Our recent story about the controversial plan to thin thousands of eucalyptus trees from the East Bay hills got a big response from our listeners.
In that piece, KALW’s Liza Veale talked with Scott Stephens, a professor of Fire Science at UC Berkeley – about how these trees contributed to the huge Oakland Hills Fire in 1991.
"Those burning embers will get down there, and they'll actually start spot fires new fires," he said. "It's basically jumping across the landscape, so it's not moving as a wave; it's moving by jumping. That's exactly what happened in the '91 fire."
Liza also spoke with Jack Gescheidt, who is organizing to save the trees.
"This notion this romantic notion we should go back to just oaks and bays on the hillside with a few grasses," he said, "it doesn't make any fire sense it doesn't make any ecological sense. It's exactly the opposite of what we want we should have more trees."
We asked what you thought, and you had a lot to say.
Click the audio player above to hear the listener response.