Someone on the west side has a beef with trees – young trees to be specific.
It began in the summer of 2010, when 44 trees in Golden Gate Park were destroyed by vandalism. No one witnessed the acts, and despite a $2,000 reward offered at the time by Rec & Park, no leads surfaced. At one point, police were staking out potential targets 24 hours a day with undercover and uniformed cops patrolling more than 40 hot spots in the park.
At the time, Elton Pon, a Parks Department said, “We don’t know if it is someone with a political agenda, or a mental problem or something else. It does seem like someone knows what they’re doing.”
A year later, Chase Bank ponied up $30,000 to replace the seventeen elm trees that were sawed in two at their base by a vandal in the Music Concourse.
Other random acts included the destruction of young rose bushes in the Golden Gate Park Rose Garden near Park Presidio, and in January 2011, the destruction of newly planted trees along Funston Avenue near the park.
News of the vandalism dissipated, and it appeared that the vandal, or vandals, had moved on.
But in today’s Chronicle, park officials say that since September 2012, “vandals have been systematically going through reforestation plots and breaking the tops off young trees”. More than 200 trees have been destroyed in this latest spree.
“What they’ve done is gone through each of these areas in each of these instances and basically snapped off the top of the tree,” Golden Gate Park manager Eric Andersen said. “They’ll go through and do every tree, in a very thorough and damaging way. It’s really malicious, and very thorough, and very methodical.” [Chronicle]
Their focus this time around is on young saplings, newly planted to reforest some areas of the park like La Playa and Fulton.
While the vandalism may look random – branches snapped and left to dangle – the location of the damage is purposeful and deliberate.
“By aiming for the top of their trunks – also known as their leaders – they destroy the trees’ structures and open them to disease and rot. After the vandals get to them, the trees are usually beyond saving and must be removed,” writes the Chronicle.
There was a flurry of vandalism in September – 28 trees – and then nothing. But it picked up again in May, and park officials are again concerned.
Not just about the vandalism, but also about the expense. Each new sapling costs about $250, and the total loss at this point totals nearly $50,000.
Park officials are asking anyone who has seen something suspicious to contact Golden Gate Park Director Eric Andersen.
Thanks to reader Megan for the tip.
Sarah B.
Trees being vandalized by native plant fanatics? Organizations like the Sierra Club who are opposing the beach chalet soccer field project are also advocating cutting down 1000s of healthy trees in parks all over the City just because they are not native.
Jacquie, are you suggesting that the Sierra Club has something to do with this vandalism? What an outrageous suggestion.
Rob, you’re a diplomat. Jacquie, if I were to politely untangle everything you wrap up so neatly in your second sentence you’d owe me a beer, but the shortest, most polite answer I can muster is “No!”
Even the staunchest native plant advocate would tell you that most of Golden Gate Park is a man-made creation, AND an important island of habitat in our dense city, so planting semi-native trees on long-vanished dune habitat, to diversify the even-age canopy that is aging out, is a good thing. It ain’t us.
Now, there are native oak woodlands at the east end of the Park. The volunteers who work WITH Rec and Park to maintain that area are much too busy pulling ivy from where it shouldn’t be growing, to go tilting at windmills. (Join them 9 AM on the second Saturday of the month to lend a hand and you’ll learn a thing or two about forests, weeding, habitats, etc and have a good time too).
Setting aside the alarmist hyperbole that’s been posted by well-meaning folks, the trees that the Natural Areas program wants to cut are generally UNHEALTHY – whether dying of old age or overcrowded saplings, sometimes encroaching on worthy remnants of the City’s original habitat, sometimes posing a big, fat fire danger to the forest and neighborhoods.
Whether trees are native or not tends NOT to be an issue (except so far as what trees are most aggressively invasive or drop oil-laden strips of bark). Go look closely at the eucalyptus forest on Mt. Sutro and tell me that every tree is healthy and I’ll buy YOU a beer.
With that said, somebody’s sure hurt or mad about something, or wants to make their mark on the world in a stupid sort of manly way. Hope they get caught.
Oh, so that’s what Chase Bank did with my overdraft fees. 🙂 Very nice of them to help fund the last batch of replacement trees.
Well, it’s definitely someone with horticulture experience and knowledge of the park.
Unfortunately I’ve seen people in the park committing acts of vandalism all the time and in broad daylight. One Sunday I witnessed 2 different groups of people cutting down dozens of Easter lilies and walking away with them. I called 311, they transferred my call to the GGP ranger office, the man there took all of the information from me (down to the make of car that one group placed the lilies into) and then proceeded to tell me that there wasn’t anyone to send out to intervene/investigate, etc…BLERGH!!!!
>>>fiddles said:
“Well, it’s definitely someone with horticulture experience and knowledge of the park.” <<<< Yup, a disgruntled former employee, I bet.
It is a rare day when G.G. Park Police are seen. I had a n incident a few years ago where two young guys on bicycles brushed by either side of me on JFK Drive right by the waterfall. I yelled, you both just made contact with and bikes are not even allowed on this side (they had been allowed only on the south side of JFK, not the north. They skidded to a stop and challenged me to a fight – so I stopped in my tracks and would not walk up to them. I called Park Police and reported their location and direction of travel, but no patrol car came out. Very unresponsive they are.