A plan to turn Sutro Forest into stumps is being considered.
Those of us who live in the San Francisco Bay Area do so because of the natural beauty – to be surrounded by majestic, towering trees. To us and to most people, it does not matter what the species of those trees are. However, a small group of individuals who have an irrational hatred of certain species of trees are threatening to destroy the natural habitat where we live. And they do so by misportraying particular species of trees as “non-native,” an unscientific distinction that scapegoats some species for eradication based on wholly subjective criteria and narrow, personal prejudice. Now, they are asking the Federal Government to pay for clear cutting and poisons, felling trees and exposing the public and wildlife to thousands of gallons of toxic herbicide. And FEMA is listening. FEMA is considering a plan to cut down as many as half a million trees in the Bay Area.
We don’t want to live in an environmental war zone, to watch with sorrow and great heartbreak as decades old trees fall to the chainsaw, to see animals displaced, harmed and poisoned, to watch beautiful, lush forests be reduced to hillsides of barren stumps merely to satisfy the perverse preferences of a tiny but very vocal minority which cleverly cloaks their agenda of destruction in an faux “environmentalism” disguise.
Not only is it wrong to label any species an “alien” on its own planet and to target that species for extermination, but it is also breathtakingly myopic. On a tiny planet surrounded by the infinite emptiness of space, in a universe in which the anomaly of life renders every blade of grass, every insect that crawls and every animal on Earth an exquisite, wondrous rarity, it is quite simply inaccurate to label any living thing found anywhere on the planet which gave it life as “alien” or “non-native.” There is no such thing as an “invasive” species.
We must turn our attention away from the futile and pointless effort to return our environment to the past toward the meaningful goal of ensuring that every life that appears on this Earth is welcomed and respected as the glorious, cosmic miracle it actually is.
Help save the forests of San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland.
Learn more by clicking here.
Send comments in opposition to FEMA by June 17:
- Via the project website: http://ebheis.cdmims.com
- By email: EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX@fema.dhs.gov
- By mail: P.O. Box 72379, Oakland, CA 94612-8579
- By fax: 510-627-7147
Please also send a copy of your comments in opposition to Senator Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein, and to the Mayors of San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley.
You can also sign the petition by clicking here.
For further reading:
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Here is my story: www.nathanwinograd.com/?p=11902
And this is my vision: http://vimeo.com/48445902