Law Can Force Builders to Pay for Felling Oaks : Land use: Activists criticized old county policy that demanded two sapling replacements for each tree cut.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, expanding its power to require remedies for the loss of oak trees to development, Tuesday approved a measure under which builders can be forced to pay for trees they destroy instead of merely planting saplings that often die.

County foresters will determine whether developers must replace lost oaks with two saplings apiece or pay for their destruction.

The money collected will form an oak forest trust fund to establish, enhance or maintain oak forests elsewhere in the county, in wild areas and in federal and state parks and at least nine county parks.

Such a payment requirement has been called for by environmentalists as preferable to allowing builders to meet county permit requirements by squeezing oak saplings into on-site strips between buildings or alongside roadways, where they have difficulty surviving.

The supervisors also unanimously directed county officials to analyze a study submitted by the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District entitled “Where Have All the Oak Trees Gone?”

The study supports the payment alternative, saying the current county oak protection ordinance has failed.

David Gottlieb, vice president of the conservation district, said the study proved what he had long suspected: “People are getting away with destroying oak trees and ignoring their permits.”

The existing ordinance requires developers to replace downed trees with saplings, on a two-for-one basis, but the study found many developers had not complied with that requirement. The study said that after the development was completed, there sometimes was no room to plant oak saplings, or for those planted to develop.

Under the previous county oak tree law, developers were specifically forbidden to remove only the largest and most significant oak trees, known as heritage oaks. However, county foresters and planners frequently also make it a condition of the building permit that developers redesign their projects to preserve the maximum number of trees.

In 20 development projects in the Santa Monica Mountains included in the conservation district study, problems noted by consultant Rosi Dagit ranged from trees dying because of improper planting locations to a failure to plant any new oaks two years into the project.

Dagit, who worked on the study for nearly a year, said she blames the vagueness of the oak tree ordinance, not the developers

Dagit’s report also called for closure of a “county bureaucratic loop” under which the conditions set for oak removal permits are largely drafted by county foresters, but policed by county planners who lack tree expertise.

“It is dismally unclear who’s in charge of monitoring and enforcing,” Dagit said.

Supervisor Ed Edelman asked county officials to look into using foresters to enforce the oak tree ordinance.