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National Features

At Lobos Creek, there is.there there. The boardwalk sends a clear message: You are here. Nature is there. Hu grew up tromping through these open fields, and believes it played a role in her decision to study animal behavior. If her childhood forays had been restricted to the boardwalk, would her interest have been piqued?

While native-plant advocates have praised the restored dunes as a living museum, Hu feels the description is all too apt: "Museumification" is a much-used pejorative among restoration critics. "This boardwalk has made this area an 'exhibit' — but it's not a good enough exhibit for people to come out and see," she says. "I see kids out here doing restoration work, and that's great. But are they coming back on their own?"

Indeed, on an utterly gorgeous Sunday during the noontime hour, only four or five other people wandered along the boardwalk — none of them children.

The future dunes — and fenced-off, isolated Raven's manzanita recovery sites — may also be accessible only by narrow boardwalks, if at all. This leaves Hu highly ambivalent.

She isn't alone. Her unlikely kindred spirit is Raven (the man, not the plant). "I had a lot of fun when I was a kid there, wandering around collecting and finding plants," he says. "Fencing or putting certain areas off-limits is quite all right, but it would be an utter tragedy if it was done on a wide scale and kids don't have contact with nature. Putting aside a bigger area and keeping people out of it is kind of problematic."

Raven laments that children are no longer allowed to gallivant about the city with nary a care, as he did in the 1940s and '50s. But he grew truly agitated at the notion of natural areas being taken away from them. City kids need to know that nature isn't something accessible only after three hours on a bus. It's all around them and they should revel in it. Besides, if Raven had stuck to the path as a 14-year-old, he would never have discovered his manzanita in the first place.

So, paradoxically enough, converting San Francisco to a more "natural" state may actually make nature less accessible for its residents — and since it will require a maniacal amount of scientific, political, and administrative effort, it certainly won't come about naturally.

After half a century of merely keeping the Raven's manzanita alive, its recovery strategy has shifted into reproduction. In recent years, researchers have uncorked the biggest breakthrough in the plant's history since Peter Raven discovered it on the bluff — at times, however, in spite of themselves.

In 1994, UC Berkeley officials lent the only copy of their detailed research history on the plant to an undergraduate — who promptly lost it. Fourteen years later, garden curator Forbes is still visibly perturbed. But she doesn't need papers to remind her that, in 1995, she led an effort to harvest seed fruits from Raven's manzanitas. She and others plied 4,500 of them with 32 different treatments, including smoke and even sulfuric acid, meant to break the seeds' nigh-impenetrable coating.

For all that travail, 12 plants were germinated. Some of Forbes' seedlings, tall and upright, were obviously the herbal equivalent of the milkman's kids. But others certainly looked like Raven's manzanita. Could all the scientists have been wrong to peg the plant an obligate outcrosser? Could the manzanita have self-pollinated?

In 2004, San Francisco State biology professor Tom Parker commenced genetic testing on the six surviving UC Berkeley seedlings. Parker and technician Craig Reading wrapped up lab work at SFSU's Conservation Genetics Laboratory only this month. And Parker has concluded that three or possibly four of the UC Berkeley plants are 100 percent Raven's manzanita. The population of genetic individuals has suddenly quadrupled (or quintupled).

"Twenty years ago, if you'd have asked me about a single individual of an outcrossing plant and what to do about it, I'd have said you're wasting your money, man," says Parker, a friendly, middle-aged man in no way related to Elvis' former manager of the same name. "The plant was at the literal edge of extinction, and now it has been moved away from that. There's a lot of satisfaction there, I think."

The Presidio has invited every last person who has ever worked on the mother manzanita plant to a June pow-wow to discuss what comes next. You would think Parker's revelations would have the scientists turning cartwheels. But you'd be wrong.

"We'll all get in this room and talk and we might be arguing if this is the best use of our time and resources," Swenerton says. "Can we bring this plant back to a level where it will do well on its own? I don't think so."

With one plant or five, the gene pool for the Raven's manzanita is barely moist. If extinction can come in a form as mundane as a caterpillar, how can the plant evolve to cope with global warming?

Parker sees things differently. "If the plant has selfed [self-pollinated], then it's never too late." At a recent PowerPoint demonstration, he walked the audience through his slicing and dicing of multiple gametes and alleles, illustrating his work with a branching chart resembling a thrice-worked-over NCAA bracket. Heads nodded as Parker predicted a future in which sexually reproducing Raven's manzanitas are once again nestled in San Francisco's rocky hills.

And then Parker made his next suggestion: As soon as you have a viable population, flip your lighter and burn them all.

"Nobody likes to hear that," he explains. "But the only way they reproduce is for the seeds to be stimulated by chemicals from smoke. That's their normal way of doing things." Padlocking the Presidio Fire Department's doors during an electrical storm could do wonders for the Raven's manzanita, he notes, only half-seriously.

For obvious reasons, wildfires are not encouraged in the Presidio, nor is the wanton immolation of rare plants. So, it seems the species will always be tied to humans, reproducing only when and where it sees fit — and that's if scientists are lucky enough to establish viable populations.

Back atop the bluff, Chassé shivers in the howling wind and peeks down at the manzanita, which is illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun. "It's a symbol, and as the last of its kind, it's a powerful symbol," he says. "It's a symbol of saving an ancient species and hope for the future."

Night fell, and Chassé hopscotched the poison oak in semidarkness. He mounted his bicycle again and pedaled home. Almost imperceptibly, the mother plant continued to quake in the wind. It had, improbably enough, survived one more day.

Write Your Comment show comments (27)

  1. If Mary McAllister truly believes the eucalyptus and ivy stands in the Presidio are more beautiful than Lobos Creek and the coastal bluffs, it is obvious her vision is failing. These dunes are such a visual treat, not only because of their incredible floral displays, but also because you can actually see: you can see vistas and landscapes that are completely obliterated and hidden from view by elitists who preferred tall trees to keep “their” city enclave completely private.

    Kudos to the folks working so selflessly to preserve the last raven's manzanita. If only the rest of us could be so humble.

    Comment by joseph — April 16, 2008 @ 09:51AM

  2. Chasse, Swenerton, Brastow, Thomas, Edwards, and of Course Raven are heroes tasked with the most difficult job on the planet: saving a neglected species from the capriciousness of our own species.

    The difficulty of their task, and also the boldness of their vision, is supported by the absurd and baseless claims of Wade, McAllister, Sayad and the others who would boldly lie about the science behind global warming and the origins of the plant conservation movement.

    Their courage to take a stand in spite of the intense irrationality of these baseless criticisms is as much of a hopeful story as the persistence of the last individual of this irreplaceable plant.

    Comment by presidiohugger — April 16, 2008 @ 10:06AM

  3. I sincerely appreciate the depth of investigation performed by Joe for his article on the Raven's Manzanita. Overall, his reporting of the skepticism about ecological restoration and its role in saving the planet speaks for itself. However, one point that requires clarification is regarding kids having access to nature.

    The local ecological restoration and conservation movement - and it's not just about the unfortunately negativized "native plants" - is as much about saving indigenous plants, animals and rocks as it is about reconnecting people with nature where they live. As an ever increasingly intensely urbanized and modern society, we are cut off wholesale from having any real relationship with nature.

    But ecological restoration and stewardship is the recipe for reconnecting kids with nature instead of buying them cell phones, DVD players and digital music devices. In the GGNRA alone, 19,000 people volunteered in 2007 equal to 390,000 volunteer hours - that's a lot of time of children and adults out in their local national park connecting to and healing the nature where they live.

    Comment by Peter Brastow — April 16, 2008 @ 11:05AM

  4. Pretty good article Eskenazi (is it ironic that you quote the nazi-name-callers when the word is in your name?)

    However, you did not explore the fencing and trails issue as thoroughly as other issues you discuss.

    In a perfect world, we would not need trails and fencing and signs to keep things preserved from inadvertent destruction.

    However, our world today is far from perfect, and every day as our population and recreational demands grow, we risk loving our recreational spaces to death, or at least wear them out under our feet. The context within which we live, particularly in places like the Presidio, forbids leaving sensitive places completely open to exploration: we would lose them entirely.

    If we did open them to uninhibited exploration in this context, in their place we'd have the weedy, uninviting landscapes that people don't want to explore in the first place. This would most assuredly keep people out of nature just as much as a fence would.

    Perhaps it is true that the fences will create fewer nature enthusiasts, but as explained so do the denuded landscapes that typically define urban landscapes used for recreation.

    The answer isn’t to rail against the fence, as it were, but to rail against the context, rail against the destruction we see on the metascale so someday the fences can come down and we can explore these landscapes in a context that won’t lead to the destruction of the very places we love.

    Comment by next time:context — April 16, 2008 @ 11:12AM

  5. IMO, this is a balanced, well-researched article about native plant restorations. I have just a couple of substantive quibbles. One is the claim that trees in the temperate zone may “raise global temperatures” and that “some grasses can store nearly twice the carbon that forests can.” These claims are refuted by other scientists. Dr. Greg McPherson debunked this claim in “Urban Tree Planting & Greenhouse Gas Reductions: Unraveling the Debate” which is available here: http://www.californiareleaf.org/documents/CalTreesFall07.pdf
    Dr. McPherson refutes these claims in detail and concludes that “the conclusion [that] the earth would be cooler if the forests were cut down defies common sense and is neither realistic nor ecologically desirable.”

    Secondly, let me respond to the native plant advocate who asks the rhetorical question, “Can’t we do just a little bit? My God!” If the native plant restorations in the Bay Area were indeed small, they would probably not be controversial. Because they are huge, they have involved the destruction of thousands of trees and have eliminated recreational use of much urban parkland. For example, the native plant restorations in the parks of the City of San Francisco, known as the Natural Areas Program, are 25% of all city-managed park acreage in San Francisco, over 1,000 acres. They will require the destruction of over 18,000 mature trees in the parkland managed by the City’s Park Department in San Francisco and Pacifica. In the East Bay the scale of these projects is even greater. About 15,000 trees have already been destroyed in the Oakland/Berkeley hills and about the same number will be destroyed in the future. If restorationists would concentrate on preserving existing native plants rather than recreating them where they have not existed for over 100 years, their projects would not be so large, so destructive and therefore not so controversial.

    Thanks for this article and the thorough and fair job that you have done on this complex subject.

    Comment by Yellow Dog — April 16, 2008 @ 01:16PM

  6. In response to claims that native plant restoration is too much, that is an argument without context. Native species have already been destroyed in 90% + of San Francisco. To suggest that even reverting the last 10% to indigenous plants is too much for us to bear is the height of self-absorption. And that isn't even what restorationists want: they ask for just a fraction of what remains. It is humble demand.

    Comment by yellowerdog — April 16, 2008 @ 01:46PM

  7. Brastow and "next time: context" seem to have forgotten what it's like to be a kid. Kids don't connect with nature when performing conscripted labor on "natural" areas as required by their schools; they connect with nature when exploring on there own, even exploring "weedy" areas. "Weedy" areas are natural and interesting to kids who haven't been carefully taught the (phony) difference between good nature and bad nature.

    Comment by birdbrain — April 16, 2008 @ 03:02PM

  8. I second the comments of Yellow(not yellower)Dog and birdbrain. Many people might be unaware of the vast reach of the Natural Areas program in San Francisco, the number of trails and trees that are in fact being sacrificed for a vision with questionable scientific basis, especially when applied within a densely populated urban area. It is not selfish to cherish walking trails and access to nature ("native" or otherwise) in and around the concrete jungle where we live. And kids can learn a lot about nature without having to be among vegetation deemed "native." Monterey cypress are certainly a part of the natural world and are beautiful, even though they do not happen to be "native" to San Francisco.

    Restoration/trees/recreation -- it's a matter of balance, the very key word in ecology. Extremist native plant advocates are unfortunately turning off many to the environmental movement, even in the green-friendly Bay Area, and that really is a problem.

    Comment by Park Fan — April 16, 2008 @ 06:11PM

  9. The debate over "nativism", be it with plants or animals, is ultimately not a scientific debate but a cultural one. That is, the current controversy is one involving values, not science. But the nativists refuse to live up to this fact, and accordingly, continue to lose credibility among environmentalists. Why is this so? Because the question can never be answered as to what was "native" at whatever arbitrary point in time is allocated for the protection of one plant or species over others. Is that which is "native" what might have been here at creation, at the Big Bang, or at some other time such as statehood? No one, not even "God" himself -- Peter Raven, can answer the scientific question. For example, the GGNRA has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars "restoring" so-called "native" plants to Crissy Field. Is there any science in this program? All of what is today Crissy Field used to be underwater, yet the public continues to be sold a bill of goods that somehow all of its money is going towards bringing back that which was never there.
    Moreover, when the author of the article attempts to distinguish the Nazi nativism movement from the current movement on the basis that the Nazis "killed people", he appears to have little respect (much less compassion)for the "non-native" white deer that are currently being massacred at Point Reyes in the name of "nativism". Even if the argument that these deer are "invasive" could be sustained, where is the humanity in their slaughter? Is there no place else for them to be relocated? Even that which we hold dear to our country, buffalo, are being killed by the National Park Service in Yellowstone because they are "invasive" to nearby ranchers. This is so far a cry from science that not even the Park Service attempts to shroud it as such. It is plainly and simply an economic preference.
    If the "nativism" zealots would simply fess up to the fact that their underpinnings are not scientific but preferential, they might regain a modicum of credibility. Perhaps more importantly, the disturbing values behind their movement would become the primary area of focus -- the killing of that which they value over that which they do not.

    Comment by Stephen Sayad — April 16, 2008 @ 09:58PM

  10. A very well written and balanced article. Balance is key. Seems to me the native plant enthusiasts believe what they think and want is sacrosanct and to heck with what others who live in the same environment may think or want. Heaven forbid if you care about trees, enjoy trees or believe that trees are important to absorb greenhouse gases. The only thing that seems to matter is their belief system. There is no balance in that kind of one-sidedness. No willingness to compromise and consider that others have preferences and beliefs as well. That's what's so irritating about the native plant movement for me. I have nothing against the preservation of native plants and species. I would join in the effort if it wasn't for the fact that the movement wants to take over far too much land. I don't want my tax dollars contributing to the destruction of thousands of healthy trees. I cherish trees as much as the nativists cherish their plants. The Natural Areas Plan states their ultimate goal is to replace the urban forest with grasslands. Excuse me, but who made these people the lord and masters of our entire environment? How about some balance and compromise with the rest of us? Is all of San Francisco landscape to end up looking like that dreary sample sandlot at the corner of Balboa and the Great Highway? Has it ever been visited? I've never seen anyone there. It cost the taxpayers three million to purchase the land plus another 47,000 to haul in the sand and no doubt other incidental expenses and for what? It looks like an empty lot waiting for a developer to do something with. Is this sand and dune scrub look all we have to look forward to in San Francisco from the native plant movement? I think the preservation of plant species is a good thing. However I think the visual transformation which will emerge from the scale of these plans is out of proportion to it's ultimate value. What also is out of balance is as these restoration plans go forward, the majority of San Franciscans will be subjected to something they either don't want or don't care about by a determined but much smaller minority.

    Comment by laputen — April 17, 2008 @ 03:52AM

  11. I think Joe really hit the nail on the head when he concluded that "the species [Raven's Manzanita] will always be tied to humans". In fact, this may be the case with all remnant wild things left around the San Francisco Bay. The disruption of natural systems (due to urbanization, filling of wetlands, erosion, introduction of exotic invasive species, pollution and suppression of natural processes like wildfires) is so intense, that our wild, natural heritage would certainly blink out without the support and stewardship of humankind. We don’t just want to sustain native ecosystems for some arbitrary aesthetic reason, we need them for our own survival.

    But it is more than that. Humans are a part of this ecosystem and have played a changing role in it since the end of the last ice age. Indigenous people burned prairies to keep hunting grounds open and enhance the growth of certain plants, early settlers farmed, the city and our population boomed and now, we are trying to figure out how to survive in this out-of-balance world. I see urban restoration, not as a tool to rid the city of all non-native species or return to some golden age, but as an opportunity for people to develop a new and positive role in our landscape. In my work, I see this happen everyday. Community-based restoration allows adults and children alike come into their national park and make a contribution to maintaining the biodiversity of our planet.

    The Raven’s Manzanita gets a lot of attention, because it is the last of its kind. But it is just one piece in a very complex puzzle. It is a reminder that we are responsible for maintaining one of the most important biological hot spots on the planet, and that it is incredibly fragile.

    Comment by Kirra Swenerton, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy — April 17, 2008 @ 10:45AM

  12. Eskanazi (or at least his editor's) fundamental lie is that thousands of trees will be felled for a single plant. This is not true: at most, maybe a dozen trees around the last raven's manzanita have been felled. These are a dozen INDIVIDUALS that had lived out most of their life that are removed for the sake of an ENTIRE SPECIES.

    To suggest that the thousands of trees that are to be removed are solely because of manzanita recovery efforts is simply a lie. Trees are removed for restoration of other species; they are removed for safety issues; they are removed for aesthetic reasons; they are removed to stop tree diseases; they are removed to preserve historical structures.

    Indeed, the death of a person at Stern Grove Monday was due to the 'tree huggers' refusal to permit natural restoration and tree removal. When this happens the tree huggers kill put people at risk of harm or death.

    This article's title perpetuates the myth, based on false information no less, that removing trees is simply done in the name of restoration. Indeed, this is all blamed by the author on the raven's (as if blame is the right word, when tree removal is often a good thing). The article should be called "Inconvenient Title" rather than "Inconvenient Plant."

    Comment by fundamental lie — April 17, 2008 @ 11:16AM

  13. I too thoroughly dislike to idea of native versus non-native, there is no way to delineate when something was "supposed" to be here. But, when it comes to creating an inviting, healthy ecosystem there are more suitable species that can adapt to a climate and coexist with one another, and there are certain species that adapt to a climate so well, without any natural predators that they crowd everything else out and create an unhealthy monoculture.
    This is where habitat restoration comes in. Throughout the years it has been blown out of proportion by the media, by politicians, and by the uniformed public that it has now turned into some Nazi crusade to eradicate all that is not perfect. This is not the case, it really just needs to be redefined.
    Kids most definitely need somewhere to explore, romp around and learn about their natural environment - unfortunately when all there is outside is a forest of Eucalyptus with an understory of ivy and blackberry there isn't much to explore. No critters inhabit the place, hardly even any bugs or spiders. Yet if the habitat is given a little TLC, a thriving ecosystem begins to emerge with an abundant amount of species. The animals will come back as will the bugs as will more plants. It just so happens that certain trees (as well as other invasive species) make this difficult around this landscape.
    The Natural Areas Program will never take out all of the trees in San Francisco. They are not going to turn beautiful forested areas into ugly sandy dunes. Go to Glen Canyon and look at some beautiful grasslands - there are an abundant amount of lizards, snakes, birds, maybe even frogs one day again.
    Take a look at Golden Gate Park. A lush, Oak Woodland has come back from the dead, with the help of a community members and the Natural Areas Program. Trees are not the enemy - unhealthy ecosystems are. All anyone is trying to do is make San Francisco a more live able place for everyone; people, plants, animals, bugs.

    Comment by peacekeeper — April 17, 2008 @ 03:24PM

  14. Steve Sayad is a hatemonger. Check out the website: http://brentplaterunleashed.blogspot.com/
    Where you will find a caricature of Brent Plater in a Nazi uniform and Hitler moustache, with the quote:
    "Brent Plater, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, and the various nativists are all in favor of the brutal slaughter of "non-native" deer at Point Reyes. These uncaring "environmentalists" attempt to justify the National Park Service's massacre under the neo-Nazi "nativism" movement that has gained hold in the Bay Area. If you find these zealots dangerous, please speak up. Before you know it, they will deem you "non-native" and demand your extermination. It's happened before."
    This man is clearly insane. It's very unfortunate that you gave this deranged man a platform. The article was very well written and I learned a lot from it. Thank you.

    Comment by David K — April 17, 2008 @ 06:05PM

  15. "fundamental lie" tells a fundamental lie, and demonstrates why native plant fanatics generate such scorn. The accusation that "tree huggers" killed the woman in Stern Grove is a typical, hateful lie directed by restoration fanatics at their critics. "Tree huggers" (I'm one) have never objected to the removal of the dangerous trees in Stern Grove/Pine Lake. We have asked repeatedly that the very dangerous trees be removed (337 have been identified), and that the healthy trees be left. Instead RPD/NAP leaves the dangerous trees (not enough money in the budget?)and removes healthy ones (plenty of money for that!). Further, the woman was killed at the east end of the park, far away from the "natural area" where NAP has destroyed healthy trees near Pine Lake.

    Comment by birdbrain — April 17, 2008 @ 08:47PM

  16. "David K" is a disturbed, misinformed person in need of legal action, which he will find shortly. You will notice he does not attribute the website to me, because he cannot do so. Nonetheless, his statements have gone beyond the healty debate found in the comments and into an area of liability.

    Comment by Stephen Sayad — April 18, 2008 @ 06:39AM

  17. I must agree with Mr. Sayad.
    While he and I hold divergent views on the issue of native plants and species, "David K" has gone beyond the bounds of decency in his comments. I do not wish to be associated with "David K" or anyone like him. Let's please keep the comments to the issues posed in the article.

    Comment by PresidioTrust? — April 18, 2008 @ 07:26AM

  18. Well put! "David K" should not be allowed to tarnish the otherwise healthy debate at hand.

    Comment by TreesRUs — April 18, 2008 @ 07:52AM

  19. BTW - I can say without hesitation that "David K" is in fact Brent Plater, but that he is too big a coward to say so. I used to work with Plater but found his politics to be so degenerative that he actually has done a lot of damage to the environmental movement.

    Comment by H. Johnson — April 18, 2008 @ 10:00AM

  20. Jocelyn Cohen's ignorant and disrespectful comment "People weren't here naturally either" is a slap in the face to the native Ohlone people of San Francisco. They inhabited a land of rolling hills dotted with oaks and alive with a plethora of grasses, flowers and other plants. They lived in this natural landscape with countless other species of plants and animals. Now the site of a city that treasures diversity, the natural landscape of San Francisco was a land teeming with such natural diversity. Anyone who for whatever reason advocates the destruction of biodiversity for the homogenization of nature is closer to the Nazi ideal than any of the people who work to bring back and save San Francisco's native plants. A forest of eucalyptus trees creates a dead zone in which few other species can survive. I encourage people such as Cohen, McAllister and their supporters to venture out into the few remaining grasslands here, actually sit down in the grass, and watch the red-tail hawks fly overhead, the bees buzz from flower to flower, the rabbits scurry from under the brush and perhaps be treated to a passing glimpse of a coyote. To encourage the eradication of grassland in San Francisco by promoting invasive species is to turn a cold shoulder on all of the other species that inhabit this peninsula with us. It saddens me that there are some people here so disconnected from the natural world that they could care less about the uniqueness of San Francisco's biodiversity. The Nazis obviously did not care much for diversity. They wanted a world of conformity based on the German ideal. So of course they wanted native German plants to thrive, but they wanted them to thrive everywhere they invaded. They wanted every place to look like Germany. So what movement then is more like Nazi Germany? The people who are trying to keep alive the biodiversity of a unique region? Or the people who want to fill the city with eucalyptus and English ivy until it looks like any other city in Australia or England or wherever?

    Comment by Chochenyo — April 18, 2008 @ 10:53AM

  21. "fundamental lie" chooses his/her username well. The statement that "the death of a person at Stern Grove Monday was due to the 'tree huggers' refusal to permit natural restoration and tree removal" is not only patently false but an egregious and incredibly offensive accusation. Critics of the Natural Areas Program have repeatedly pointed out that some of the huge amount of funds poured into that program could be better spent maintaining parks, including the removal of potentially hazardous trees. I agree with birdbrain that "fundamental lie" illustrates the reason people are so put off by the fanatics in the native plant community. There is no defensible reason for that kind of false, highly inflammatory accusation.

    Comment by Park Fan — April 18, 2008 @ 02:01PM

  22. Riddle: How do you tell the difference between a native and a non native plant?
    Answer: The native plant is the one surrounded by flags, ropes, fencing and armed guards.

    Simply put, the native plant people have got it all wrong. Native plants are incapable of surviving on their own in todays urban eco systems. Sorry. This is not 1850. People actually live here now. Good news, though. Take a drive up to the Canadian border. Or, better yet, drive back to eastern USA. You will find millions of acres of pristine, untouched land to build your native plant monuments with no threat of disturbance from "invasive" man or his “invasive” inventions. But that's not good enough for you nativists, is it? You must commandeer the most usable, most accessible areas from our parks and beaches to build your stand-behind-the-ropes-and-view-only museums for native plants. Reminds me of the guy looking for his misplaced car keys a block away from his car because that's where the light is. Forget recreation. Forget the current rash of societal obesity. Forget the families that are fleeing the SF area. Native plants are the answer. What again was the question?

    Comment by Parc Yooser — April 18, 2008 @ 06:50PM

  23. Thanks to “peacemaker” for this sincere attempt to find common ground. I share his/her appreciation of the oak woodland in GG Park and the grassland in Glen Canyon. These are actual remnants of native vegetation and they illustrate that if native plant advocates would focus their efforts there they would enjoy more success both in the horticultural outcome and the public’s satisfaction.

    However, when “peacemaker” compares these areas with parks that haven’t been maintained for decades, he/she offers us a false dichotomy. There are a range of alternatives between the dark overgrown forest that results after years of neglect and the creation of a native plant reserve. If the trees were maintained—by pruning, thinning and removing hazardous trees—as well as the understory, these areas would be as inviting as the oak woodland. They would also be more accessible because they would not be so fragile as to require fences and other protections required for native plants. If there really are more creatures living amongst native plants, exploring children have little access to them, confined to the trail, walking behind a fence.

    Critics of the native plant movement do not have places such as the oak woodland in mind when they complain about restorations. Their perception of the movement is based on places such as India Basin or the “vacant lot” at Balboa and the Great Highway, places that had been built upon for over 100 years. Efforts to return them to their prior state have been largely unsuccessful. Man’s attempts to mimic nature are often failures. Nature knows more than we do.

    The GGNRA has enjoyed greater success because they have more resources. For example, they actually irrigate some of their “restorations,” thereby defeating one of the main purposes of planting natives. They spent over $30 million on the Crissy Field restoration. They planted a native grass on the former playing field that required more water than its predecessor to keep it green. The native bunch grass was so uneven that people could no longer walk or play on it.

    So nativists have one park in mind and critics quite another. That’s why they reach very different conclusions. I hope that this will not generate the more typical reaction of name-calling and personal attacks. Such an approach contributes nothing but bad feelings to the debate.

    Comment by treehugger — April 19, 2008 @ 10:21AM

  24. I don't believe in the distinction between indigenous and invasive, or native/non-native.

    Instead there is only one true distinction I believe in: I only believe in me versus everything else.

    Things that benefit me and my whimiscal fancies are objectively good and all government should promote it at all costs to the so-called native species.

    This is called evolution: when I want my dog to run off leash or perhaps plant some french broom here or there, the plants and dunes should simply adapt or go extinct.

    That is what Darwin taught us, and so long as the native planters continue to ignore this science they will continue to lose credibility with us environmentalists.

    Some suggest that because we have already colonized the vast majority of san francisco we should be "humble" and permit what remains to "go native." This is absurd: I am for ME, not THEM. And I didn't colonize the rest of San Francisco for ME. THEY did it for THEM. That is someone else's fault! It is not fair that I have to do something that is inconvenient for ME, when THEY are to blame!!!

    If you want to keep someone out or ask someone to interact with these species in a gentle way even if they don't feel like it, you should ask THOSE people, not ME! I just want my little piece of the action, and the native plants can go elsewhere if I'm too much of a burden on them.

    When the native planters get back on board with my agenda to promote me, then their movement will become relevent again. To me.

    Comment by mefirst! — April 19, 2008 @ 12:15PM

  25. Selfish, selfish, selfish, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah . . .
    The ranting name-calling of "fundamental lie," "David K," and "mefirst" contrasts so sharply with the calm, reasoned presentations by "Yellow Dog," "Park Fan," "laputen," "peacekeeper," and "treehugger" it's like two different species talking. Really, fl-DK-mf, if you don't have anything substantive to say, you would do restorationists a favor by remaining quiet.

    Comment by birdbrain — April 19, 2008 @ 08:31PM

  26. The plant looks beautiful. No wonder many ppl on the site biloves.com are talking about it these days.

    Comment by allen — April 20, 2008 @ 08:11AM

  27. I vote for the natives! The writer who is dissatisfied with Crissy Field must not have been here when it was a giant, toxic parking lot. To compare Crissy Field today with Crissy past is just nutty!
    Eucalyptus and Cypress are weeds, albiet tall, often beautiful weeds. I think we can afford to lost alot of them in the Presidio in favor of the shining goal of restoring habitat.
    Given their fecundity, I guarantee that there will never be a shortage of Euc's, or blackberries, in San Francisco.
    Here we have a chance to save a species. Why not run with it?

    Comment by keenplanner — May 15, 2008 @ 03:23PM

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