Let’s not take oaks for granted

By Buzz Eggleston | Posted: Tuesday, January 15

Editor’s note: Calaveras County officials have revived long-neglected efforts to draft an oak preservation ordinance, the topic of this November 2005 column, reprinted below. Steve Stocking of San Andreas, a botanist and former professor at San Joaquin Delta Community College, tells us that an acorn planted when that column first appeared, well-tended and protected from animals that would eat it, could be as tall as 7-foot today.

Some years ago in Tuolumne County a hill was cleared of its oaks and thousands of yards of earth were removed until the hill was a flattened platform for a commercial project. Its owners then had the gall to call it “Timberhills Shopping Center.”

Although the California redwood has been the official state tree since 1937, the native oaks are close to the heart of many in the Golden State, including me.

Many of us grew up in the shadows of the big valley trees, which once stood on the landscape like elephants on a savanna. We played and hiked among thick oak forests that blanketed the hills. The rolling foothills of the Sierra were carpeted by oaks whose crops of acorns fed countless generations of native people, who revered the trees that sustained them.

Spanish crosses found carved into a large oak near Morro Bay in the early 1980s are believed by some to have been put there by members of Gaspar de Portola’s expedition in 1769, the first Europeans to explore inland California. Ranchers later cleared oaks to open more forage. Gold mines cleared them to fuel stamp mills. Farmers cleared them to plant crops. Cities cleared them for homes and commercial development.

One of the long-running arguments of environmentalists in their battles with logging interests has been indiscriminate clearing of oaks and other hardwoods, replacing them with plantations of commercial timber, such as Ponderosa pine. The practice is viewed as diminishing the habitat for animals that depend on diversity, and inviting infestations of bark beetles and other pests that affect whole stands of woodland, leading to other ills.

The oaks, a living symbol of the state’s history and one of its great resources, have been under relentless assault for many decades. Today they suffer as well from air pollutants that drift in from far away.

Here in Calaveras County some 316,000 acres of hardwood rangeland exists, the California Oak Foundation figures. Among our neighbors, Amador County accounts for another 131,000 acres and Tuolumne County 234,000 acres.

They seem bountiful, like buffalo once seemed endless on the plains. But if we awoke one morning and the oaks were gone, we would be shocked.

Now and then, in fact, that happens to people. As housing and commercial development widens in Calaveras County, residents sometimes awake to the sounds of bulldozers at work, uprooting trees, scraping away the landscape down to bare earth. It’s then that we become aware of just how much value we actually place on the green vista around us. It’s then that we become outraged with developers and politicians. But by then it’s too late.

Fortunately, the outcry over this loss is beginning to be heard. State legislation that took effect last January requires counties to consider the possible impacts of development on oak woodland as part of the environmental review for all projects where some discretion or approval by public officials is in-volved. It’s a first step.

The new law states that in determining whether an environmental impact report, mitigated negative declaration or negative declaration is required for a project, counties must determine whether the project “may result in a conversion of oak woodlands that will have a significant effect on the environment,” one legal analysis reported. Cumulative impacts might also be considered, so that as the march of development sprawls across the countryside, the totality of the loss can be weighed.

The new state law encourages counties to adopt ordinances that put the legislative vision into effect. And that is happening, at a slow pace, here in Calaveras and in neighboring counties whose planners are conferring with each other over the wording and specifics of oak preservation rules. Similar studies are happening in counties throughout the state. It’s an important job, and when the drafts of these new laws are written the public should study them carefully and tell county supervisors what they think. In fact, timing is important, so we should be urging officials to move more quickly in drafting these new rules.

Building continues here and with it the loss of oaks. A 124-home, 144-acre project proposed in Wallace, for example, would remove 612 blue oaks, including nine “heritage” trees with trunks at least 24 inches in diameter, and two live oaks. In their place, the developer proposes to plant three to five times as many oak seedlings, a step toward mitigating the loss of the native trees. It’s a start, but probably not enough. Preserving mature trees whenever possible should be a goal of every major development.

In Calaveras County, oaks are the backdrop on our lives. They are always there as we go about our daily activities, the often unnoticed scenery behind the hustle and bustle of daily existence. We value them more than we know, and we often don’t realize until they are gone how much they comfort us and how much we enjoy their company.

It’s good that Californians are finally awakening to this, and that change is in the wind. Perhaps when our children’s children are grown they too will be able to enjoy the living heritage that was passed down to us.