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The trees in People’s Park are irreplaceable and crucial for the health of Berkeley. So many studies are now showing the importance of green spaces in urban areas for the health and biodiversity of cities. They keep temperatures down, clean air pollution and slow climate change. Studies show people who live close to green spaces are healthier in everything from heart rates, immune functioning, stress, and mental health to reduced pms symptoms, anxiety and cardiovascular mortality. People’s Park holds numerous large trees, plants, permeable soft soil and an ecological reprieve for city wildlife. This cannot be replaced if UC destroys it.  

Sure, it’s a good idea to plant some new trees somewhere for five generations into the future, but UC cannot, no human can, replace the 100+ year old redwood in the Park, that is currently sequestering significant carbon and creating oxygen for a dense urban area. It has been shown that trees not only filter the air and lessen climate change in the future, but they also attract precipitation in the present.  

Cutting the trees may change the climate enough that future Redwoods would be unable to survive here. Witness Redwood Valley in Mendocino CA after logging, now dry and hot and devoid of its previous moist forests. UC has a plan to build a mega dorm on the Park and claims that many of the trees “will be preserved from the current park”, but clearly the designers did look at the actual trees now growing in the Park or they would have left the elder Redwood, that predates the Park, in their design, as it is not actually in the footprint of their proposed building. UC should certainly wait until the numerous community concerns and lawsuits are addressed before cutting any more trees in People’s Park. Their plan is ill conceived in so many ways. While it is long overdue to address the issues of homelessness in our community, UC and Berkeley stepping up to the plate to do something for the houseless is not a good reason to destroy the only open green space in a densely populated area, a Park that supplies countless services to all kinds of People in Berkeley.  

The offer of temporary housing for folks currently camping in People’s Park feels more like a publicity stunt than true concern or a long term improvement for Berkeley’s homeless. Building on the Park is not a done deal, there are many alternative locations for a dorm. To build on People’s Park is just a mean spirited assault on our community, our health and our history. People’s Park is not only a Berkeley landmark but it was recently officially listed on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places! Can anyone imagine building on it could possibly go well? It would be ugly, painful and divisive. Likely there would be countless delays and cost overruns and our Park would be a construction site, an open wound, for decades. There is spell that protects People’s Park, deep in the roots, from everyone who has ever rested, planted, had lunch or fought for that special land. Those spirits, as well as the ancient Redwood, are best let be.