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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

November 20, 2002

Protest takes root

Residents of Santa Clarita rally around man hired by environmental group to guard oak tree from builder.

Tree-sitter John Quigley has vowed to save the 60-foot oak that has been slated for removal by an Orange County developer for a road-widening project in this north Los Angeles County suburb.

Open-space proponents said the fight over the tree represents a new battleground for conservation, since past tree-sitting protests have occurred in forest land.

The developer, John Laing Homes of Newport Beach, said it is doing everything possible to save the tree, including spending $250,000 to move the oak. "We've moved oak trees before but nothing quite like this," said Bill Rattazzi, president of the Los Angeles division of John Laing Homes.

The road expansion, adjacent to John Laing's 279-home development, is something the county insisted upon to handle future traffic, he said.

Rattazzi said the tree likely will be moved just a short distance from its current site, and the move should begin in the next week.

Quigley and his backers, however, said the tree would not survive being uprooted, and the tree-sitting vigil would continue. The protest has drawn the attention of national media and throngs of supporters for Quigley, 42, who has made the tree, known as "Old Glory," his home for most of the month.

Children come to the tree to bring him food and chant his name. He has received mail at the tree encouraging his protest, and homemade signs offering support adorn a fence surrounding the old oak.
Quigley said he spent three weeks in 1995 atop a tree deep in a British Columbia rain forest subject to logging. He noted the difference Tuesday while sitting on his perch.

"The location (in Santa Clarita) is about as opposite as you can get," he said, adding that his previous tree-sitting vigil took place a two-hour boat ride away from a town of 1,000 people.

The protest illustrates the challenge of planning for growth in suburban areas, said Dan Fahey, spokesman for the San Francisco nonprofit group Greenbelt Alliance, a proponent of open space.

"What this shows is that people are not able to achieve their goals through working through the city process," he said. Fahey said he hoped the spotlight on the oak tree will help spur local governments to take a more active role in development planning.

Quigley was hired by the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning and the Environment, which has staged other pro-environment demonstrations in the fast-growing area over the years, but none with such widespread support.

"This is our Alamo," said Lynn Plambeck, president of the group. "This is something the community can get their arms around and become a rallying point for everybody."

Santa Clarita has seen a 35 percent jump in population since 1990. With a population of 151,088, the city is the fourth-largest in Los Angeles County, according to 2000 U.S. Census data. In the next six years, 6 million more people are expected to call California home.

"We don't have the mechanism in scale to do development for the growing population," said Donald Brackenbush, chairman of the Urban Land Institute's Los Angeles office, part of the progressive wing of the national real estate industry.

"That leads to problems like this with people fighting lot by lot and tree by tree," he said.

"The fact is, what people won't talk about is that we're in denial about the numbers we have to deal with," Brackenbush said. Brackenbush said he believes developers need to be more flexible. He also said that those in favor of open space need to open their eyes to the tremendous population pressures.

"We'd all like open space. It would be nice if we could retain existing open space," Brackenbush said. "But there's enormous pressure on the land."

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