According to FEMA, the clear cut and poisoning will result in “unavoidable adverse impacts… to vegetation, wildlife and habitats, protected species, soils, water quality, aesthetics, community character, human health and safety, recreation, and noise.”
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March 2017 Update: The City of Oakland is proceeding with a legally required "environmental assessment" in order to proceed with bid to clearcut the Oakland hills. The process will be complete by 2019. We encourage everyone who cares to sign up for email updates and get involved to fight it: https://oaklandvegmanagement.org/contact-us/
September 2016 Lawsuit Update: Hills Conservation Network is reporting a settlement in their lawsuit against FEMA over funding of East Bay deforestation. Under the terms of the proposed settlement, Berkeley and Oakland will lose all of their funding to clear cut trees and poison our neighborhoods. The EBRPD will be allowed to keep their funding but only use it for brush clearing, not clear cutting. Do these developments mean the war to save our forests is over? Unfortunately, no. As to UC Berkeley: Since UCB was already financially penalized by FEMA over the illegal clear cutting they did at Frowning Ridge before the Environmental Impact Statement was completed, the loss of the remaining funds to UCB does not appear to be a bar for their deforestation agenda. In fact, all indications are that they will begin clear cutting trees any day now. Thankfully, HCN has another lawsuit against them and intends to file a restraining order to prevent that from happening. As to lands managed by the East Bay Regional Park District: While EBRPD can only use the FEMA grant money for brush clearing, they will use Measure CC, general operating and grant funds to remove the trees anyway, so this will not stop them from their deforestation agenda. The same amount of trees will fall, so we must keep up the political and public pressure there. There is no reason to assume that the EBRPD has abandoned plans to deforest large areas of many of our most beloved parks, including Tilden, Wildcat Canyon, Sibley, Redwood Regional, Huckleberry and more. Indeed, their current clear cutting affirms their intentions to do so. As to Oakland: The loss of millions of dollars is a victory. If the City plans to proceed with clear cutting, it will have to come up with the funding on their own, a difficult undertaking given the economic climate. They may or may not. At the very least, we believe this delays a decision by at least two to three years. But if our experience has taught us anything, it is that if a city wants to do a project, they will come up with the money. Save The East Bay Hills will continue to fight to protect the urban forests of the East Bay from UC Berkeley, the EBRPD, and the nativist bullies at the Sierra Club and the Claremont Conservancy who will no doubt continue to work with Councilmember Dan Kalb and Mayor Libby Schaaf to pursue their environmentally devastating deforestation agenda. We must continue the fight, but at the very least, we've been given an important reprieve. |
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the Oakland City Council, U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks and East Bay Regional Parks District General Manager Robert Doyle have received federal funding for an environmentally catastrophic plan to "eradicate" Eucalyptus, Monterey Pine, and Acacia forests on the public lands and parks of the East Bay. Over 400,000 in the East Bay hills will be chopped down and cancer-causing toxic herbicides made by Monsanto and Dow will be dumped on their stumps. Costing nearly $6 million, this plan will radically transform the character and appearance of the hills while causing great animal suffering, including the decimation of habitat vital to several endangered species. The environment in which they live eliminated, these animals and multitudes of others will be displaced. Human residents, visitors and their pets in the region will likewise be exposed to hazardous chemicals, while the idyllic setting upon which the property values of Oakland homeowners depend will be seriously degraded.
According to FEMA, the federal agency funding this proposal, the goal is to eliminate forests so that the land can be transformed into “grassland with islands of shrubs.” In total 105 areas in various locations throughout the East Bay will be eliminated on the public lands overseen by the city of Oakland and UC Berkeley, and within the East Bay Regional Parks District for a total of over 2,000 acres. Slated for eradication are the vast forests above the Caldecott Tunnel and Caldecott Field (53 acres), North Hills/Skyline (68 acres), and at Strawberry and Claremont Canyons (112 acres).
Also slated for conversion to grassland are the forests within and around the following East Bay Regional Parks:
A statement released by FEMA admits that the plan will cause,
“unavoidable adverse impacts… to vegetation, wildlife and habitats, protected species, soils, water quality, aesthetics, community character, human health and safety, recreation, and noise.”
According to FEMA, the federal agency funding this proposal, the goal is to eliminate forests so that the land can be transformed into “grassland with islands of shrubs.” In total 105 areas in various locations throughout the East Bay will be eliminated on the public lands overseen by the city of Oakland and UC Berkeley, and within the East Bay Regional Parks District for a total of over 2,000 acres. Slated for eradication are the vast forests above the Caldecott Tunnel and Caldecott Field (53 acres), North Hills/Skyline (68 acres), and at Strawberry and Claremont Canyons (112 acres).
Also slated for conversion to grassland are the forests within and around the following East Bay Regional Parks:
- Anthony Chabot (200 acres)
- Claremont Canyon Preserve (152 acres)
- Huckleberry Botanic (18 acres)
- Lake Chabot (5 acres)
- Leona Canyon (5 acres)
- Miller/Knox Shoreline (22 acres)
- Redwood (151 acres)
- Sibley (166 acres)
- Sobrante Ridge (4 acres)
- Tilden (325 acres)
- Wildcat Canyon (112 acres)
A statement released by FEMA admits that the plan will cause,
“unavoidable adverse impacts… to vegetation, wildlife and habitats, protected species, soils, water quality, aesthetics, community character, human health and safety, recreation, and noise.”
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When this plan is completed, gone will be the beloved, shaded hiking trails of the East Bay, made so idyllic by the soaring, century old trees planted by Oakland’s earliest residents. Instead, visitors to the East Bay hills will find empty, sun-scorched paths lined by caution tape warning visitors to avoid the chemical soaked tree stumps that serve as grave markers to forests and beauty that are no more. Commuters traveling East through the Caldecott tunnel will no longer behold the spectacular forests that blanket the hills above the southern bore, but instead an empty, blighted hillside rendered a tragic and heart-wrenching eyesore. Weekend visitors to Tilden Park in Berkeley will discover that the trees which lined their paths and under which they
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picnicked are gone. Just as alarming, the people and animals of the East Bay will be repeatedly exposed—twice a year, every year for a decade and perhaps in perpetuity—to hazardous herbicides, including Dow Chemical’s Garlon and Monsanto’s Glyphosate.
These herbicides have been found to cause DNA and chromosomal damage in human cells and increase the risk of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, to cause severe birth defects when tested on poor animals including rats born with their brains outside their skulls, to harm birds and aquatic species and to damage the kidneys, liver and the blood of dogs, the latter being an issue of particular concern to the legions of dog walkers which regularly visit our public parks. These herbicides not only contaminate ground water and persist in the environment for a year, but, ironically, alter the soil by killing fungi essential to the health of oak trees, one of the species of trees proponents of the plan will not be clear-cutting, thereby imperiling even those few trees that will be left behind.
When FEMA was debating whether or not to fund this proposal, over 13,000 public comments were submitted, 90% of which expressed opposition. Despite this overwhelming display of public sentiment against the plan, FEMA, Mayor Schaaf, the Oakland City Council, Chancellor Dirks and EBRPD General Manager Doyle have chosen to ignore the will of the people and forge ahead with their plan to destroy the public lands we entrusted them to care for on our behalf. Not since the Firestorm tragedy of 1991 have the East Bay hills and their historical heritage been under a similarly devastating threat but for one, crucial difference: this time, the danger to the well being of residents and the scars upon the landscape will be deliberately inflicted by our public officials.
Unless we stop them, this proposal may well usher in the end of East Bay forests as we know and love them.
- Read our statement in opposition by clicking here.
- Read our rebuttal to the the misinformation by proponents by clicking here.
- Read FEMA's language for clearcutting in the Oakland and Berkeley hills by clicking here.
- Find out how the plan will impact areas in and near the Montclair District by clicking here.
- Click here for what you can do.
