Heat advisories continue to dominate the news this week as firefighters remain vigilant — especially in the parched East Bay hills. A one-woman force of nature is on duty too, organizing work parties to help mitigate the fire danger along Oakland’s Skyline Boulevard. Beloved former television news anchor Wendy Tokuda is using a grant from the Diablo Fire Safe Council to help with her passion project — removing invasive plants from parklands and open space.
Most recently, she rallied a group of volunteers to tackle a thicket of brush and non-native saplings near Chabot Space & Science Center. “This area we worked in is close to homes in Piedmont Pines in a high-fire-risk area,” she said, adding the area was a tangle of brush and invasive acacia trees that had fallen downhill on top of each other. “It was a mess.
For a moment, I wondered if it was simply hopeless. Then I realized you could easily pull the saplings with a weed wrench. I thought, ‘What the heck — let’s just do what we can.
’ ” After several sessions of “weeding the forest,” as her daughter calls it, volunteers pulled out the saplings and removed branches. Then an arborist came in and cut down a number of acacias, leaving the stumps for a future work party endeavor. The goal is to restore the area and plant oak trees, a long-term project that will take several years.
“Cleaning up our open spaces doesn’t just make our homes safer,” Tokuda said. “We are lucky enough to live in a beau.
