Got a chuckle out of this one...
Crowdog
www.crowley-offroad.com
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Presidio trees may be axed to save weed
180 acres of sand would replace forest
Ken Garcia
Tuesday, April 9, 2002
San Francisco -- In San Francisco, bad ideas are so plentiful, they can actually be harvested.
That is especially true when a large bureaucracy like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comes up with a grand sand-hugging plan that wouldn't allow us to see the forest for the trees, because there wouldn't be a forest or trees. Just sand and more sand and the promise of a plentiful lot of small plants that most people would be hard-pressed to notice or pronounce.
It's remarkable that a government agency would go to great lengths to protect a tiny sprout that flourishes in dunes and has a very short life span. A short life span, in fact, is exactly what the government's so-called restoration plan deserves.
In a classic case of bureaucratic overkill, the federal government, largely at the behest of true-believing botanist Peter Baye, has pushed forth a plan to restore a weedlike plant called lessingia. It has done so in the most cryptic fashion, outlining what would amount to clear-cutting a huge swath of the western Presidio in a proposal titled, "Draft Recovery for Coastal Plants of the Northern San Francisco Peninsula."
The plant recovery idea is about as subtle and bright as the plan a couple of years back by the National Park Service to reintroduce poison oak in the Presidio as a native species. That proposal would have left us scratching our heads (and arms and legs), but this latest myopic march promises to leave thousands of neighborhood residents shivering in the wind.
I don't know where Julia Butterfly Hill is right now, but there's a stand of Monterey cypress near the Golden Gate Bridge with her name on it.
The so-called draft plan calls for the eradication of nearly 4,000 mature trees on the west side of the Presidio between Baker Beach and Rob Hill, near the bridge. It proposes setting aside about 180 acres in our ever- controversial national park -- about 25 percent of the Presidio's open space -- so Fish and Wildlife can establish as many as 4.3 million lessingia plants.
All this for the bargain price of a cool $17 million.
Since you've probably never heard of a lessingia plant, nor could identify one if you had one curled under your toes, I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that it makes little sense to cut down several thousand Monterey pines, Monterey cypress and eucalyptus trees to make room for it. It's not like the trees have to go -- there's enough room in just a 10-acre parcel to grow 4 million lessingia.
To add to this flora folly, the lessingia is an annual. So, for a little plant that goes brown, we should cut down a century-old forest?
Of course, reason and common sense are elusive qualities when it comes to grand plans pushed by national park and federal wildlife officials. The Golden Gate National Recreation Area has been cordoning off huge chunks of once-open beaches from dogs as part of its assault on the reality of urban life in the Bay Area. And by the time the Presidio Trust finishes its development plan for the Presidio, we could have the world's first national theme park.
It's a fine idea to try to reintroduce native plants -- Crissy Field has basically been rebuilt and roped off to that end -- but taking nearly 200 acres in a cherished area of the city and demolishing mature, majestic trees to save some sand dune scrubs is a few ice plants short of a landscape.
"I knew it was going to be a hard sell," botanist Baye told The Chronicle's Kathleen Sullivan recently, a comment that shows perhaps that he has at least a few roots planted in reality.
Presidio neighbors have a long history of dealing with federal park planners. It would be an understatement to say they are battle-weary, let alone perplexed at the ability of a handful of native-plant enthusiasts to sway policy over the city's sole national park. But this latest assault makes the poison oak proposal seem sane by comparison.
"Those of us who live near the Presidio love the views and the trees and the sense of serenity you get from walking through the forest," said Andre Tolpegin, president of the Sea Cliff Properties Association. "We love the environment, which is one of the reasons we're fighting the plan."
Bill Shepard, a lawyer whose home backs up to the Presidio, said that "on a very small scale, the plan would not be objectionable. But removing 3,800 trees from the western Presidio will create a bleak, wind-blown, uninviting area, the very reason the trees were planted there 100 years ago."
Revising the city's history has become a favorite pastime of planners and politicians alike. After all, any number of people have stepped forward to try to make Golden Gate Park less accessible by closing down roads, even though it's the only way for most people to reach the park's museums. National park officials have been hearing howls of protest from thousands of dog lovers since they introduced a plan to curtail off-leash pooches in the Presidio and other areas -- the federal government's attempt at redefining San Francisco as a rural wilderness area.
The only saving grace in the lessingia affair is that the public still has time to voice its disapproval by writing to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
2800 Cottage Way, W-2605, Sacramento CA 95825. The public comment period will last until May 6.
Chopping down nearly 4,000 mature trees to make room for some sand-loving plants with the life span of a garden snail would have trouble winning over even Sierra Club members, who know a dead stump when they see one. And although the Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to portray the plan as nothing else but an advisory proposal, you can bet it didn't get this far by catching an offshore breeze.
If federal wildlife officials want to save some sand dune weeds that are dormant most of the year, I'd suggest they stake out Point Reyes, where the lessingia can have a field day.
That way they won't have to go into the logging business.
You can reach Ken Garcia at (415) 777-7152 or e-mail him at kgarcia@sfchronicle.com.
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../09/BA38737.DTL