Plans to destroy hundreds of thousands of trees in the East Bay Hills have caused a deep rift among members of the Sierra Club.

The local Sierra Club leadership not only supports the project to destroy non-native trees — eucalyptus, Monterey pine and acacia — it has also sued the funding agency to demand 100 percent destruction of the trees instead of thinning as proposed by the East Bay Regional Park District. However, many Sierra Club members oppose the plans.

Though club chapter leaders call this a “restoration” project, it actually includes NO plans to replant the 2,000-acre project. Once the trees are cut down, the project area will likely become overgrown with scrub and grass. Native trees such as redwood and oak will not be planted to replace the trees that are destroyed. Native trees cannot grow in most of the project area. The hills were virtually treeless before the arrival of Europeans.

A recent study also reports that 3 million native oaks have been killed by sudden oak death since 1995 and predicts the death of most of our oaks in California.

Although the project is billed as a fire-safety plan, the project area will actually become less fire-safe. The trees will be chipped and left as a 2-foot deep layer of mulch that will dry out and become a fuel source for fires. Shrubs and grasses are more flammable than trees because they ignite more easily.

Without trees to shade them and provide fog drip to keep them moist, the scrub and grasses will dry out, becoming even more flammable. The windbreak the trees provide will be lost, increasing dangerous wind-driven fires. The real reason behind the tree cutting is that the trees are not “native” and, in the opinion of the promoters of this project, don’t belong here.

A world famous fire scientist with the U.S. Forest Service says of the 1991 fire in the East Bay, —… eliminating eucalyptus and replacing it with some other vegetation would not prevent future fire disasters because the problem was inappropriately defined as a eucalyptus vegetation problem and not a … home ignition zone problem.”

The project will use thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides to keep the trees from resprouting. The San Francisco Bay Sierra Club leadership explicitly refuses to oppose herbicide use. They claim only minimal amounts of herbicides will be used. However, one of the project landowners has estimated it will use 2,250 gallons of herbicides on its section alone.

Many empirical studies document the rich biodiversity of the existing non-native forests. Bees, hummingbirds and Monarch butterflies require eucalyptus trees during winter months, when there are few other sources of nectar. Hawks and owls nest in the branches.

California law enabled me to send a letter to members of the local chapter of the Sierra Club to inform them of the club’s support for these deforestation projects. More than 1,800 members returned postcard petitions expressing opposition to these projects and the use of pesticides on public land.

Sierra Club bylaws obligate the club to hold an official vote about their support for these projects.

Please join us for a demonstration of our opposition to the club’s position and to support our request for a vote of the membership to democratically determine the wishes of the members. We will meet on June 13 at 2100 Franklin Street at 21st Street in Oakland at noon. For more information, please visit milliontrees.me.

Mary McAllister lives in Oakland and is the webmaster of the Million Trees blog.