Angel Island

The state Park Department’s plan to clear-cut the eucalyptus trees on Angel Island and then spray the stumps repeatedly with an herbicide (Part I, Oct. 30) strikes me as a red herring along the same lines as Secretary of the Interior Donald Hodel’s talk about restoring Hetch Hetchy.

Yes, it would be a fine and wondrous thing to see some of our scenic lands as they were before the white man disturbed them. But at the same time that the state Park Department and the Department of the Interior are holding out these Chimeras of “the way it was,” are they being equally vigilant in preserving and protecting the threatened areas that can be saved by far less extravagant measures?

According to The Times story, Angel Island has been an Army base since the Civil War and the first eucalyptus trees were planted in 1863. To try to restore the island 125 years after the first plantings to a condition thought to have existed probably at least 100 years before really seems a terrible waste of resources. I’m sorry to see environmental groups swallow the bait.

While Hodel offers a restored Hetch Hetchy out of one side of his mouth as he bargains away both the Alaska Wildlife Refuge and the California coast to the oil interests, is the state Park Department aiding the game by offering an additional diversion?

BESS CHRISTENSEN

Lompoc