In what's probably a sign of the times in which we live, authorities in tolerant San Francisco are planning a major crackdown, with the goal of eradicating foreign invaders:

SAN FRANCISCO - In an effort to preserve San Francisco’s natural habitat, The City approved a plan Monday that would cut down thousands of non-native trees along hillsides and parks.

Under the Significant Natural Resource Areas Management Plan, a road map to guide The City’s efforts to revive San Francisco’s natural habitat, thousands of eucalyptus trees, shrubs and other non-native plant species would be cut down from 1,100 acres across 29 parks that are part of The City’s natural areas program. The plan calls for replanting native trees in some parks.

I am all for protecting native habitat, and eucalyptus trees were probably not the best choice when much of The City’s forests were planted a century ago, given their encroachment tendencies with other plants and trees and grasses. But it should be pointed out that there are considerably more plant species here today than there were when all of those horrible non-native types arrived, and they’ve managed to survive without NAP’s heavy-handed intervention.

And that would be the only way to describe the group’s style to date, highlighted by the destruction of groves of trees around The City because they were allegedly interfering with the precious native plants the program is dedicated to protect. Indeed, at least one person in NAP’s core group of volunteers has been arrested more than once for cutting down trees without a permit — even in San Francisco you can’t give license to every sand-dune savior who wants to whack down trees they refer to as “alien species.”

Unfortunately, many San Franciscans imagine the pests to be beautiful, and the Eucalyptus trees have been growing there (and all over California) for many, many years. Since at least 1871:

The gold fever came in 1850 and affected the farming life and production of the early settlers, but only for a few years. The elder George Greene was not only a farmer but a miner, and he caught the fever. He continued intermittently as a prospector all his life. He also was one of the first oil men in California, commencing his activities in 1865.

In about 1871 young George Greene conceived the idea of planting their property with eucalyptus trees. The first eucalyptus seeds had been sent here from Australia by Bishop William Taylor. Greene’s father consented to this plan, and George carried it out, Later he further developed their land by planting "Holland grass" on the sand dunes to prevent their shifting with the wind.

Greene's error was compounded when the subsequent owner donated the blighted grove to the city, because the unthinkingly sentimental, aesthetic-minded citizens of San Francisco turned it into a place for open air concerts:

[Mrs. Sigmund Stern] turned it over to the people of San Francisco as a recreation site, deeding it in perpetuity to the city with the express provision that it would forever be used only for recreational purposes.

For this it had obvious advantages – shelter from prevailing winds and fog, unspoiled nature in close proximity to the heart of an expanding city.

The Grove Is Nature’s Music Box

Some additional possibilities soon became apparent. It was Nature’s music box. The terrain, with the help of the accidental sounding board created by the tall eucalyptus massed down the slopes, provided unusual acoustics. William Gladstone Merchant was the architect consulted on the development of the area as a playground and open-air concert place. A pavilion was designed and built. The Trocadero was re-conditioned and today stands virtually unchanged from the days when it was the famous roadhouse. Even the hand-painted wash bowls have been retained to this day.

On June 4, 1932, the city gratefully accepted the gift and the childish trebles of a playground chorus gave the first test to a musical center that now ranks among the world’s finest.

From that day’s inaugural stemmed a steady growth of the city’s musical reputation. For the first time San Francisco, the cultural heart of the Pacific Coast, had an outdoor center to vie in service to the people with Chicago’s Ravinia Park, St. Louis’s Forest Park and Hollywood’s Bowl.

But the Summer Music Festival is the biggest attraction and as one music critic put it — accurately if lightly — the programs “are the only ones given hereabouts that can smell as good as they sound, thanks to the action of sunlight on wet eucalyptus trees.”

It might have taken them some time, but San Francisco is finally showing some sense.

Here here!

URGENT CAVEAT: Please bear in mind that it's sometimes tough to distinguish real life from satire in San Francisco.

Readers looking for in-depth, real-life satire should read about San Francisco's "Natural Areas Program." Going after alien trees is only a start toward the utopian dream of "restoring" Stern Grove to its original sand dune status (by stealth, with the clever introduction of "Trojan turtles") and ultimately kicking San Franciscans out of their parks.

Alien trees are bad enough, but humans are the ultimate alien species.

(None dare call any of this speciesism.)