CAMILLA MORTENSEN
Eugene logs its urban forest
BY ERIN ROKITA AND CAMILLA MORTENSEN
T
here’s nothing like waking up in the
morning to the sound of buzzing chain-
saws on Eugene’s streets. Urban forests
are in decline across the country, and Eugene
cuts down as many as 500 of its city street
trees in an average year. Is “Tree City, USA,”
intent on chopping down its urban forest?
The coast redwood is one of the world’s
largest living species, reaching up nearly 400
feet and living more than 2,000 years. Eugene
has a couple — considerably younger — of
examples of this giant Oregon and California
native. If you walk down 15th Avenue until
you hit Mill Street, you’ll be hard pressed to
miss one of Eugene’s redwoods. The 50-year-
old tree is large for its age; it dwarfs the home
it stands next to. And this tree too needed a lit-
tle saving.
Back in 1944, two “young and adventur-
ous” ex-Midwesterners, John and Lillian Durr,
took a road trip from Eugene along the coast to
northern California. “Somewhere along the
way they dug up a small coast redwood and
brought it back to Eugene to plant,” explained
their niece, Nena Lovinger. At the time,
Lovinger was the newest addition to the fami-
ly, and her uncle and aunt decided to plant the
redwood in honor of her birth. “Nena’s tree”
stands to this day in front of the house her
family built on the Mill Street property.
Last October, she learned from city offi-
cials that the sidewalk near the redwood posed
a safety hazard to area residents. The tree’s
roots had pushed up sections of the sidewalk,
causing it to crack and buckle.
In many cases, once a tree has been
deemed a “hazard,” the city cuts it down. But
this time Lovinger and city officials agreed the
best course of action was to realign and
replace sections of the sidewalk to make room
14 NOVEMBER 21, 2007
for the tree’s roots and protect the safety of
pedestrians. “It was a happy solution for me
and the tree,” Lovinger says.
Not every tree has such a happy ending.
Eugene’s urban forest and the issues of tree
removal and land development have a long,
complicated history, one that leaves communi-
ty members divided. Urban trees are an emo-
tional as well as an environmental issue. So
it’s not surprising that the topic of cutting
Eugene’s trees is a heated subject.
In Eugene, we have more than 100,000
street trees, and over the past decade the city
has planted on average 1,100 new trees per
year. Mark Snyder, city of Eugene urban
forester, says survival rates are “relatively
high” for newly planted trees. “We see more
trees die every year because of the dryer than
normal conditions, but over the last 10 years
or so, we think we have around 90 percent or
higher survival rates,” he says.
The city anticipates spending $81,800 on
planting trees next year through the
NeighborWoods Volunteer Tree Planting
Program, while an estimated $161,000 is bud-
geted for “contractual hazard tree removal,”
Snyder says. He indicated that due to budget
reductions the city can no longer afford to
plant as many trees. “It’s a sorry state of affairs
because we can’t afford what needs to be
done,” he says.
TREE CONFLICTS
A
t least once a month, EW gets a call from
a concerned citizen who has spotted the
city cutting down a tree. Sometimes the tree in
question is a native Douglas fir or bigleaf
maple; other times, it’s a non-native black
locust. Once in a while there’s no tree coming
RISKY TREES
O
ne of Eugene’s claims to fame is that we
have a city full of beautiful, lush trees.
Every year, Eugene touts its designation as a
“Tree City, USA.” This designation is earned
by “meeting minimum requirements for com-
munity forestry programs at the municipal
level,” according to the Oregon Department of
Forestry. Oregon has at least 45 designated
Tree Cities, and there are thousands of Tree
Cities across the country.
According to Snyder, the benefits of urban
trees are vast. But despite their value, he says
city trees can also be hazardous.
"Some trees are dangerous," agrees Alby
Thoumsin, certified arborist and president of
the Eugene Tree Foundation. Arborists not
only prune trees but are paid to cut them down
as well. "In an urban setting trees need to be
removed because they represent a risk," he
says. Thoumsin points out that cities are not
wild ecosystems, and city trees need to be
maintained to prevent injury and damage.
According to Snyder, "a tree is not a haz-
ard unless something would be harmed … so
KATHRYN SCHUESSLER
TIMBERRRR!
down at all: The city is just trimming the
shrubs, but neighbors are tired of seeing
Eugene’s leafy tree canopy torn apart by
chainsaws and are quick to call and complain.
EW’s letters section often features ques-
tions like that of Bobbie Cirel: “Don’t those
who made the decision to cut these trees rec-
ognize the value of mature trees in an urban
landscape?” And Shen Steiner of Eugene
chided, “Where once these trees reigned
supreme and majestic, now they fall one after
another, removing with them homes for crit-
ters, cooling-off shade and life-sustaining oxy-
gen. Shame on you, city of Eugene.” Other
Eugeneans, while angry about the cutting, are
leery of going on record with their concerns,
saying, “Well, I’m not an expert on trees.”
It doesn’t take an expert to know that
Eugene’s trees are more than just the shady
branches downtown, known as “street trees”
to foresters. Also, inside Eugene’s urban
growth boundary (UGB) are places like the
Amazon headwaters that developers are seek-
ing to turn into a subdivision. People like Lisa
Warnes of Southeast Neighbors would rather
see the headwaters maintained as a forest, part
of the Ridgeline Trail hiking system. This for-
est in south Eugene is home to native and
threatened species. Urban forests like the
Amazon headwaters are “within walking dis-
tance or near bus lines, giving the citizens an
opportunity for passive recreation without
driving a car,” says Warnes. They give “us all
a sense of peace, tranquility and beauty,” she
says.
Perhaps the most famous attempt to save
Eugene’s urban trees was on June 1, 1997,
when 40 of downtown’s largest trees were cut
to make room for the Broadway Place devel-
opment. Eleven protestors climbed trees and
clung to them in an attempt to delay the log-
ging until a public hearing could be held. The
Eugene Police Department sprayed every can
of pepper spray they had on the protestors and
borrowed more cans from Springfield and
Lane County in an incident that sparked
protest locally as well as from Amnesty
International. Three of the protestors later sued
the city, which settled for $30,000.
As a result of the incident, local environ-
mentalists began to push for better tree protec-
tion laws, a push which has been largely
blocked by developers. The Eugene Tree
Foundation, a local group that works on
“planting, education, and advocacy,” accord-
ing to their web page, came to exist during this
time period. The group has planted trees and
responded to incidents of illegal tree removals.
However, despite the large number of activist
and anti-logging groups in Eugene, there is no
one activist group agitating simply to preserve
Eugene’s urban forest.
“I think we need much more restrictive
laws about tree removal,” says Eugene City
Councilor Betty Taylor. “Council did pass a
more restrictive ordinance as part of the Land
Use Code Update several years ago,” she says.
But it was sent back on appeal, “and there has
never been a majority of councilors to place it
high on the Planning Commission’s work
schedule for re-consideration,” she says.
Taylor says every year she tries to get the tree
ordinance moved up on the Planning
Commission’s work plan, “but never gets
enough councilors’ votes to make the change.”
Urban trees give ‘us all a
sense of peace, tranquility
and beauty.’
— Lisa Warnes, Southeast Neighbors