City Approves Plan to Protect Trees : Environment: Thousand Oaks adopts program to nurture oaks and other ‘landmark’ species. Proposal had no opposition at hearing.

Hoping to ensure their city will live up to its name, Thousand Oaks council members have adopted a tree protection plan that emphasizes nurturing oaks, sycamores and other varieties--and punishing developers who illegally uproot them.

Although the plan contains some new mandates, such as requiring developers to plant trees along city sidewalks and pay for their maintenance, it generated no opposition at a public hearing Tuesday night.

All five council members agreed that the program would ultimately enhance Thousand Oaks’ community forest, keeping the city shaded, graceful and green.

“We’ll be supportive of our name of Thousand Oaks well into the future,” Councilman Frank Schillo said.

The forestry program aims to protect so-called landmark trees--sycamores, black walnuts, bay laurels and hollies--in addition to the long-sacred oak. Removing a landmark tree, or even building close to one, will now require a permit, unless the tree is located in the private yard of a single-family home.

To further safeguard the landmark trees, described in the plan as “symbolic of the city’s heritage, beauty and image,” the forestry program calls for the city to launch a public education campaign. The city will also encourage local schools to develop a forestry curriculum.

*

For starters, teachers could use the master plan’s eight-page introduction, which asks readers to imagine a treeless city--a hot, dry, hostile environment of stark concrete and barren streets. Trees, the report concludes, serve as “living clocks marking the passage of time” and “green monuments to our past.”

Commenting admiringly on the flowery rhetoric, Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said Tuesday: “This certainly is a passionate report.”

Adopted as an element to the General Plan, the forestry program lists 62 goals, ranging from training city tree workers in horticulture to developing neighborhood landscape programs.

The city will also strive to plant more canopy trees along sidewalks to shade at least 50% of every public street. Private parking lots, too, must be heavily shaded, under the new city rules.

Finally, the council also agreed to concentrate on drought-resistant landscaping, replacing grassy street medians with mulch and rock gardens. The city’s ever-escalating water costs have boosted the annual landscape maintenance budget to about $2.9 million this year.

“We all love the lush green look,” Councilwoman Judy Lazar said, “but it may not be the most cost-effective or environmentally conscious. That doesn’t mean we have to go to the stark, barren, Arizona desert look--I think we can do it attractively.”

While landscape architects and environmental activists stayed away from the public hearing Tuesday night, in private interviews they expressed doubt about whether the city would enforce tough tree protection laws.

“You can write all these reports and say all these great things, but unless you implement them, it’s just another way of fooling people,” Sierra Club activist Cassandra Auerbach said.

Assistant City Manager MaryJane Lazz, however, said the city staff could enforce the laws--and in many cases, they already do. “This really just puts into place some of the informal policies the council has held for a long time,” she said.