Trolleys, Dogs and Oak Trees

The eagles have returned to Piedmont and so have the oak trees, or so city staff would have you believe. After its disrespectful closure of the Linda Dog Park, city staff is rolling out the narrative that Piedmont is better for it: “With paths and benches open, the park offers a rare opportunity to watch an oak woodland – one of California’s most essential native landscapes – develop from the ground up.”

Lovely prose, perhaps meant to paper over staff’s shabby treatment of dog owners, but it makes it sound as if the park will now flourish. The park is now a very healthy and enjoyable collection oak trees and made that way precisely because of how humans occupied it these past 100 years.

First, oak trees don’t like to be crowded and develop a broad canopy to prevent other oaks from sprouting nearby. And second, oaks like sun and well-drained soil which is why they are typically found on grassy slopes where the acorns can get to the soil and sprout. Conversely, oaks don’t like ivy because it blocks the sun for spouting acorns and keeps the soil moist.

Take a good look at the oak trees at Linda Park and you’ll see three types, most not occurring from natural conditions. The very few +100-year tress, on the steepest slopes in the park, are probably original to the site. Then the 50-100-year trees are found adjacent to the path and occur in the greatest number. Finally, a half dozen 20-year old trees cluster in the center of the old off leash area – these are barely 20 feet high.

This discreet population of trees reflects the changes to the site brought about by human activity. Turns out the path through the park is the route of the old Key Line trolley (https://www.walkingpiedmont.com/post/trolley-tracks-and-turnarounds-piedmont-s-key-system-stroll, thanks Chuck Oraftik) and removal of the tracks created open soil with no ground cover making it easy oak trees to sprout – oaks in the park are most densely populated just adjacent to the path, the old trolley right of way. Likewise, the 20-year old trees are clustered in an area where the dogs used to run for the past 20 years – dogs likely suppressed the ivy, allowing these few trees to establish. This collection of oaks, a nice as it is, is an aberration of how natural oak woodlands develop.

Staff wants to plant natives in the understory and “re-vegetate” the landscape but Piedmont needs more dog parks than oak woodlands. The Linda Park dog run could likely have been maintained had staff vested effort in studying the problem. The Water Board’s own assessment suggests that solutions to site run-off were viable. And our highly qualified Park Commission was eager to work on finding those solutions. Unfortunately, Public Works Director Gonzales unilaterally determined that the dog park be closed. Spinning the virtues of oak woodlands now doesn’t hide the fact of how poorly Gonzales worked with the community and Park Commission to address this situation. A majority of Council wants to study the viability of a fenced dog area at the Oakland Bridge – will the Director ignore Council as well?