http://www.sfgate.com/
Return to regular view
Public ire at parks habitat program rises
- Ken Garcia
Friday, July 19, 2002
The native plant enthusiasts who want to take over large chunks of San Francisco's parks have done a poor job of cultivating their agenda, but they have allowed one unalienable truth about the city to bloom.
People here don't like being told what's good for them and especially dislike being left in the dark about plans that allegedly have been conceived for their benefit.
This will explain how a low-profile division of the Recreation and Park Department has become the center of a burgeoning battle between tree lovers and shrub saviors, dog owners and sand dune defenders. And why the true believers inside the city's Natural Areas Program now understand that when you start unilaterally killing trees, fights will follow.
Last week, the first public jousting over the purpose and scope of the program took place at a committee hearing of the Board of Supervisors, a place that has often defied the Darwinian view of evolution. It's still too early to see what the outcome will be, but it's clear that the people pushing a narrow view of ecological correctness have planted a seed they wish would stop growing.
As I first reported in April, the Natural Areas Program was an acorn in Rec and Park's giant forest, unknown to most, and charged with the seemingly innocuous task of restoring native habitats. A laudable pursuit, few could argue, except that those involved in the program decided to achieve this high- minded concept with almost no public input and allowed their most avid subscribers to run amok.
This resulted in all sorts of embarrassing anti-preservation adventures, such as the discovery that some of the program's gardeners and a few of its most zealous volunteers had been girdling scores of healthy, mature trees around the city. Girdling is a subtle way of killing trees by removing their bark, and it was a practice that occurred at Lake Merced, on Tank Hill near UCSF and at McLaren Park and Mount Davidson, which made the nature-loving citizens in those areas rather testy.
The death and removal of the trees, it turns out, came about because they were seen to be interfering with the precious native plants the Natural Areas Program has vowed to protect. And it didn't help that several of the program's members have publicly stated that they view eucalyptus trees as weeds that should be eradicated and that some of them began referring to any so-called non-native plants and trees as "alien" species.
Perhaps more alarming was that their mission and work was being carried out without any public oversight, even though a citizens advisory group was supposed to supervise it, according to the mandate that created the Natural Areas Program five years ago.
The uproar grew after the people involved in the program decided to cut down nearly 1,000 trees and saplings on Bayview Hill near Candlestick Park last year as part of a habitat-restoration project. And when it was discovered that program officials had hopes of quietly taking over more than 1,000 acres of city parkland for its precious projects -- about one-third of all the green space in the city -- even the most ardent environmentalists became alarmed.
Rec and Park officials decided to address the concerns by putting together what it euphemistically called a "green-ribbon panel" to advise the Natural Areas Program, but people involved in parks around the city were not impressed,
since many of them had been left out of the process. And dozens of them came to the supervisor's hearing last week to assail the program -- demanding that the city name a real citizens advisory group and called for a moratorium on NAP's work.
"This is not a small program, it's an ever-expanding program," said Nancy Wuerfel. "The Natural Areas Program needs to have a wide base of public support, which it currently does not. And it concerns me that its own planning document refers to things like weed management when it's actually a euphemism for the removal of mature trees."
Rec and Park General Manager Elizabeth Goldstein, who has defended the program, admitted that the department had failed miserably in its job of communicating the habitat-management plan's mission, since some of the city's most vocal park supporters are now rallying against it. Or that even some native-plant enthusiasts believe that officials in the Natural Areas Program have overstepped their bounds.
"The concept of NAP is a good one, but the process so far has been very flawed," said Bill Shepard, who has been involved in similar battles at the Presidio. "These people have acted as if the general public is to ignorant too understand or participate in the program. And it presumes that native and non- native plants are not compatible."
Since there are more plant species thriving here today than there were before all those horrible non-native trees arrived more than a century ago, it would appear that San Francisco's parks have managed to survive without heavy- handed management.
It seems nature does a much better balancing act than it's often given credit for. And that's why when you start killing trees in the name of some sort of ecological purity, its seems that much more unbalanced.
Page 1
URL:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/07/19/WB6330.DTL
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle