Bittersweet Tree Removal

Tree removal at Stanyan and 17th street entrance

If you are a regular reader of our newsletter, or have been in the neighborhood long enough, you probably know that we are lucky to have an above ground, seasonal creek on Mount Sutro. The potential, opportunity and challenge we have is to free the creek from the chaos of invasive species that choke the water flow in the winter, plant California native species that evolved right here in San Francisco, and place natural features in the path of the creek that will slow its speedy descent into the culvert at Stanyan Street. This will prevent downstream flooding and encourage the water to stick around longer and infiltrate into the soil, making it available to plants and wildlife where now it flashes down hill and erodes its own banks. 

In June of 2023, Sutro Stewards wrote a proposal for District 7 Participatory Voting, to remove dead, dying and hazardous trees in Mount Sutro that were threatening homes on Stanyan street and choking the creek bed. We won enough votes from the community to grant $25,000 to SFRPD for the project. While it is painful to see these giant trees lying on the ground, now homes that had been threatened with tree failure along Stanyan street are safe in the ever more frequent extreme wind and rain events we have due to climate change; now we can plant native oak trees and understory species where invasive eucalyptus that are extremely flammable once stood, and now we have more access to the creek bed to continue the restoration efforts we have begun upstream. 

Center rot of recently felled tree shows diseased and dying tree.

Sutro Stewards is part of a growing international movement to restore biodiversity as one of the most cost effective and multi-benefit solutions to excess global warming carbon in the atmosphere. All plants sequester and store carbon, but a balanced biodiverse ecosystem does this more reliably and with more resilience in the face of extreme weather. There is a simple formula to returning a landscape to a balanced, biodiverse ecosystem: remove invasive species and plant plants that evolved locally (ie. native plants). Because these plants evolved here, they have intimate relationships with the local insects, birds and wildlife that cascade up the food chain, creating the conditions for local wildlife to thrive and increasing biodiversity. As our human societies are healthier with a diversity of ideas, cultures and practices, so too are our ecosystems. 

The Eucalyptus, Monterey pine, Monterey cyprus and plum trees on Mount Sutro were planted by Adolf Sutro in the late 1880's, replacing the lush and diverse grassland, dune, coastal shrub and riparian (stream) ecosystems. As Sutro Stewards works to expand habitat, we see again and again that our restoration sites that thrive, are the ones with little Eucalyptus overstory. Check out the summit of Mount Sutro or the Clarendon Trailhead. Across the street from the Clarendon trailhead you will see what the site once looked like. Where now we have close to 50 species of native plants, there once was a crowded eucalyptus plantation with just a few species of invasive plants underneath. If you have a moment to watch the bird activity in the morning at the Clarendon trailhead, you will see the value of native plants. Across the street, we see a lot of green, but not nearly as much LIFE.

Clarendon Trailhead planting with view of invasive Eucalyptus plantation in the background

We support tree removal when: 

• There is a solid restoration plan to follow (like the Vegetation Management Plan that UCSF is implementing)

• Trees are dead, dying or a falling or burning hazard where people live

• Trees are invasive and outcompeting native vegetation. 

All of the above is true for the trees at Stanyan street. While you may agree with this, you are probably wondering why the logs have been left in place, looking like a tree graveyard, rather than a restoration site. One reason is money. As we build the political will to care for our landscapes and designate the appropriate resources towards the health of nature that we depend on, there will be more options for the most nuanced, site specific and careful implementation. The priority here was to protect homes and lives and so the trees that could have crushed homes were felled rather than pulled out of the open space. Even with all the resources in the world, leaving some trees on the ground has benefits for wildlife. The dead wood becomes homes to countless decomposers that are then food for birds and other wildlife. Microclimates are created from one side of the log to the other that favor certain species of plants over the other. Diversity of physical features in a landscape aids in the diversity of lifeforms that use that landscape, and, as we know, diversity leads to more resilience of the ecosystem. 

The new look will take some getting used to, but we are committed to work with our partners at SFRPD and UCSF for the long term restoration and ecological health of Mount Sutro and Woodland Canyon Creek. Join our next Woodland Canyon Creek volunteer day on August 17th to help out!