Vegetation Management Almanac for the East Bay Hills
Danielsen, C. W.; McClure, R.; Leong, E.; Kelley, M.; and Rice, C. Publisher: Hills Emergency Forum, a consortium of eight local governments. Distribution through: Length:
The Almanac is designed to promote native plant and wildlife habitat when conducting vegetation management for fire hazard reduction in the urban-wildlife intermix zone. The project brought together authors with different backgrounds to look at techniques and timing for solving vegetation management problems, as well as identifying species to protect, to retain, or to control or diminish. The ultimate goal of the authors is to nurture vegetation management that moves toward converting areas to stable plant communities with favorable fire behavior characteristics. Generally, they favor removing non-native plants, especially those that are weedy or fire-prone, and allowing native plants to move in and take their place.
Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants and animals...This thumbnail sketch of land as an energy circuit conveys three basic ideas: (1) That land is not merely soil, (2) That the native plants and animals kept the energy circuit open; others may or may not, (3) That man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen...A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity . . . Aldo Leopold
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