America's Largest Weed

Restoration hadn't been easy, Boyd explained. There had been fierce opposition from a group called POET (Preserve Our Eucalyptus Trees). Having frightened the National Park Service into abandoning an ambitious plan to free the Golden Gate National Recreation Area of eucs, POET fired off a salvo of verse--a poem lovely as a giant weed in which it quoted the eucs as they cried out against arboricide: "We love our home / Here on the isle / We love our fellow trees, plants, animals / And people / We would love to continue living / But we have no voice." Boyd was called a "plant Nazi" and accused of plotting to "eradicate history." When the department's consultant testified that it was okay to get rid of invasive nonnative plants, POET countered with, "The next thing we're going to hear from you is that getting rid of all nonnative people is okay." In an attempt to cover itself, the department undertook a study, publishing a 265-page report six months and $25,000 later. POET found the report inadequate and sued, so the department undertook an environmental review, which consumed another six months and another $25,000. By then the chip market, which would have paid for the tree removal, had dried up. So the department had to cough up $200,000 to have 16 acres logged by helicopter. The rest of the operation, 64 acres, cost another $200,000.

When the work was finally completed, in the spring of 1996, there was angry talk about how the department had constructed a building without holding public hearings or even telling anyone. The eyesore was plainly visible from the mainland amid a mix of bay laurel, large toyon, madrone, and coast live oak. The department had even painted it red.

The building, Boyd and his colleagues explained, was a hospital built by the U.S. Army in 1904. For almost a century it had been hidden by eucalyptus monoculture.

Ted Williams wrote on reckless tree planting in the May 1991 Audubon.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Euc protection is just one example of what's happening all over America, as people insist on planting trees where they don't belong. But it doesn't have to be this way. Speak out for the removal of invasive exotics, and remember that restoring native ecosystems begins at home. For instructions, click here.