Public Comment

Most Berkeley residents are aware of the encampment in the oak trees by the University of California’s Memorial Stadium. 

But few people are aware that the university has cut down more than 18,500 trees on its property in Claremont Canyon during the past 18 months, and plans an even-more-massive clear-cutting effort in Strawberry Canyon. 

The stadium tree-sitters and their sympathizers are complaining loudly that UC may cut down some 100 trees planted in the 1920s, in order to make room for a sports training center. Some of these tree-sitters have been squatting there since the Big Game of 2006. 

UC claims it’s a leader in reducing the impact of energy consumption on the environment, while it clear-cut tens of thousands of trees that were absorbing greenhouse gases, while cities and countries are planting millions of trees. 

Hardly anyone is complaining, save a small band of survivors of the 1991 East Bay fire. There are no tree-sitters to protect the trees in the hills where there is no publicity, no students or football fans passing by.  

UC is clear-cutting huge swaths of tall trees—pines, madrone, laurel, acacia, eucalyptus and cypress—with the stated intent of preventing wildfires. In the wake of this deforestation remain stumps, fallen logs and acres of chips more flammable than the trees.  

The university plans to cut 10,000 more trees in Claremont Canyon and an unknown number of trees in Strawberry Canyon above Memorial Stadium, as soon as it gets another million-dollar FEMA grant. There will be no replanting program.  

To prevent the trees from resprouting, ongoing re-application of an herbicide to the stumps will be required for as long as 10 years. When it rains this poison will drain into Berkeley streams and watershed. 

After the trees are gone, so-called native vegetation, such as chamise, poison oak, toyon and chaparral broom, will cover the hills. This is the vegetation that was responsible for the recent Southern California fires. And it begs the question, much like the slaughter of the Point Reyes deer, of who has the right to call a plant or animal “native.”  

There were no eucalyptus in the vicinity of the beginning of the great 1991 hills fire, which was started accidentally by construction workers. Firefighters only extinguished the fire superficially, and the next day it flared up and wind blew hot embers into dry brush and trees.  

Eucalyptus did not contribute to the 1991 fire any more than other trees. We saw tall, unburned eucalyptus trees standing near my burned-out, gutted home when we returned to it.  

If you want to see what the future of the hills above the campus will look like, drive up Claremont Avenue to Grizzly Peak Boulevard and notice the clear-cutting that has already been done and the chips that cover the ground. 

Global warming is a fact. One of the things being done around the world is planting trees. Not only is clear-cutting not an accepted means of fire prevention, but trees absorb carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming. Some examples include: 

The City of Los Angeles plans to plant 1 million trees, Enterprise Car Rental will plant 50 million trees, Volkswagen plans to plant 100,000-plus trees, the United Nations Environment Program plans to plant 1 billion, the city of Boston 100,000, the city of New York 1 million, the government of Thailand has pledged to plant 9 million trees. 

As if it isn’t listening, the University of California plans to virtually denude the hills on property it owns, cutting down up to 300,000 trees and using millions of our FEMA dollars. Is its goal more development? 

The East Bay Regional Park District, on the other hand, is thinning trees and clearing debris as a more realistic way to prevent the spread of fire. 

The university has the legal authority to remove the tree-sitters anytime it wants. Maybe UC is using the handful of Memorial Stadium trees to divert public attention from what it is really doing. Maybe the tree-sitters would find this hidden environmental travesty a more deserving target. 

Writer Robert Bruce lost his Oakland home in the 1991 fire, and published the Phoenix Journal newspaper for fire survivors. He is part of a volunteer group known as the Hills Conservation Network that is trying to stop UC’s clear-cutting and get them to use more rational methods of fire prevention.