Squirrels, raccoons, opossums, birds, and all the other animals who make the forests of the San Francisco East Bay their home rely on trees for shelter, cover, safety, shade and the ecosystem the trees create which allow their food sources to grow. But starting this August, over 100,000 of those trees and as many as 400,000 will be clear cut and thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals made by Monsanto and Dow will be spread in and around their stumps because some people say they are “non-native” and therefore should not be there. When chainsaws decimate the vast forests which create their homes, reducing public lands once blanketed with their habitat to barren, empty hillsides, where, exactly, are these animals supposed to go? How will they survive? What are they supposed to eat? Where will birds and squirrels build their nests? When the clear cut hillsides are doused in toxic chemicals, poisoning their water supply, where are the wild animals to find fresh, clean drinking water that does not make them sick?
These animal refugees will find no harbor or safety when the forests are gone, resulting in displaced animals searching in vain for a new home and putting them at great risk of being hit by cars, fighting with one another for scarce and precious habitat, and starvation. Even the proponents of this plan admit that it will result in “unavoidable adverse impacts” to “wildlife and habitats.” So much animal suffering and death will result, and for what? To placate a group of intolerant, misguided people who myopically reduce the worth trees which other beings rely upon for their very lives to something as ultimately irrelevant as their long ago historical place of evolutionary origin. How can anyone hate trees so much that their destruction is worth the cost in fear, pain and suffering it will cause to the animals who live amongst those trees and call them home? It boggles the compassionate mind.
What a perverse, cruel and deeply dystopian inversion of moral priorities, paid for with our tax dollars, and implemented by the heartless new Mayor of Oakland, Libby Schaaf.
Mayor Libby Schaaf, where are these animals supposed to go?
Learn more: www.saveeastbayhills.org
Take action by clicking here.
Join the conversation on the Facebook page my wife and I started here: Save The East Bay Hills
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