FEMA program would protect flammable non-natives, inflate costs
For immediate release, May 26, 2015
Contact: Virginia Reinhart, Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter, virginia.reinhart@sierraclub.org, 510-848-0800 ext. 306
The Sierra Club and the Sustainability, Parks, Recycling and Wildlife Legal Defense Fund (SPRAWLDEF) today filed suit over plans by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to fund a vegetation-management program in the East Bay hills that would increase fire hazards, threaten endangered species and native wildlife, and increase the financial burden on taxpayers.
“The best way forward is to promote native vegetation that is less flammable and encourages healthy ecosystems and greater biodiversity,” said Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter director Michelle Myers. “That’s a win-win for the environment and for homeowners who want to feel secure that they won’t lose their homes in another Great Fire like the one we lived through in 1991. Unfortunately, FEMA’s approach isn’t in line with the priorities of fire safety and habitat restoration.”
FEMA has over $5.5 million in grant money to disburse for vegetation management in the East Bay Hills from Richmond to San Leandro. These areas contain thousands of acres of highly flammable eucalyptus and non-native pines, which choke out more fire-resistant natives like oaks, bays, and laurel. Flying in the face of the best science and land-management practice, FEMA has signaled its intention to fund a plan to thin flammable non-natives, rather than remove them entirely. The Sierra Club / SPRAWLDEF suit contents that this is the wrong approach.
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups including the Claremont Conservancy, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, and the California Native Plant Society have all advocated for removing all of the flammable eucalyptus and pine trees over time so that less-flammable native habitat can reclaim those areas. In contrast to clearcutting, this approach calls for removing eucalyptus in phases, so that native trees — which cannot grow to full size underneath the eucalyptus canopy — are able to thrive. Mere thinning of eucalyptus and pine plantations in fact denudes hillsides to an even greater extent, as it requires the clearing of native plants in the understory.
Restoration of native habitat would provide an opportunity for the return of local endangered species like the Alameda whipsnake. FEMA’s plan fails to follow the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Biological Opinion for protecting the whipsnake. Eucalyptus and pine groves, even thinned, do not provide habitat for this endangered species, and the areas that the FEMA plan covers are prime habitat areas for this endangered species.
The City of Oakland and the University of California, Berkeley applied for FEMA grants to fund the removal of non-natives and the restoration of native habitat. Only the East Bay Regional Park District plans would allow non-natives to remain. By directing funds to a misguided program, FEMA would force Oakland and UC Berkeley to forgo their sensible plans.
The approach FEMA has endorsed would burden taxpayers with hundreds of millions of dollars in future maintenance costs. Over a period of 20 to 30 years, the costs of regular thinning of non-natives and debris removal would be at least $250 million. Long-term maintenance costs would force agencies like the East Bay Regional Park District to levy fire-maintenance taxes as high as $200 per household in the East Bay — or else defer maintenance and risk a deadly and destructive fire.
“It’s time for us to be economically smart and environmentally conscious,” said Norman La Force, chair of the Sierra Club’s East Bay Public Lands Committee and president of SPRAWLDEF. “I’ve served in government and I know that when a public agency runs out of money it defers maintenance. Letting flammable material build up on our hillsides is an accident waiting to happen. We know that’s what caused the Great Fire of 1991, so why would we go back to the same failed approach? The restoration of native habitat will make our hills much safer and will be far less costly to maintain.”