WWW to Supervisors: Stop the Destruction of trees for more wine grapes

Dear Chairperson Gorin and Sonoma County Board of Supervisors:

Wine and Water Watch is a non-profit organization that challenges the over-development of the wine tourism industry and promotes ethical land and water use. We advocate agricultural practices that are ecologically regenerative.

We write to thank you for your efforts on behalf of Sonoma County’s homeless, fire victims, COVID-19 vulnerable communities, and local businesses. We know that you have likely put in extra time these past months to address the needs of your constituents and we want to express our gratitude.

In addition, we write on behalf of our members to ask you to use the next weeks of 2020 to focus on creating a temporary “time out” on County approved permits to remove significant numbers of trees.

Climate change is as serious a crisis as any, and one we must all address, and one of the best antidotes to that crisis – sequestration of green house gases (carbon dioxide) in mature woodlands, is squarely in the hands of the Board of Supervisors – the lead county land use authority.

What we are seeing today is unfit for Sonoma County. Without your leadership, these tragedies will continue. We urge the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors to step up, be a true leader in the state, and protect the county’s unprotected biologically and globally important woodlands now.

Same property as above showing woodland destructMore  destruction approved by Sonoma County–mostly native oaks

Beginning of Ken Wilson project clearing about 200 acres of oaks for wine grapes

We seek immediate Board action to stop the destruction of climate-serving-woodlands until such time as a science driven twenty-first century Tree Protection Ordinance has been adopted by Sonoma County. We request an urgency interim ordinance adopting a moratorium on woodland tree removal and other damaging activities until said Ordinance is in place.

In the next days, we will be contacting your office for a meeting to discuss this matter. Thank you again for your work on behalf of Sonoma County.

Respectfully,