Copy & paste this letter by June 6th or use this letter as inspiration for your own email. It will be sent to the San Mateo County Parks and pertinent county officials. See below form for list of officials.

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Dear Nicholas Calderon, Director of San Mateo County Parks and staff at San Mateo County Parks:

We appreciate all the work your staff has put into the creation of the Quarry Park Master Plan including the shaded fuel breaks to help reduce risk of wildfire. However, we are very concerned about the deforestation part of the plan.

The long-term plan for Quarry Park transformation from a forest into scrub land with no plan for replanting native vegetation or native trees is alarming. It is essentially deforestation during climate crisis. This seems counterintuitive. We don't think our town signed up for this. At the very least or as a compromise, replant native California trees to create a forest that could contain native scrub meadows. We do have local native trees nearby in areas areas such as Purissima creek or over the hill off 280: trees like redwoods, madrones, oaks, buckeye, ironwood.  See list here from Fire Safe San Mateo County Fire Safe website. https://www.firesafesanmateo.org/preparedness/defensible-space/fire-resistant-plant-list

Too many obvious unintended consequences seem apparent with this plan. We feel this is a deforestation plan that does not take into account:

1. heating and drying of the land during drought & loss of carbon capture during climate crisis

2. displacement of the last hundred years of ecosystems that are thriving there now including many birds of prey on our coast that prefer tall trees for survival: hawks, eagles, owls, and threatened pollinators such as bats, hummingbirds, and bees.

3. potential loss of marine layer due excess tree canopy removal (400 acres) which could cause the Peninsula to heat up causing more wind to be pulled in from the ocean. Increased Pacific Ocean winds could drive wildfires, as they have recently in the Laguna Niguel fire. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-13/the-science-of-fire-and-destruction-in-laguna-niguel

4. loss of shade from tree canopy as part of the recreational pleasure/cooling of the forest

It seems a well-managed healthy forest could contain a hybrid of meadows of native scrub and grasses without sacrificing all areas of tree canopy completely. Diversity is what creates healthy wildland. This plan seems extreme and purist regarding going back to the original native landscape 100 years ago. We did not have climate crisis 100 years ago.  Trees cool the planet. We need trees now, not more deforestation to heat up the climate.

Thank you for considering our citizen input and we request you make modifications to this plan that brings it closer to carbon neutrality.

Please send this letter before June 6, 2022.

Here are email addresses for other pertinent county officials that you can write to with these or other concerns.

• Supervisor Don Horsley:
  dhorsley@smcgov.org

• Legislative Aide - Lena Silberman: lsilberman@smcgov.org

• San Mateo County Parks: ParksandRecreation@smcgov.org

• Senior Planner Parks Department- Samuel Herzberg sherzberg@smcgov.org

• Parks Director - Nicholas Calderon: ncalderon@smcgov.org

• California Coastal Commission: NorthCentralCoast@coastal.ca.gov