Manage Parks for Wildlife, Not People
Mike Vandeman
June 10, 1992
EBRPD Board of Directors
Attn: Carroll Williams
2950 Peralta Oaks Court
Oakland, California 94605-5369
Re: The "Brush Hog" Mentality
Gentlepersons:
The April, 1992 issue of "Regional Parks" described your
purchase and use of a "brush hog" to "[clear] areas of poison oak
and other potentially dangerous plant life" (p.10). I have also
heard that you bulldoze "fire breaks" and "fire trails" in some of
the parks. In Claremont Canyon, all underbrush near homes has been
cut and removed. This makes me wonder if you know what parks are
for.
Mankind has no trouble whatever claiming and subduing every
almost every square inch of the Earth's surface. However, if we do
this, we will soon be completely alone (except for a few pigeons,
rats, cockroaches, flies, and domestic cats and dogs), and our own
extinction would follow soon after. What is difficult (and
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valuable) is to protect the other species on the planet. They
cannot protect themselves. They depend on us completely. Therefore,
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in every human activity, their needs must come first.
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We are losing species in California at a rapid and scary rate.
You are well aware of this. But what are you actually doing about
it? Almost nothing. Tiny islands of habitat are insufficient to
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protect our wildlife. We need to create continuous wildlife
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corridors crossing the country from border to border (east-west and
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north-south), that are completely off-limits to humans. Nothing
less will provide the protection that they need. All human
facilities that need to cross these corridors (e.g. roads) should
tunnel underneath. Our regional parks, representing the last
vestiges of protected habitat in our area, must act as the seeds
for such a network, and they must be managed, above all, for the
needs of the wildlife, not for the whims of their current human
neighbors.
If people need developments, they can find them in the city.
They can build golf courses (if at all), playgrounds, zoos, etc. in
reclaimed parts of the city. Why go to a park to get away from
excess human influence, and then recreate that very degradation
right in the parks?! The golf course should be removed from Tilden.
That land should be restored to wildlife habitat. All human
facilities except those that are absolutely necessary (toilets and
drinking fountains?) should be removed. Instead of closing South
Park Drive only when it rains, all roads should be removed from the
parks. The automobile has taken over and destroyed the parks, just
as it has our cities and countryside. The Steam Train is cute, but
is run by a bunch of anti-environmental rail nuts. I once spent 3
hours picking up trash in the park and went to their maintenance
shop on Grizzly Peak Drive to see if I could dump it in their trash
can. They refused to let me!!
Everything about the parks should contribute to environmental
education, and certainly not give the opposite message. All
automobile facilities (roads, parking lots, etc.) should be
removed. Roads and vehicles are the number one threat to the
environment in this country. They are destroying air quality, water
quality, the ozone layer, biodiversity, and causing global warming.
You cannot afford to be ambiguous or compromising in your
opposition to these threats. If people don't get environmental
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education in the parks, then where are they going to get it???
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Psychologists tell us that we learn almost everything we will
ever know by the age of 6. Wilderness should be one of the first
visions that a newborn child sees. Only in wilderness will he or
she learn what the meaning of life is, and how things are supposed
to be. Driving past it in a car, or even on a mountain bike,
needless to say, is not the same thing. Let's create some parks
where real environmental education can take place, without
conflicting messages. Children are not dumb. They learn mostly
nonverbally -- by what they see us do. Children who grow up
surrounded by pavement and cars grow up believing that that is how
things are supposed to be. They grow up to love the mountain bike,
the automobile, the bulldozer, and the "brush hog".
People who choose to live near fire-prone parks should take
responsibility for their own actions, and not force park users to
"sanitize" their parks and force the very wildlife that make the
parks interesting into extinction. Just as people who choose to
live in a flood plain do not deserve flood protection from the
government, people who live near a tree should not expect the
taxpayer to fireproof it for them! People can protect themselves;
wildlife can not. Wildlife must, therefore, take priority! If you
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want to do something useful with a bulldozer, use it to clear
"dangerous human life" from the traditional, essential, mating,
escaping, and food-seeking paths of wildlife! This would provide
much-needed work for a lot of people who need it.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.