Environmental Talk: Seeing The Landscape For The Trees | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Speaker: Tim Hyland

Note: This program will take place in the large auditorium in the County Fair Building. Acoustics are less than perfect.

Humans love trees. We climb them, picnic under them, plant them in our yards, gardens, and parks. So why would someone whose job it is to protect them be busy cutting them down? Come and hear why California State Parks Environmental Scientist Tim Hyland is busy doing just that.

Our relationship with fire has also changed. Once native communities used fire as a powerful tool to manage the landscape, but for the past hundred years we have lived in fear of fire and attempted to suppress it completely. Tim Hyland will discuss how these attitudes about trees and fire present challenges for managing the diversity of the plant communities of our local State Parks; and how a longtime defender of native plants has decided that cutting down native trees is an important part of it.

Tim Hyland graduated with a BA in graphic design from Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo, which he still finds useful despite having spent the last 30 years working primarily with native plants: first as a manager of Yerba Buena Nursery, then as a volunteer pulling weeds with the Wildland Restoration Team in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and most recently as a land manager for the Santa Cruz District of California State Parks. He also served for two years as president of the Santa Cruz chapter of CNPS.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.