassland and scrub, native plant advocates often claim that these landscapes store more carbon than trees. In fact, trees store far more carbon than the native landscape because carbon storage is largely proportional to biomass. In other words, the bigger the plant, the more carbon it is capable of storing. (Carbon storage in plants and soils is explained in detail here.)
  • In the Draft Environmental Impact Report for San Francisco’s Natural Areas Program, native plant advocates claimed that destroying the forest and restoring grassland would lower ground temperatures based on a scientific study about the arctic north at latitudes above 50°. In fact, the point of that study was that snow reflects more light than trees. The Bay Area is far below 50° latitude and it doesn’t snow here, so that study is irrelevant to the Bay Area. (That study and its misuse by native plant advocates are reported here.)
  • Since most of the urban forest in the Bay Area was planted over 100 years ago, native plant advocates often claim that only young trees store carbon. Since carbon storage is largely proportional to biomass, mature trees store more carbon than small young trees. That is illustrated by this graph from the US Forest Service survey of San Francisco’s urban forest.
Larger trees store more carbon at a faster rate

Larger trees store more carbon at a faster rate

  • The claim that young trees store more carbon is often made in connection with the equally bogus claim that “restoration” projects in the Bay Area will replace non-native trees with native trees. None of the plans for these projects propose to plant native trees where non-native trees are destroyed because that wasn’t the native landscape. In any case, native trees don’t tolerate the windy, dry conditions in which non-native trees are growing. For example, a study of historic vegetation in Oakland, California reported that only 2% of pre-settlement Oakland was forested with trees. (2)

A NEW STUDY ABOUT CARBON STORAGE IN FOREST

Now that science has established the reality of climate change, most scientific inquiry has turned to how to stop it and/or mitigate it. For example, a recent study reports that planting forests where they did not exist in the past, quickly stores far more carbon in the soil than the treeless landscape. Scientists “…looked at lands previously used for surface mining and other industrial uses, former agricultural lands, and native grasslands where forests have encroached….[they] found that, in general, growing trees on formerly non-forested land increases soil carbon.” (3)

Here are their specific findings on each type of previously non-forested land:

  • “On a post-mining landscape, the amount of soil carbon generally doubled within 20 years and continued to double after that every decade or so.”
  • “The changes after cultivation of farm fields was abandoned and trees became established are much subtler, but still significant…at the end of a century’s time, the amount of soil carbon averages 15 percent higher than when the land was under cultivation…”
  • “In places where trees and shrubs have encroached into native grassland, soil carbon increased 31 percent after several decades…”

Mainstream environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club claim to be concerned about climate change, yet they are the driving force behind the destruction of the urban forest in the San Francisco Bay Area. When will they wake up to the fact that advocating for the destruction of the urban forest is irresponsible for an environmental organization in the age of climate change?

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

(1) “A Look at the World Explains 90 Percent of Changes in Vegetation,” Science Daily, April 22, 2013.

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

(3) “Soils in Newly Forested Areas Store Substantial Carbon That Could Help Offset Climate Change,” Science Daily, April 4, 2013.

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Nearly Half a Million Trees Threatened in East Bay

May 8, 2013 6 Comments

Another Draft Environmental Impact Report, another threat to trees. Now we’re no longer counting in thousands or tens of thousands. This time, it’s hundreds of thousands.

In the East Bay, there are three inter-related plans to cut down nearly 500 thousand eucalyptus and other trees on 2,000 nearly 1500 acres of land.

lake-chabot cropped Photo credit MillionTrees dot me

Forest at Lake Chabot – Photo credit: MillionTrees.me

Three owners/ land managers are involved:

  • University of California at Berkeley (60,000 54,000 trees on 284 acres)
  • City of Oakland (26,000 23,000 trees on 126 acres);
  • East Bay Regional Parks District (400,000 409,000 trees on 1,650 1,060 acres).

They would use Garlon to prevent resprouting (which would require thousands of gallons of this very toxic herbicide), and glyphosate (Aquamaster or Roundup) to discourage the growth of non-native plants. The first two projects plan to remove all the non-native trees in the project areas. The third plans to “thin” the trees to about 60 trees per acre, removing around 90% of the trees on the project area, and using prescribed burns in addition to pesticide.

You can read about this plan and the tree removal calculations HERE.

WHAT THEY HOPE AND WHY IT WILL FAIL

The plan is described as ‘fuel reduction’ to lessen the fire hazard. In fact, is likely to have the opposite effect.

  • Wind speeds will rise since the wind breaks provided by the trees would be gone.
  • With the trees and shade gone,  finer fuels like grasses and shrubs will grow instead.
  • The loss of shade and the moisture harvested from the fog will make for a drier, more fire-prone landscape.
  • The felled trees will be left in place, contributing dead wood to the fuel load.

The plans intend to encourage the growth of native plants -  but doesn’t provide for planting or tending them. They assume that the existing seed banks and seeds from adjacent areas will grow there. Actually, it’s more likely that blackberry and broom and other fast-growing non-native species will take over. If some of this acreage  does become oak-bay woodlands, as the land managers hope, there’s another problem: Sudden oak death, which is spreading through California and could provide dead trees as fuel.

ENVIRONMENTAL BLIGHT AND WASTED MONEY

The Plan will be a blight on the environment.

  • The trees will no longer store carbon; instead, they will be releasing thousands of tons of it into the atmosphere.
  • Thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides will be spread over the East Bay.
  • Prescribed burns will further affect air quality, and could get away and cause wildfires and serious damage.
  • Erosion and landslides could occur on steep slopes when the tree roots no longer stabilize the slopes.

The plan is to fund the first two projects, and about a third of the East Bay RPD project, from FEMA grants. This takes money that’s needed to respond to or avert actual serious disasters and uses it for a doomed Native Plant conversion project.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

  • sign for East Bay HillsSign a Petition. The Hills Conservation Network has a petition up; the button will take you to the petition.
  • Contribute. Hills Conservation Network are also raising funds for potential legal action. If you would like to contribute, their website is HERE and includes a Paypal button.
  • Speak at public meetings. FEMA will host three public meetings in Oakland, and  taking public comments. Two are on May 14, 2013 (at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.) at the Richard C. Trudeau Center, 11500 Skyline Boulevard  Oakland, CA  94619.  One is on May 18, 2013 (at 10 a.m.) at Claremont Middle School, 5750 College Avenue  Oakland, CA  94618.
  • Comment on the DEIR. FEMA has published the Draft Environmental Impact Report for these projects, and will accept comments until June 17th, 2013. That is available HERE;  it’s a long document. The Executive Summary is quite short – and telling. It’s here as a 16-page PDF: Executive+Summary-East Bay   You may submit written comments in several ways:
  1. Via the project website:
    http://ebheis.cdmims.com
  2. At the public meetings listed above
  3. By email to EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX@fema.dhs.gov
  4. By mail: P.O. Box 72379, Oakland, CA 94612-8579
  5. By fax: 510-627-7147

[Edited to Add: Further analysis showed the number of threatened trees to be "only" about half a million instead of the 900,000 reported earlier. This article has been updated where needed to show the revised calculations.]

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The UCSF Plan for Mount Sutro Forest – Video

April 30, 2013 Leave a comment

San Francisco’s hidden urban treasure is at risk. The Sutro Forest is the single largest urban forest in San Francisco. Three-quarters (61 acres) of it is owned by UCSF, which officially calls it the Open Space Reserve. The contiguous 19-acre Interior Green Belt area to the east of it is city-owned.

Now, UCSF is planning to remove 90% of the trees and vegetation on 5 acres of forest – around 3,000 trees. Then its considering extending the same idea – removing 90% of trees and 90% of understory habitat, and potentially using large amounts of herbicides glyphosate (Aquamaster/ Roundup) and Garlon (triclopyr) to prevent it from coming back.

This video summarizes the risk to Mount Sutro Cloud Forest from UCSF’s “Management Plan” – in just 8 minutes. Please watch it, and if you like it, pass it on!

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Who’s Using Pesticides: Q1 Pesticides Report

April 29, 2013 1 Comment

We’ve been reporting that San Francisco’s Natural Areas Program (NAP) has been spraying increasing amounts of toxic pesticides in parks used by people, pets, and wildlife.  The San Francisco Department of the environment restricts the use of pesticides of land owned by the city, and it classifies permitted chemicals into three tiers: Tier III is the least hazardous; Tier II, more hazardous and Tier I, most hazardous pesticides.

Recently, someone asked us how NAP’s Tier I and Tier II pesticide use compares with the rest of SF Rec & Parks (SFRPD) usage. We hadn’t compiled the numbers (and neither, as far as we know, had the city).  But we’ve done so now for the first quarter, Jan-March 2013.

It’s pretty bad. NAP used three times as much of the most toxic chemicals as all the other SFRPD departments put together.

NAP vs Other SFRPD

[Edited to Add: We should note that these figures exclude Harding Park Golf Course. That's a separate case because apparently the city is under contract to maintain it to certain specifications that involve substantial amounts of pesticides.]

NAP was the only department to use Tier I herbicides.  They used Garlon 4 Ultra against oxalis in McLaren Park, Bayview Hill, Twin Peaks, and Mount Davidson. No other SFRPD area used any Tier I herbicides.  NAP doesn’t use any Tier III pesticides.

Our “Natural Areas” are getting hit with the most toxic chemicals the city permits.

Which areas did they target?

  • In March, it was Mc Laren and Glen Park.
  • In February, it was Twin Peaks, Mt Davidson, Lake Merced, Pine Lake, and Oak Woodlands in Golden Gate Park.
  • In January, it was Bayview, McLaren, and Twin Peaks.

Most of the pesticides used by NAP were applied by the contractors, Shelterbelt.

If this concerns you – as it does us – write to your representative on the Board of Supervisors. And write to the Mayor. These levels of pesticide use just don’t make sense for so-called “Natural Areas.”

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Pesticides and Cancer, Glyphosate and Gut Bugs

April 25, 2013 5 Comments

Spraying pesticides in Glen Canyon March 2013At the recent “Save the Forests!” meeting, physician Dr Morley Singer told us about an article in the journal of the American Cancer Society that showed links between pesticide use and increased cancer risk. The article is in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, which is peer-reviewed and highly respected, and he sent us the link.

[HERE's the link to the article:  Increased cancer burden among pesticide applicators and others due to pesticide exposure.]

What caught our eye was glyphosate, the active ingredient in Aquamaster and Roundup,   and the pesticide most used by SF Rec & Parks’ Natural Areas Program (NAP). Glyphosate is associated with Non Hodgkin Lymphoma.

A HIGHER RISK OF CANCER

Pesticides increase the risk of cancer not only for the people who apply these toxins, but also for bystanders.  And it’s not just insecticides, also herbicides, which are much more broadly used. From the abstract:

“A growing number of … studies provide substantial evidence that the pesticides … are associated with excess cancer risk. This risk is associated both with those applying the pesticide and, under some conditions, those who are simply bystanders to the application.”

Three of the Four on Mt Davidson

Three of the Four on Mt Davidson

The problem with determining cancer risk from pesticides is that you can’t conduct experiments on people. Experiments on animals would have to be quite long term, and thus expensive.

What you can collect is “epidemiological” evidence – that shows a link between the pesticide and types of cancer (or other conditions), but doesn’t specify how it works. You can also do studies on cells in laboratories, a process that is cheaper (and, frankly, more humane) than doing large experiments on live animals. Those can provide insights to how exactly the toxins work.  Epidemiological evidence is the kind of  evidence that eventually tied cigarette-smoking to lung cancer. The tobacco industry argued that there was no toxicological evidence, but the epidemiological evidence eventually became overwhelming.

As the journal article says: “The use of cultured animal and human cells allows high-throughput assays of pesticide toxicity to be assessed at much lower cost compared with whole-animal studies and without the ethical constraints that limit human studies.”

What the authors did was look at a whole lot of other studies for associations between many types of cancer and many different pesticides. They found a problem.

“In this article, the epidemiological, molecular biology, and toxicological evidence emerging from recent literature assessing the link between specific pesticides and several cancers including prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, and breast cancer are integrated. Although the review is not exhaustive in its scope or depth, the literature does strongly suggest that the public health problem is real.”

GLYPHOSATE (ROUNDUP, AQUAMASTER) AND HEALTH EFFECTS

One of the pesticides mentioned was glyphosate, the active ingredient of Roundup and Aquamaster. It’s one the pesticides NAP uses most frequently. (In the graphs below, Roundup/ Aquamaster is represented by the olive-green section at the bottom of each column.)

It’s associated with Non Hodgkin Lymphoma, a group of cancers starting from the lymph nodes.

pesticide use number n vol 2008 to 2012

GLYPHOSATE AND GUT PROBLEMS

An article at Rodale.com suggests the growing evidence against glyphosate, possibly the world’s most widely used herbicide: ‘Once called “safer than aspirin,” glyphosate’s reputation for safety isn’t holding up to the scrutiny of independent research. More and more non-industry-funded scientists are finding links between the chemical and all sorts of problems, including cell death, birth defects, miscarriage, low sperm counts, DNA damage, and more recently, destruction of gut bacteria.’

Researchers found that glyphosate residues on food interfere with certain enzymes, with the result that  “…glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body.”

[That paper, published this month in the journal Entropy, is HERE.]

It suggests that glyphosate might be causing a lot of the health problems that have been associated with Western diets – including “obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”

NATURAL AREAS AND PESTICIDES

Some countries have already moved to limit pesticide use. According to the CA journal article:

“Rather than wait for human carcinogens to be identified, several European countries, including Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and others, have initiated pesticide use reduction policies that have resulted in substantially diminished pesticide use overall. In the United States, a nationwide use reduction policy has met with resistance politically…”

In San Francisco,  the SF Department of the Environment (SF DOE) regulates pesticide use on any city-owned property – including the Natural Areas. It divides permitted pesticides into three Tiers, with Tier III being the least hazardous, Tier II being more hazardous, and Tier I being the most hazardous.

Right now, glyphosate is classified at Tier II. We asked them to consider reclassifying it as Tier I on the basis of the article in the American Cancer Society journal, and the possibility that glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor. SF DOE refused.

Meanwhile, as the graphs above show, NAP’s use of herbicides has been growing, no matter how you calculate it.  We ask that the Natural Areas Program stop using any Tier I or Tier II chemicals in the Natural Areas. Many of these areas are on high ground. Residues could move downhill into residential areas. They are open spaces where people – including kids – wander, where pets explore, and wildlife lives.  The health risks to everyone are not worth the questionable victories against plants NAP dislikes.

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Save the Forests! Meeting on Sunday April 21, 2013

April 14, 2013 Leave a comment

Mt Davidson at sunrise - Lori D'Ambrosio

Photo credit: Lori D’Ambrosio

forest-girlThe San Francisco Forest Alliance  and  Save Sutro Forest  are holding a meeting on 21 April 2013 to talk about the planned felling of trees on Mount Sutro — and on Mount Davidson. These actions would gut two important urban forests in San Francisco and irretrievably alter the landscape.

We’re going to address questions such as:

  •     How many thousand trees do they plan to cut down on Mount Sutro? On Mount Davidson?
  •     Who’s “They”?
  •     What about Pesticide use?
  •     When will this happen?

For answers to these questions and more, come to the meeting!

WHERE: Miraloma Park Clubhouse,  350 O’Shaughnessy Blvd,
San Francisco, CA 94127

WHEN:  April 21st, 2013 (Sunday) – 4.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.

Felled trees - Interior Green Belt

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Photo of San Francisco’s Wild Turkey on Mount Davidson – by Tim Cashman

April 12, 2013 3 Comments

wild turkey in SF - edited from photograph by Tim Cashman

Wild Turkey on Mount Davidson in San Francisco – edited from photo by Tim Cashman

Tim Cashman got photographs of San Francisco’s wild turkey, the same one Jacquie and Ron Proctor saw on March 30th 2013.  Here’s his account and the photographs (printed with permission):

Wild turkey San Francisco - photo by Tim Cashman

Wild turkey San Francisco – photo by Tim Cashman

“I was working at my computer when something large and black flew across the large picture window we have that looks directly west. Nothing unusual here as large crows fly by often. A moment later came a commotion on our rooftop, two stories above, that sounded like two animals in the midst of a fierce fight. When I stood up to go upstairs and see what was going on, a large bird like creature flew off the roof, beating its wings ferociously. I at first thought it was a hawk, but a hawk is graceful and this was not. It alighted in my neighbor’s tree and sat very still. It was only when it finally turned in silhouette that I could see it was a wild turkey. It was still in the same spot about a half hour later when I left. I’m familiar with wild turkeys as I play golf frequently at a course in Marin County that is loaded with them. “

Wild turkey San Francisco by Tim Cashman

Another view of the San Francisco Wild turkey by Tim Cashman

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Wild Turkey On Mount Davidson

April 7, 2013 1 Comment

Wild turkey in Marin

“For you wildlife watchers, I just saw a wild turkey cross the north trail on Mt. D today,” wrote Jacqueline Proctor.  “He flew off toward Glen Canyon when we tried to get a better look and picture. I have never seen one up there before or heard of them being in SF for that matter.”

Neither had the birders on the Yahoo Birds list. They wanted to know more. Jacquie confirmed the sighting: March 30th, around 1 p.m.  But there were no pictures. (The picture here is of a wild turkey in Marin county, not the bird that Jacquie saw.)

Then, the Westside Observer carried a grayscale photograph of  the Mount D turkey, submitted by Kay Curry [bottom of page 8]. And someone else said a lone male turkey had been seen hanging out on Potrero Hill.

If anyone sends us photographs of San Francisco’s wild turkeys, we’d be happy to publish them here. [We did. Thanks, Tim Cashman!]

Meanwhile, it looks like there’s a new addition to San Francisco’s wildlife.

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Bushtit and Quality Control

March 25, 2013 3 Comments

We are delighted to post this series of pictures by prize-winning wildlife photographer Janet Kessler. They were taken a few days ago in Glen Canyon, where nesting season is in full swing.

“I found the tiny little Bushtit — 3.5 inches from tip of the beak to tip of the tail — searching for, finding, and testing building materials for its nest,” she writes. “The materials did not pass muster and were abandoned. Birds have very high standards.”

0324 bushtit 1

Stringy lichen? Anyway, nesting stuff – maybe

0324 (6) bushtit 2

Gotta run a quality check

0324 (3) bushit 3

Pulling the ball apart

0324 (4) bushtit 4

Hmmm. Maybe it’ll do.

0324 (2) bushtit 5

Get some more

0324 (5) bushtit 6

Still testing -dubious

0324 (7) bushtit 7

Abandoned stuff

0324 (1) bushtit 7

Nah. I don’t think so.

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Sutro Forest Herbicide Projections: Bad News for San Francisco’s Natural Areas?

March 21, 2013 3 Comments

pesticide use number n vol 2008 to 2012Our regular readers will know that we’ve been following the Natural Areas Program’s (NAP) increasing use of pesticides with some dismay. When we got the 2012 data, it was clear that pesticide use had increased by every measure. That story is HERE: Natural Areas Program Uses Even More Pesticides.  Imagine our concern, then, when the Sutro Forest Draft Environmental Impact Report outlined the amounts of pesticides they contemplate using as part of their destructive plan for the forest on Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve. It’s between 5 and 15 times the amount that NAP is using on all its properties. (Sutro Forest has been essentially pesticide-free since 2008.)

NAP’s own DEIR on the Significant Natural Resource Areas Management Plan – SNRAMP or Sin-Ramp – doesn’t quantify the amounts of pesticides it would need to implement its plan. But the Sutro Forest numbers suggest that we’re looking at multiples of their existing levels of use.

Like many, we’re very concerned about this pesticide use. It’s bad for human beings, for pets, for the environment and for wildlife. We recently came upon this excellent article by David Stang. It’s reprinted here with permission. Of the pesticides reviewed, NAP is using Milestone VM, Roundup (or Aquamaster, with the same active ingredient – glyphosate), and Imazapyr.  (Note: All the illustrations are ours.)

————————-

THE LAST ROUNDUP

By David Stang

pacific chorus frog - public domain image (NPS)Recently an agricultural services firm was retained to spray the herbicide Milestone VM on nearby pastures to kill clover and other broadleaf plants. After spraying, rains washed some of the herbicide downhill from the pastures into the ponds below. Before the spraying, the ponds were full of tadpoles. A few days after spraying, there were no tadpoles in the ponds examined.

Because none of the tadpoles had legs before the spraying, they could not have developed into adult frogs and walked off. Nor could any predator have managed to get every single one of them. And a “control group” — waterways not affected by pasture runoff — still had the tadpoles they had before this spraying. Adult frogs may have been killed as well – the evenings at the ponds after spraying were much quieter than just prior to the spraying.

We could suspect that pasture runoff of Milestone VM into our ponds is the culprit. A literature search confirms this hypothesis (see below).

Studies have shown that herbicides and pesticides may have both direct and indirect effects on tadpoles:

  • Very, very low concentrations of pesticides and herbicides have been found to be a major factor in high levels of deformities in frogs and tadpoles1, and studies have shown that herbicides such as Roundup cause DNA damage in tadpoles.2
  • Very low concentrations may kill tadpoles and frogs in just one day.3
  • Those that are not killed outright by herbicides may die of delayed effects. Malathion, for instance, in very low doses destroys zooplankton that eat algae that floats in the water. With the zooplankton gone, the algae grew rapidly and prevented sunlight from reaching the algae at the bottom of the pond, which tadpoles eat. Some tadpoles then starve to death.4
  • Tadpoles that do not starve will mature slowly, or grow so slowly that they may not reach maturity.5
  • If tadpoles reach maturity, and become adult frogs, herbicides may weaken their immune systems, leaving them susceptible to chytrid fungus infections.6

The known dangers of herbicides for frogs and toads is acknowledged by the National Park Service which, for Yosemite National Park, required that “Herbicides will not be applied within 750 meters (2,500 feet) of known breeding habitat for the Yosemite toad.”7

Where pasture runoff flows into streams, ponds, or even ditches, the use of herbicide or pesticide in our pastures should be suspended until the dangers of any proposed substance can be carefully evaluated.

Herbicides that are known to be toxic to wildlife include Milestone VM, Roundup, Powerline and Arsenal, and Tordon K. It seems likely that all herbicides are toxic to wildlife.

2013-03-14 (2)Milestone VM

Milestone VM contains the active ingredient aminopyralid.

Aminopyralid dissolves very easily and is persistent in water. It has high leachability and mobility. It is toxic to algae, oysters, aquatic plants8, fish, honeybees and earthworms9.Aminopyralid is also on PAN International’s List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides10.

Recently aminopyralid was at the center of public and media attention in the United Kingdom. Gardeners discovered that using manure from animals that grazed on or were fed hay from aminopyralid-sprayed roadsides caused their garden crops to fail or develop abnormally. In fact, the University of Minnesota Extension Service describes this problem in their fact sheet, “Use Caution When Harvesting and Feeding Ditch Hay.”11

Aminopyralid is of concern to vegetable growers as it can enter the food chain via manure which contains long lasting residues of the herbicide. It affects potatoes, tomatoes and beans, causing deformed plants, and poor or non-existent yields. Problems with manure contaminated with Aminopyralid residue surfaced in the UK in June and July 2008, and at the end of July 2008 Dow AgroSciences (the manufacturer of Milestone) implemented an immediate suspension of UK sales and use of herbicides containing Aminopyralid. A company statement explained: “Consistent with its long-standing commitments to product stewardship, and in cooperation with United Kingdom regulators, Dow AgroSciences has asked the Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD) for a temporary suspension of sales and use of herbicides containing aminopyralid. The suspension shall remain in place until assurances can be given that the product and subsequent treated forage and resultant animal wastes will be handled correctly.”12

If it is unsafe to eat vegetables raised with manure from pastures treated with Milestone, how safe can it be to eat plants that themselves have been treated with Milestone? Are the horses in treated pastures safe?

Of concern to all is the 2005 claim by the EPA that “There are no acute or chronic risks to non-target endangered or non-endangered fish, birds, wild mammals, terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates, algae or aquatic plants”13, despite the fact that the EPA report cites studies such as “Acute Toxicity to Larval Amphibians Using the Northern Leopard Frog, Rana pipiens, as a Biological Model.”

Even if Milestone/aminopyralid were safe for tadpoles, it would only be when applied at recommended doses to non-sloping land. The recommended dose is just 7 fluid ounces per acre, according to the EPA.14

Roundup

Three of the Four on Mt Davidson

Three of the Four on Mt Davidson

Other commonly used herbicides also put wildlife at risk. Roundup, for instance, kills birds, fish, tadpoles, bees, worms – at least 76 different species.

Roundup contains glyphosate as its active ingredient. Glyphosate dissolves readily and is very persistent in water. It is toxic to birds, fish, honeybees and earthworms15and is listed by PAN International as a highly hazardous pesticide16. Its maker, Monsanto, was convicted of false advertising in 2007 for its claim that Roundup was “practically non-toxic” to mammals, birds, and fish.17 Some of the scientific evidence for the safety of Roundup comes from studies with falsified results.18

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified 76 species that may be endangered by glyphosate use19.An important study has shown that glyphosate kills tadpoles20. A University of Pittsburgh biologist has found that the herbicide caused an 86-percent decline in the total population of tadpoles.21A recent study found that even at concentrations one-third of the maximum concentrations expected in nature, Roundup still killed up to 71 percent of tadpoles raised in outdoor tanks.22

Out of concern for these issues as well as human health, European Union member states are warned that they “must pay particular attention to the protection of the groundwater in vulnerable areas, in particular with respect to non-crop uses,” when using glyphosate23.According to EPA, short-term exposure to elevated levels of glyphosate may cause lung congestion and increased breathing rates and, in long-term exposure, kidney damage, reproductive effects24. Glyphosate has also been associated with Parkinson’s disease.25Increased adverse neurologic and neurobehavioral effects have been found in children of applicators of glyphosate26.Female partners of workers who apply glyphosate are at higher risk of spontaneous abortion27.Some glyphosate-based formulations and metabolic products have been found to cause the death of human embryonic, placental, and umbilical cells in vitro even at low concentrations. The effects are not proportional to glyphosate concentrations but dependent on the nature of the adjuvants used in the formulation.28

Powerline and Arsenal

glen canyon imazapyr under treesPowerline and Arsenal contain the active ingredient imazapyr, which has been listed for withdrawal from the market in the European Union.29It is highly soluble and moderately persistent in water. It is also toxic to fish, honey bees and earthworms30. Imazapyr’s potential to leach to groundwater is high and surface runoff potential is high31.One field study found that between 40 and 70 percent of applied imazapyr leached down to the lowest depth tested32. If imazapyr leaches down below 18 inches (where microbial activity is limited) the chemical can be expected to persist for more than a year33.EPA cautions that imazapyr-based herbicides can place terrestrial and aquatic plant species in “jeopardy.”34

Tordon K

Tordon K has the active ingredient picloram. Picloram is a persistent herbicide that is highly leachable, very soluble in water and does not degrade readily in water. It is toxic to birds, fish, honeybees and earthworms. It has also been identified as an endocrine disruptor3536and is on PAN International’s List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides37.EPA’s evaluation of picloram states, “eventual contamination of groundwater is virtually certain in areas where residues persist in the overlying soil. Once in groundwater, the chemical is unlikely to degrade even over a period of several years.”38

Anyone who would advocate against herbicides will face the might of organized agriculture, the lawn care business, and even the EPA. A paper on the Environmental Safety of Forestry Herbicides39, for instance, argues that the herbicides named in the present article – imazypyr, glyphosate, and picloram, as well as many others – are “less toxic than caffeine”, “less toxic than aspirin” and “are safe for animals because the biochemical basis for toxicity does not exist.” The article goes on to claim “herbicides positively affect water quality by reducing sedimentation rates.”

I’d like to think that we could send herbicides to the last roundup. But it seems more likely that herbicides will continue to send wildlife to that roundup.

◊

End Notes

1 Fellers G, Sparling D; Wafting Pesticides taint far-flung frogs, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 2001; Science News, Dec 16,2000, Vol 158, p391; Science News, 9-5-98,p150.

3 Even Small Doses of Popular Weed Killer Fatal to Frogs, Scientist Finds http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050804053212.htm

4 Even Small Doses of Popular Weed Killer Fatal to Frogs, Scientist Finds http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050804053212.htm

10 PAN International List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides, 2009. http://www.pan-germany.org/download/PAN_HHP-List_090116.pdf

11 University of Minnosota Extension Service, “Use Caution When Harvesting and Feeding Ditch Hay.” http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/livestocksystems/components/M1197.pdf

15 Pesticide Properties DataBase http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/aeru/footprint/en/index.htm

16 PAN International List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides, 2009. http://www.pan-germany.org/download/PAN_HHP-List_1101.pdf

18 On two occasions the United States Environmental Protection Agency has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate. [(US EPA Communications and Public Affairs 1991 "Note to correspondents" Washington DC Mar 1)] [(US EPA Communications and Public Affairs 1991 Press Advisory. "EPA lists crops associated with pesticides for which residue and environmental fate studies were allegedly manipulated". Washington DC Mar 29)] [(U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Com. on Gov. Oper. 1984. "Problems plague the EPA pesticide registration activities". House Report 98-1147)] In the first incident involving Industrial Biotest Laboratories, an EPA reviewer stated after finding “routine falsification of data” that it was “hard to believe the scientific integrity of the studies when they said they took specimens of the uterus from male rabbits”. [(U.S. EPA 1978 Data validation. Memo from K Locke, Toxicology Branch, to R Taylor, Registration Branch. Washington DC Aug 9)] [(U.S. EPA Office of pesticides and Toxic Substances 1983, "Summary of the IBT review program". Washington D.C. July)] [Schneider, K. 1983. Faking it: The case against Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories. The Amicus Journal (Spring):14-26. Reproduced at [http://planetwaves.net/contents/faking_it.html Planetwaves] ] In the second incident of falsifying test results in 1991, the owner of the lab (Craven Labs), and three employees were indicted on 20 felony counts, the owner was sentenced to 5 years in prison and fined 50,000 dollars, the lab was fined 15.5 million dollars and ordered to pay 3.7 million in restitution. [(US Dept. of Justice. United States Attorney. Western District of Texas 1992. "Texas laboratory, its president, 3 employees indicted on 20 felony counts in connection with pesticide testing". Austin TX Sept 29) ] [(US EPA Communications, Education, And Public Affairs 1994 Press Advisory. "Craven Laboratories, owner, and 14 employees sentenced for falsifying pesticide tests". Washington DC Mar 4)] [http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Roundup-Glyphosate-Factsheet-Cox.htm Glyphosate Factsheet (part 1 of 2) Caroline Cox / Journal of Pesticide Reform v.108, n.3 Fall98 rev.Oct00 ] ] Craven laboratories performed studies for 262 pesticide companies including Monsanto. — http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/56554

19 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, 1997. Herbicide Information Profile: Glyphosate

20 Hileman, B. (2005) Common herbicide kills tadpoles. Chemical & Engineering News. Washington 83(15):11

22 Even Small Doses of Popular Weed Killer Fatal to Frogs, Scientist Findshttp://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/08/050804053212.htm

23 European Commission, Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General. Directorate E – Food Safety: plant health, animal health and welfare, international questions. E1 – Plant health. Glyphosate. 6511/VI/99-final. 21 January 2002.

25 Barbosa et al., 2001. Parkinsonism after glycine-derivative exposure. Mov. Disorder. 16: 565-568.

26 Garry et al., 2002. Birth defects, season of conception and sex of children born to pesticide applicators living in the Red River Valley of Minnesota, USA. Environ. Health Perspect. 110: 441-449.

27 Arbuckle et al., 2001. An exploratory analysis of the effect of pesticide exposure on spontaneous abortion in Ontario farm population. Environ. Health Persp. 109: 851-857.

28 Benachour Nora; Gilles- Eric Séralini (December 23, 2008). “Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells”. Chemical Research in Toxicology 22: 97. doi:10.1021/tx800218n. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx800218n%5D.

29 “Pesticides coming off EU market. Pesticide News No. 60, June 2003, pp. 8-10.

31 Washington State Department of Transportation. Imazapyr – Roadside Vegetation Management. Herbicide Fact Sheet. February 2006.

32 Vizantinopoulos, S. and P. Lolos. 1994. Persistence and leaching of the herbicide imazapyr in soil. Bull. Environ. Cont. Toxicol. 52:404-410.

33 “Ecological Risk Assessment of the Proposed Use of the Herbicide Imazapyr to Control Invasive Cordgrass (Spartina spp.) in Estuarine Habitat ofWashington State.” Department of Agriculture, Olympia, WA 98504. Prepared by ENTRIX Inc., Olympia, Washington. Project No. 3000901, October 30, 2003.

34 USEPA. Office of Pesticide Programs. 1987. EEB Review of 241-EEO. Washington, DC (April 21 & June 1)

35 Endocrine disruptors interfere with the endocrine glands that produce hormones that guide the development, growth and reproduction in people and animals. Disruption of hormones, which guide growth, development, intelligence, and reproduction, can result in irreversible harm, which is passed on to future generations.

36 Pesticide Properties Database http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/aeru/footprint/en/index.htm

37 PAN International List of Highly Hazardous Pesticides, 2009. http://www.pan-germany.org/gbr.htm

38 U.S. EPA. Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances. 1995. Reregistration eligibility decision (RED): Picloram. Washington, D.C., Aug.

39McNabb, Ken. Environmental Safety of Forestry Herbicides
http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/A/ANR-0846/

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Alma Hecht, Certified Arborist: Saving the Trees

March 16, 2013 1 Comment

This is a 5-minute talk from Alma Hecht, Certified Arborist. She gave it at an SF Forest Alliance meeting in Glen Canyon Park before the Elk Street entrance trees were cut down. The trees are gone; the talk still matters. More trees are threatened in every park and wild land across the city.

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Glen Canyon: Nesting Season, Habitat Destruction, and Pesticide

March 14, 2013 6 Comments

The nesting season is in full swing, now, and pictures of baby owls and other baby wildlife are beginning to hit the Internet. Glen Canyon is – or has been – an exceptionally good nesting area, with many kinds of habitat, undisturbed thickets for protected breeding spots, and easy access to food and water.

But the Natural Areas Program doesn’t appear to have registered this. We reported on this last year, and they’re doing it again – breaking down thickets and spraying pesticides, despite the obvious risk of disturbing birds and other wildlife. An observer wrote us: “… a group of four individuals with picks and axes are at it in the mid section of the park.”

Spraying pesticides in Glen Canyon March 2013

“This is way back in the park which we had hoped to keep wild. They’ve already removed much of the understory and now they are poisoning. “

It’s no use to ask the staff to look out for nests. Birds, especially small ones, hide their nests as thoroughly as they can. They’re difficult to find even if you know what to look for. Some are very tiny: a hummingbird’s nest is the size of a quarter. Even with the best will in the world, these workers would find it impossible to guard against disturbing or destroying nests or dens.

2013-03-14 (2)

What is it?  A tank mix of Aquamaster and Milestone, apparently. Aquamaster is glyphosate, the same stuff that goes in Roundup. And Milestone is the pesticide that doesn’t go away (and is therefore banned in New York, which fears it will get into its waterways). The Natural Areas Program has steadily increased its use of pesticides since 2009, and Milestone use has increased particularly sharply in 2012.  It looks like 2013 is off to a good start.  (For more information about the pesticide applications and the pesticides themselves, read SF’s Natural Areas Program Uses Even More Pesticides.)

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Thanks for the Great Turnout For Sutro Forest!

February 27, 2013 Leave a comment

We’d like to thank everyone who made it a point to attend the Feb 25th hearing  about Sutro Forest, and especially those who spoke. It was a great turnout, and overwhelmingly opposed UCSF’s plan to remove thousands – or tens of thousands – of trees on Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve.

4 forest feb 2013

Though technically it was a hearing  for comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (details HERE), it became a platform for people to speak of their love for this magnificent forest, and the need to preserve it. Around 250 people attended (the room was full); and 47 55 spoke. (Six more had intended to speak, but because the hearing continued past 9 p.m., they had already left by the time their names were called.)

UCSF Public Hearing on Sutro Forest feb 2013

A more detailed account of the meeting is HERE.

A FOREST PEOPLE LOVE

Sentiment ran [better than] 2:1 in favor of preserving the forest, and celebrating its wildness. It was marvelous to hear the emotion resonating through the room; this is a place people love. People spoke of magic, of an emotional connection, of the forest as a place of refuge, even one that is spiritual and sacred.

Channel 2 KTVU was there, and it covered the Sutro Forest story. You can view that here.

You can see the newscaster’s reaction when she encounters the forest… many of us felt that way when we first entered Sutro Cloud Forest.

UCSF’s PLAN WOULD INCREASE THE FIRE HAZARD

But perhaps the most impactful statement of the evening was made by someone who wasn’t even there… a statement from a professional ecologist who has experience with forests nationally and internationally, and who noted that the Plan would increase the fire hazard by drying out the understory and the duff. He ended with:

“The forest on Mt. Sutro is, indeed, a novel ecosystem with many introduced species.  Yet it is a diverse, functioning ecosystem providing many services, the most interesting of which is that it provides a small piece of wild nature in the heart of our city.  The forest is old, but it may not yet be mature.  There is no forest perfectly analogous to what exists on Mt. Sutro – a cosmopolitan mix of species, much like San Francisco.  The fact that the forest is strange to us is not a sufficient  justification for destroying it.”

[Edited to Add: You can read his whole 3-minute statement HERE.]

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Valentine’s Day Bounty

February 14, 2013 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day!

McLaren Park's Flowered Grassland and Forest

McLaren Park’s Flowered Grassland and Forest

We hope you have a chance today to join the birds and the bees in experiencing the natural beauty and bounty created in San Francisco over hundreds of years.

Oxalis
The birds and flowers come early to San Francisco parks and offer spectacular Valentine flowers for people and wildlife alike.  Now is one of the best times in parks like McLaren, Glen Canyon, and Lake Merced – all alive with the chatter of birds in forests and open woodlands planted over the past 150 years.  Even the air is more crisp and alive with the smell  of early springtime’s green grasses and trees.  You can easily find large white eucalyptus blooms – a favorite of nectar loving bees and hummingbirds.  With some luck you’ll see squirrels gobbling up the green Monterey pine cones or birds enjoying the red berries of the cotoneasters.

Eucalyptus
The grasslands are lush green with the wild oat grasses growing rapidly, a legacy brought several hundreds of years ago by the Spanish ranchers.  The first yellow wave of mustard, buttercups, and dandelions have arrived along with the pink and white wild radish that paints the grassland just like when the Spaniards ran cattle here.  Also adding to this naturalized, non-native bounty are a few native plants like the beautiful blue blossoms, California blackberries, and California poppies.

California Poppy
While enjoying your walk you might spot these San Francisco beauties:

TREES

Blue Gum Eucalyptus – non-native
Monterey Cypress – non-SF native
Monterey Pines – non-SF native

SHRUBS
Blue Blossom – native
California blackberries – native
Cotoneasters – non-native
Silver Wattle – non-native

GRASSES AND OTHER PLANTS
Black Mustard – non-native
California Poppy – native
Oxalis (buttercups/sourgrass) – non-native
Dandelion  – non-native
Wild oat grass – non-native
Wild radish – non-native

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