We received a copy of the decision on the Jefferson Street trees (at Fishermans Wharf, San Francisco) today.

Though it’s not quite as good as we’d hoped (see our post on that: Jefferson Trees Update), we think it’s a lot more reasonable than the original plan to just wipe out all the trees on two busy city blocks.

We hope the merchants of Jefferson St will also benefit from the retention of the trees; at an Urban Forestry presentation today, the speaker said that streets with trees encourage people to linger and thus spend more.

Key findings from the decision regarding Jefferson trees

(You can read the whole decision here:  Jefferson_St_Decision_180718.)

The City responded to the public support for the trees. We want to thank Kathy Hallinan who led the effort, and the hundreds who supported her; and the project planners and the city for finding another way.

We hope it’s a model for other projects with unnecessary tree removal.

We call on all City departments to consider that people love trees, are passionate about them and will try to defend them. New saplings cannot be considered to “replace” mature trees in size, canopy, grace, or habitat and ecological values. Therefore, projects should be planned to minimize the number of trees impacted, and designed to avoid tree removals as far as possible.