Removal of Oaks Stirs Agoura Hills Protest

About a dozen people and a 25-foot-long inflatable whale showed up at an Agoura Hills development site Wednesday morning to protest the destruction of 13 oak trees and the transplanting of five others.

The trees are being removed to clear the way for construction of seven commercial buildings, three of which will house Teradyne’s semiconductor division.

The project was approved by the Agoura Hills City Council in July.

The development plan requires 12 trees to be maintained in their original condition but allows five to be transplanted to another part of the property and 13 to be cut down, a city planning official said.

But the protesters complained that most of the older, more stately, oaks on the site are being destroyed.

“I and many other citizens in the city consider this to be absolute vandalism to remove these oak trees,” protester John Perry said.

Perry brought the inflatable whale, which had previously been used in the “Save the Whales” campaign. For this protest he covered the word “whales” with the word “oaks.”

The whale also bore a sign urging the defeat in the Nov. 5 municipal election of John Hood and Hayden Finley, two of the three City Council members who voted for the project.

Arriving about 7 a.m., Perry and another protester walked onto the property briefly, saying they intended to prevent the developer from tearing down any trees improperly.

City law requires that all trees to be saved be fenced in before grading begins. A representative from the city engineer’s office visited the site Tuesday and ordered the developer to put up the fencing after preparatory grading was started without it.

Perry said the 12 trees to be saved had not been fenced when he arrived, so he went onto the property to protect them himself.

“The fellow who is responsible told us we shouldn’t be here,” Perry said. “We said we weren’t going to move until they complied with the law, that the oak trees they were going to save had to be fenced.”

Perry said the workers agreed to fence the trees before starting work.