Monetizing & non-profitizing Oakland's parks, open spaces, and woodlands

The recent trend to clear cut in order to conserve and the transformation of "conservation" into construction is concerning to me. We have seen this 3 times recently in Oakland with the Dimond Park Plan, Knowland Park Zoo and the Vegetation Management Plan for the East Bay Hills. Currently the Sierra club has a lawsuit against FEMA for not funding a full clear cutting project along the East Bay Ridgeline; they seem to be more concerned about saving housing than habitat. The common theme of all of these projects is the need to to clear existing vegetation, even large trees in order to “conserve,” (which has come to mean re-landscape and re-plant) the native environment. In Dimond Park, this involved cutting out established redwoods, which according the project’s native plant specialist, are not native at the Dimond Park’s elevation. These projects provide work and funding for the Oakland Native Plant Nursery, construction contracts, natural resources (wood pulp), publicly funded fire mitigation for homeowners and huge “projects” to be managed by non-profits and the City of Oakland.

Drought stress, blight and sudden oak death are killing trees as well, and Oakland has almost no tree planting programs,* we are loosing trees at an alarming rate. No one is monitoring or measuring the cumulative effects of these projects on amphibians, existing wildlife, and humans who share use the spaces. This is a radical, destructive and interventionist approach to conservation. We want to o clear cut, poison then "re-plant" a native space according to our vision for what belongs near our million dollar homes. Is it really prudent land management to destroy and reconstruct our local woodlands, while simultaneously neglecting our urban landscape, during a severe drought, which we hope will end with wet winter a month or two after the clear-cutting?

* the Sierra Club has one of the only ongoing tree planting programs in Oakland