Native species and grasses produce sparks and firebrands too, Stephens says, but not of the same quantity and quality as eucalyptus. Although the view didn’t change, I saw something different each time through the eyes of the person I was with. It might indeed get away, or catch houses on fire. Broadly, the protest was about the Sierra Club’s perceived hypocrisy; the environmentalist organization is also suing FEMA as a sort of countersuit to the Hills Conservation Network’s pro-euc suit. “Eucalyptus is highly flammable and a very dangerous tree.” Fuel reduction projects that target the nonnative trees are not new. “Every piece of vegetation is flammable. Within a decade, he was the world’s leading evangelist for eucalypts. “For most eucalypts, fire was not a destroyer but a liberator,” writes fire ecologist Stephen Pyne in his book Burning Bush. The ground below this tree is littered with its rooster-tail leaves and cinnamon-stick tubes of bark. Euc-defenders point out that the leaves of native California bay laurel trees also have a high oil content. “I love eucalyptus,” Bowman says. At the same time, anyone who’s fought a fire in eucalyptus understands why they need to be thinned, he says—all vegetation will burn, that’s true. I visited Signpost 29 three times while reporting this story. The high oil content of eucalyptus leaves also means that they burn hotter than less oily leaves. The Vicks VapoRub smell of blue gum forests comes from the oils in their foliage, oils that fire ecologist consultant Carol Rice says can be as much as a fifth of a eucalyptus leaf’s dry weight. Like the other Australians I spoke with, Sullivan called the Bay Area blue gums “supersized,” treated to better soils than those in nutrient-poor Australia and untrimmed by their native pests. “But there’s a lot of fuel there, too. 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In the early 2000s, UC Berkeley and the nonprofit Claremont Canyon Conservancy cleared 70-odd acres on the south side of Claremont Avenue. Editor’s note: In late September, FEMA rescinded its fire mitigation grants to UC Berkeley and the City of Oakland, covering the 350 most contentious acres. We pass a man in an excavator stacking eucalyptus logs. “They’re absolutely dangerous plants,” he says. The protestors I spoke with disagree with Kent: They tended not to believe that the eucalyptus are more flammable or fire-promoting than native species, and they seemed determined to discount any evidence suggesting otherwise, arguing, as Maloney has, that whichever of the tree’s characteristics might promote fire are outweighed by its services. And in the bigger picture, simply thinning the trees, as the park district is doing on their properties, isn’t a great solution either. “It’s an amazing just-so story,” he says of the possibility: “Eucalypts evolved to burn their neighbors.”. “We’re trying to change fire behavior, to make it easier to put the fire out, to give people more time to evacuate.” About a month after my visit to Signpost 29 with Dave Maloney, I return with Dan Grassetti, founder and director of the Hills Conservation Network, the nonprofit that’s filing suit against FEMA. It’s not just eucalyptus we target. You get away from stress, smell the smells, see the birds. The eucalyptus tree, native to Australia, and now common in other parts of the world, is an exotic-looking and aromatic tree. Like Maloney, he says he got involved after researching the FEMA plan and coming to the conclusion that removing trees would make the area more fire prone, not less. Essential oils such as tea tree, lavender and citrus oils such as lemon, orange, lime and others have a flash point of about 50 – 60 degrees Celsius so they are classified under Class 3 Flammable Liquids. Others were concerned that the FEMA plan was cover for native species restoration advocates. After a fire, many eucalypt species will sprout epicormic shoots along their entire trunks. I’m going to live up to that promise.” The ground around the tree is littered with its bark and leaves, inches deep in places. In many parts of the state, people planted eucalyptus for that express purpose; the wind inside a forest might have less than half the wind speed it would in the open. In addition, eucalyptus tree care includes annual pruning (in summer) to control top growth and their overall height. service@baynature.org. Some eucalyptus varieties are decorative and iconic. They simply dry up, becoming increasingly ever more flammable. 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