Good old fashioned San Francisco street protest. Help us preserve Glen Canyon Park trees Thursday, Oct.11 from 5:00 – 6:30 PM Dear Friend of the San Francisco Forest Alliance, As a follow-up to our very successful meeting on Saturday at the Glen Park rec center we are holding a peaceful street protest at the corner of Elk and Bosworth Streets (corner of Glen Canyon Park near the baseball diamond) to bring attention to SF Rec and Park’s plans to remove 300+ viable trees from the park. We need to act fast - construction (and associated tree removal) will start on October 15th! Come and show your support for Glen Canyon Park this Thursday (11th) at 5 PM!
We were clear we do not want to stop the long awaited improvements to park facilities. However, the plans for the upgrades to the tennis courts, playground and rec center include removal of hundreds of trees that could be spared. At our Saturday meeting we presented slides from Sunshine Act (SF freedom of information act) documents and data showing the vast majority of 300 + (closer to 400) tree removals for the various projects and the “natural areas” are not for safety reasons. There are some hazardous trees that do need to be removed and we do support removal for legitimate safety reasons. We also showed how removal of so many trees will change the character of the park forever. Our audience agreed trading mature trees for saplings is a bad deal. We showed pictures and featured speakers who revealed Rec and Park’s extremely poor record of tree planting and sapling survival. At the very best, replanting = “restoration” in 75 years. We heard from our audience that these extreme tree removal goals had not been communicated to them. The “community process” showcased the facility improvements while remaining silent on the extensive, expensive, and unnecessary tree removals. As a result, we have asked Rec & Park for a community walkthrough of the arborist plan. When we showed we had support of 20 other neighborhood organizations against NAP and unjustified RPD tree removal plans many who participated wanted a more independent analysis and position from the Glen Park Association. The Glen Park Association is currently highly supportive of RPD’s plans to remove trees. A reminder: The San Francisco Forest Alliance is an authentic grassroots organization with a membership that has no professional or financial dependencies or relationships with our City or SF Recreation and Park Department. The SFFA is also fighting against the plans that the SF RPD Natural Areas Program has proposed for our city parks as a whole:
San Francisco Forest Alliance www.SFForest.Net |