Trees May Be Cut Down to Save Native Plants
From Staff and Wire Reports
In a bid to save two endangered native plants, a federal agency has approved a plan that could result in the removal of large trees from more than 100 acres of San Francisco’s Presidio.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved the plan Tuesday.
At the heart of the issue are two indigenous plants -- San Francisco lessingia, a flowering annual herb, and Raven’s manzanita, a creeping evergreen shrub. The two plants once flourished on the expansive dunes that preceded the founding of San Francisco.
However, with urbanization and the conversion of undeveloped land to landscaped groves of nonnative trees, the two plants almost became extinct.
