I delighted at the outpouring of offers of assistance for Mr. J. Wilson that I received in response to his acid criticism of people who do brush clearance in Malibu. One friend offered to move Mr. Wilson into one of the non-flammable homes he insists we all live in -it’s called a cave. Another offered him a year’s membership in RPA-Rehabilitating Pyros Anonymous -because he’s certainly not shy about recommending we let wildfires just “do their thing” and burn everything up. A scientist called offering a free biology class to cure him of the belief that “fire is part of Malibu’s natural ecosystem.” Every fire in Malibu in the last century has been the result of a campfire, arson or a downed powerline. Not so natural after all!
This debate isn’t just about brush clearance because the people who complain about “removing habitat” also want to forbid you from clearing a play area for your child, a yard for outdoor parties or a garden for your grandmother. All you have to do is look at photos of Malibu from the 1920s, when it was as bare as a bone, to see there is a lot more biomass and “habitat” now. It’s just different than the politically correct “native only” greenery that control mongers like Mr. Wilson and the Coastal Commission think we should be looking at.
Don’t forget, the California Native Plant Society defines ‘non-native’ as any species that was not present in California in the Pre-Columbian era and that was introduced to the state after 1492. Once you get past their slogans, you realize that these people encourage wholesale habitat destruction when it suits them as they promote the widespread application of herbicides to eradicate all the beautiful plants that have been cultivated in California for hundreds of years as they are doing with all the non-native trees and vegetation in our state parks now.
The surest and lowest cost way to keep Malibu green is for environmental agencies to realize that non-native plants are plants, too, and to hand out free saplings and seeds of whatever they wish. The majority of the trees in Malibu today are here because the Fire Department distributed free pine and eucalyptus saplings to homeowners for many years.
A little kindness and encouragement from our environmental agencies will go a lot farther than the financial hammers they impose now, forcing homeowners to measure and monitor every tree they own every year, the expense of which guarantees their eventual extinction.
People like Mr. Wilson would undoubtedly embrace that forest vision if they could just take their blinders off long enough to see it.
Anne Hoffman