America's Largest Weed

Moreover, the public, the county, and the National Park Service seem singularly unconcerned about the many species of butterfly that evolved with coastal scrub and that are dying out because eucs have killed it. A good example is the threatened bay checkerspot, whose larvae feed on a tiny, narrow-leaved plantain that grows in the Jack's Creek corridor. The Xerces blue butterfly is thought to have been made extinct by eucs.

Spokespeople from the logging company, on hand to answer questions, were greeted with chants of "Save the eucalyptus." Removal would be "clear-cutting," proclaimed the euc defenders, "genocide," "ethnic cleansing." Moreover, it would cause "global warming." Those pushing euc removal were "plant Nazis." Ann Young and the equally tireless and talented activist-author Judith Lowry, who scratches out a living propagating, selling, and promoting native plants, were heckled when they spoke. Euc branches were shaken in their faces. They were "in it to get rich." The sunless, impenetrable monoculture was a "cathedral," a "sacred grove," an "old-growth forest." Someone had given birth under a euc, someone else had been baptized under one, someone else married. A poem was submitted, suggesting that the trees be consulted. Eucalyptus cough drops were distributed. "Humans aren't native either," someone testified. Most of all, the defenders argued that monarchs require eucs. The county swallowed it hook, line, boat, and motor, and this past summer the development agency made it clear to sewer officials that there would be no cutting without a coastal permit. So political is the scene that the town has decided to do nothing except remove new saplings and the few mature trees that have hold of sewer pipes.

Speaking for the anti-cutting study group is Judy Molyneux, who paints superb pictures of eucs. She would hate to think she had been painting "bad" trees. "I don't buy the argument that we have to preserve native habitat," she says. Besides, "the eucs have been here so long they've become native." She knows this because she once read something by a biologist who studied eucs "right after they came to California" (that is, in the mid-19th century) and, having noticed that the structure of the seeds had changed, "postulated that we are giving birth to a new form of eucalyptus." Molyneux now reports that "the eucalyptus forest is a home for great horned owls. They make the most splendid sounds, and I love the fact that they're here." The Point Reyes Bird Observatory does not. Despite its lack of conifers, western Marin County holds the world's largest known concentration of northern spotted owls, which, because they didn't evolve with significant numbers of great horned owls, are docile and trusting and therefore one of the great horned owls' favorite prey items.

Euc paintings by Molyneux's dead mentors—the "Eucalyptus School" of California impressionists--are much coveted by art collectors, especially because there are now so few of them. In 1991 many of the best examples were incinerated, along with the houses of the Berkeley professors who owned them, when real eucs fueled the Oakland Hills fire—which killed 25 people, destroyed 3,000 buildings, and is commonly cited as "the most destructive wildfire in U.S. history."

Nine years earlier a report identifying the danger and recommending euc removal had been submitted to the city of Oakland by the East Bay Regional Park District and other fire authorities. The city ignored it. As a result Oakland got hit with a broadside of negligence suits. Liability risk to Marin County is even greater because it doesn't just ignore advice from fire experts, it spends money preventing that advice from being implemented.

Even by California standards, Bolinas is funky. Residents tend to be well-to-do, artsy, passionately given to liberal causes. Bumper stickers and posters exhort the populace to "save the redwoods," heed the ghostwritten pronouncements of Chief Seattle, seek "justice NOT revenge" in Afghanistan, go "Dancing With the Planets." For 30 years there has been a building moratorium. Tourism is anathema. There's only one road into Bolinas, and every time highway officials alert the world to the town's existence by erecting a sign, someone rips it down. Might Bolinas be an anomaly?

No. The city of Santa Cruz, for example, protects eucs under—of all things—a Heritage Tree Ordinance. A euc qualifies for "heritage tree" status when it's about 16 years old—that is, when the trunk two feet from the ground is 16 inches in diameter. To cut one, even on your own property, is a criminal offense punishable by a fine of not less than $500. You can apply for a permit, but the overwhelming majority of applications get turned down.

For a decade Robert Sward, an English professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, has been trying to get permission to cut the blue gum eucs that overhang his house and rain flammable litter on his roof. "This is no frivolous undertaking," he remarked. "It would cost us $3,000. When we tried to trim the limbs the workmen were chased out of the trees by the [Santa Cruz] Parks and Recreation Department." For three years one of his neighbors, Geraldine Kaspar, has been trying to cut the huge, sickly, litter-spewing euc that is growing into and over her house and poisoning her lawn with toxic drippings. Now the roots are ripping up her driveway. If the damage continues, the repair bill will be several thousand dollars. Kaspar tells me she'll try one last time for a permit, then cut the tree and pay the $500 fine.

Usually the only thing that happens when Santa Cruz fire marshal Mark Latham recommends euc removal to the city fathers is that it "gets studied," he says. "We have categories of flammable plants, and eucalyptus is way up at the top—almost off the scale. It's a nasty situation." He calls the Heritage Tree Ordinance "pretty prevalent up and down the coast."

Wherever managers have dared to remove eucalyptus trees, ecosystems have surged back. Amid native shrubs and grasses pushing up between gray euc stumps, I stood on Angel Island, which juts 781 feet out of San Francisco Bay. Beside me was David Boyd, resource ecologist for the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Pivoting from right to left, we admired the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge reaching through a fog bank, then the city of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge, the UCal at Berkeley tower, the Richmond Bridge, and China Camp State Park, 20 miles away over hazy hills. Sailboats and pelicans drifted across the azure bay. A distant bell buoy chimed. Ten years ago the only view here was peeling euc bark.