Hit It and Quit It!

Paragraphs by Paul Miller (Click cartoon to enlarge)

Sir Francis Drake High School in Marin is about to lose two iconic palm trees, the Marin Headlands has already had several small stands of handsome pine trees whacked to the ground along its battery trails, and two graceful pine trees that have stood for years and years along Pine Mountain Road near Fairfax in the Marin Municipal Water District have suffered the efficiency of chain saws and lie dead, one dumped on the other.

These isolate trees deserve to be cut down because they are non-native and, apparently, because they are beautiful and have blessed high school kids and hill hikers for too many decades.

Trees like that are curses on public lands and our environment.

But other kinds of non-native trees in huge clumps in both ground space and altitude, such as the you-never-know-when-they-will-fall-over-or-explode-in-a-fire eucalyptuses are all over the place.  Why are groves of these Aussie natives not taken out first?  If two palms by a creek and a score of pines along hikers' trails can destroy the environment before millions of the eucalyptus giants do, it certainly defies common sense. 

Monstrous eucalyptuses flourish in the Marin Headlands. Groves cover large areas near the Coast Miwok "Kule Loklo" village and Horse Trail in Point Reyes National Seashore, and they crowd the open space ridges behind the Red Hill Shopping Center not far from the Drake High campus.  Other such groves in Marin are abundant.

The expert warriors against invasive plants are doing important work, but they seem to be firing at the soft--maybe even innocent--targets.

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Long time Marinite Paul Miller was editorial cartoonist for the Marin IJ, sports cartoonist for the Novato Advance, a cover cartoonist for the Pacific Sun, and is currently a cartoonist illustrator for The Ark.   He's had cartoons published in the San Francisco Chronicle and his surf paintings have been published on the Surfriders Foundation website. He joins MoreMarin as a contributing editorial cartoonist.

Miller, a former Marine and UCLA graduate, taught a cartooning course in the art department at the College of Marin. His paintings and drawings are in private collections in California, Arizona, Washington, Hawaii, Texas, Florida and Provence, France. Miller's book, A Cartoonist's Guide to Prostate Cancer, was described by Dr. Dean Edell as "a must for any man facing prostate cancer!"

Comments

[Karen]

Excellent points, all! At what point does the absurdity become apparent to those in charge of who turns on the chain saws when and where? Those palm trees have, by the Tamalpais HSD Board's own estimation, another 40 years of solid life in them...too few to make them "salable" to a hotel or resort..so why not just leave them there until their natural end of life? Oh yeah, I forgot, they aren't "native."

[Joel Bartlett]

Great parody! I would love to see the grizzly bears come back. To really "go native," let's bring back the other wild animals -- or, if possible, even the dinosaurs. I kinda like the eucalyptus as long as they are not in my back yard.

[Daniel D.]

They cut down the eucalyptus at san bruno mt. state park a few years ago. Still looks scarred. Then more recently they cut down the eucalyptus on the hillside behind my house. Now it's like an echo chamber. Sure some invasive species need to be taken out because of the harm they can do. But the whole native flora movement strikes me as BS. I'm sure the money could be better spent elsewhere. Especially now a days when parks money doesn't grow on trees.

[jim hobart]

This entire "native species" campaign is crazy! How far back do we go to determine what is native and what isn't. Love your stuff Paul-keep it comming. Jim H