UCLA : Tree Removal Uproots Owls, Piques Interest of Hayden Staff

UCLA’s plan to cut down a small grove of trees on campus has fractured a family of owls that live in the area and piqued the interest of state Sen. Tom Hayden’s(D-Santa Monica) staff, who question whether the trees should be removed.

The university intends to remove about 33 trees--part of a landscaping and seismic retrofitting project--that was home to two parent owls and two baby owls in a nest on the ledge of a nearby building. When UCLA officials indicated that they would proceed with the tree cutting this month, students took the baby owls to an animal rehabilitation center in Simi Valley.

The parents, for the most part, have abandoned their spot at UCLA.

The trees at the root of the dispute are in the Franklin Murphy Sculpture Garden, near the university’s former Anderson School of Management building. The university is retrofitting the former Anderson School site for earthquake safety, building wall buttresses that extend from the school building into the area where some of the trees are growing.

The university also plans to remove some of the trees, several of them diseased, to expand and enhance the look of the sculpture garden, said Charles Oakley, campus architect. The university will replant the area with about 40 young trees.

When UCLA refused to eliminate its tree-cutting program for the sake of the owls, Travis Longcore and Catherine Rich, both graduate students, contacted Hayden’s office. Sandy Brown, Hayden’s deputy chief of staff who lives near UCLA, says she is concerned that UCLA is removing the trees.

UCLA officials will meet with Brown to discuss the issue, said Carole Magnuson, the university’s director of state and local relations. For now, however, the trees still are scheduled to come down, Oakley said.

The students say they will keep fighting to save what’s left of UCLA’s park-like atmosphere.

“I want the university to view its landscaping as more than outdoor furniture to be discarded at will,” Rich said.