The following question was posed to Willie Brown recently:
Rec and Park is planning to cut down 20,000 healthy trees because they are not native; considering the threat to global warming and Al Gore’s advice to plant lots of tree, what would you do about this tree destruction plan?
His answer, in part:
“I would terminate every person connected to my administration who would advocate cutting down any of the trees in this city.”
He goes on to say: “It is ludicrous for this city to be talking about removing trees that are allegedly not native to the environment” …. “I would direct the Rec and Park department to cease and desist, and if they don’t, it will not be the trees removed, it will be you removed !”
Hear the 3 minute video here:
San Francisco Forest Alliance 
Brilliant and a true statement – as in ” the emperor has no clothes …” !! Now how to pass this along …uh duh ….of course – thank you Willie brown….
Awwww-RIGHT, Willie! You go! Let’s reelect this dude immediately. This just made my day. Now only if he/we could actually make this happen!
Well, someone gets it. Can he help save trees now? If only the current mayor would stop the nonsense like this! These NAP people are so hell-bent on their twisted, uneducated vision of what they want, they don’t care what is healthy for the environment.
BUT…Willie was the mayor of SF when NAP was born and many people tried to interest him in the controversy that program created. Perhaps we weren’t making enough noise when he was mayor. Or he is rewriting history with this after-the-fact assessment of a program that was created while he was mayor.
Over the years there have not been many issues that Mayor Brown and I agree on. However, on the issue of native plants and tree killing I will give Willie three cheers. Maybe he is able to persuade those thick headed native plants zealots to cease and desist their murdering of beautiful, beneficial and healthy trees.
Willie says “allegedly non-native” species, auguring into the currently raging debate over what’s a “native” plant, and what isn’t. “Nativists” generally agree they’re what was brought to the New World by Europeans. Regardless of this arguably arbitrary demarcation, I agree with Willie’s common sense: we desperately need healthy trees of all species and origin NOW more than ever in our era of human-made global warming.
It’s one thing to advocate planting “native” species, and quite another to advocate massive clear cuts of THOUSANDS of mature, healthy trees. In a word, it’s suicidal. What the world needs now, is LESS tree-killing and deforestation of all kinds & scale; and MORE tree planting everywhere. Recent massive clear cuts of THOUSANDS of healthy, mature, shade-providing, soil stabilizing, 02-producing, planet-cooling, animal habitat providing “non-native” eucalyptus trees (and increasingly Monterey Pine and Cypress) in the SF Bay Area is going to do far more harm than good.
Have we as a society grown so much indoors, and so far away from feeling our connection to the natural world that we now fear precious, life-sustaining, TREES, a species so critical to our survival and our well-being? – Jack Gescheidt, The TreeSpirit Project, http://www.TreeSpiritProject.com