WRITTEN PUBLIC COMMENTS
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From: Chuck Alpert
To: City Clerk
Subject: Study Session (2:/8/22): Comment on Item A-1 Urban Forest Management Plan.
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2022 1:14:06 PM
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Honorable Mayor, Vice-Mayor and Council Members:
I was Chair of the Public Works Commission when the Commission considered the Urban Forest Management Plan. By a unanimous vote, the Commission adopted a Resolution on the Plan which you will find as the final three pages of the staff report.
The Resolution recommends that you incorporate additional policies to those recommended and take certain exceptions to the recommendations of the Plan.
The Commission recommended these additional policies:
Targeting over 20-year plan, a 30% canopy. The City’s current canopy coverage is 26%. The Plan recommends no canopy target.
Treating municipal trees as critical infrastructure, with appropriate budget considerations.
Maintaining on a street-by-street basis the same tree species or a compatible dual species wherever feasible.
Reviewing the Plan Goals on a 3-to-5-year basis. The Plan has no review period.
Minimizing the negative effect from private development on the Urban Forest.
Initiating a Public Program promoting private tree plantings and education.
Experimenting with innovative canopy enhancing approaches, such as the tiny forest and green walls/roofs.
Prioritize education and communication over enforcement to attain Plan goals.
As for exceptions to the Plan, the Commission recommends:
Rejecting the Plan’s view of retaining only iconic Plans and removing all other Palms. Rather the Commission urges keeping existing city Palm trees but not using palms as replacement trees.
Not relying on an outside arborist, as the Plan recommends, for review of private tree issues, but rather support another full-time city arborist position if warranted.
Over the several meetings where the Commission reviewed the Plan, I came to realize the importance of the following unattributed saying: “If we take care of our trees, trees will help take care of us.” Similarly, I am reminded of the Chinese proverb: "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
Motivated by those thoughts, I urge you to adopt the Commission’s recommendations and exceptions to the Plan as part of the approval of the Plan.
Chuck Alpert
The Urban Wildlands Group, Inc.
P.O. Box 24020, Los Angeles, California 90024-0020, Tel (310) 247-9719 February 5, 2022
Via Email ([email protected])
City Council
City of Beverly Hills
455 N. Rexford Drive
Beverly Hills, California 90210
Re: City Council Adjourned Study Session, February 8, 2022 Item A-1: Urban Forest Management Plan
Honorable City Council Members:
Please consider the following information regarding the ecological history of the land that became the City of Beverly Hills and the implications for future urban forest goals as you consider the Urban Forest Management Plan before you. By way of background for these comments, I am an associate adjunct professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and have researched the historical ecology of southern California for 25 years (Mattoni and Longcore 1997, Stein et al. 2007, Stein et al. 2010, Beller et al. 2011, Dark et al. 2011, Beller et al. 2014, Longcore 2016, Safran et al. 2017, Longcore et al. 2018, Ethington et al. 2020, Longcore et al. 2020) and currently co-lead the Los Angeles Landscape History project (lalandscapehistory.org), funded by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.
The Urban Forest Management Plan makes the statement that Beverly Hills was not historically treed and compares its tree cover to that which would be expected in a city that was built on grassland. This statement is misleading and lowers the bar for where Beverly Hills should be in terms of tree canopy. Based on research that my colleagues and I have done (Ethington et al. 2020), Beverly Hills historically was a mix of shrubland in the lower flats, oak woodland at the lower reaches of the hills and up the canyons, and chaparral with scattered Southern California Black Walnut trees on the higher slopes. There would have been more tree cover than the report suggests, and it would be reasonable to raise the bar in terms of expectations for tree cover, especially for the lower portion of the hills and in the canyons in particular. This point does not make a big difference to the conclusions of the plan, but Beverly Hills should know that its ecological history was not one of an open, treeless grassland, and that oak and walnut woodlands, and sycamore-lined streams, were part of its natural heritage.
The plan also sets a standard that no single species should make up more than 5% of the urban forest. The rationale for such limits is reasonable, to avoid losses to disease or other calamity by having all one species. It would be appropriate, however, to allow for the historically native 2 trees to exceed that 5% limit should there be the opportunity to do so, especially for Coast Live Oak, which was both so common on the historical landscape and which, along with California Sycamore, still provides the greatest wildlife benefit of any tree the City might plant (Wood and Esaian 2020). Forward-looking cities in California are embarking on “re-oaking” projects to weave the ecological value of the historical forest and savanna into current landscapes (Whipple et al. 2011, Beller et al. 2019) and this plan offers an opportunity to do the same (see:
https://www.sfei.org/projects/re-oaking for more detail).
I would be happy to elaborate on these issues, or to answer questions, if desired by the Council, City staff, or your consultants.
Sincerely,
Travis Longcore, Ph.D.
Science Director
Beller, E. E., S. Baumgarten, R. M. Grossinger, T. Longcore, E. D. Stein, S. Dark, and S. D.
Dusterhoff. 2014. Northern San Diego County Lagoons Historical Ecology Investigation:
Regional Patterns, Local Diversity, and Landscape Trajectories. SFEI Contribution No. 722. San Francisco Estuary Institute - Aquatic Science Center, Richmond, California.
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Beagle. 2011. Historical Ecology of the Lower Santa Clara River, Ventura River, and Oxnard Plain: An Analysis of Terrestrial, Riverine, and Coastal Habitats. SFEI Contribution No. 641. San Francisco Estuary Institute, Oakland, California.
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Beller. 2011. Historical Ecology of the Ballona Creek Watershed. Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, Technical Report No. 671, Costa Mesa, California.
Ethington, P. J., B. MacDonald, G. Stein, W. Deverell, and T. Longcore. 2020. Historical Ecology of the Los Angeles River Watershed and Environs: Infrastructure for a Comprehensive Analysis. University of Southern California Spatial Sciences Institute, Los Angeles.
Longcore, T. 2016. Historical Ecology of the Los Angeles River Riparian Zone in the Elysian Valley. Pages 2-1–2-29 in Water Supply and Habitat Resiliency for a Future Los Angeles River: Site-Specific Natural Enhancement Opportunities Informed by River Flow and Watershed-Wide Action: Los Feliz to Taylor Yard. The Nature Conservancy, Urban Conservation Program, Los Angeles.
Longcore, T., B. MacDonald, and J. P. Wilson. 2020. Reconstruction of Historical Topography to Estimate Erosion and Model Historical Vegetation Distribution on San Clemente 3 Island, California. University of Southern California Spatial Sciences Institute and UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, Los Angeles.
Longcore, T., N. Noujdina, and P. J. Dixon. 2018. Landscape modeling of the potential natural vegetation of Santa Catalina Island, California. Western North American Naturalist 78:617–632.
Mattoni, R., and T. R. Longcore. 1997. The Los Angeles coastal prairie, a vanished community.
Crossosoma 23:71–102.
Safran, S. M., S. A. Baumgarten, E. E. Beller, J. A. Crooks, R. M. Grossinger, J. Lorda, T. R.
Longcore, D. L. Bram, S. J. Dark, E. D. Stein, and T. L. McIntosh. 2017. Tijuana River Valley Historical Ecology Investigation. SFEI Contribution No. 760. San Francisco Estuary Institute - Aquatic Science Center, Richmond, California.
Stein, E. D., S. Dark, T. Longcore, R. Grossinger, N. Hall, and M. Beland. 2010. Historical ecology as a tool for assessing landscape change and informing wetland restoration priorities. Wetlands 30:589–601.
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Sutula. 2007. Historical Ecology and Landscape Change of the San Gabriel River and Floodplain. SCCWRP Technical Report No. 499. Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, Costa Mesa, California.
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Wood, E. M., and S. Esaian. 2020. The importance of street trees to urban avifauna. Ecological Applications 30:e02149.