News of the Arroyo
Title: | Mitigate, don't fell, old oak |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2004-06-16 |
Summary: | June 16, 2004 - The Star News wades into the Bird Fountain Oak dispute and calls for warning signs so that a "magnificent tree, a veteran older than our nation itself, a silent witness to Southern California history, would be allowed to live out its natural life span." |
Author: | Editorial |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | AS TREES go, the-called Bird Fountain Oak is not a famous one. General Sherman or General Grant, the famed sequoias of the western Sierra, this California live oak on the eastern lip of the Arroyo Seco is not. Even as Pasadena trees go, even though it\'s 250 years old, the somewhat scraggly, propped-up oak is not particularly well known. Residents know that Pasadena is a city of wonderful trees on the whole; that occasionally an Englemann oak or that big Morton Bay fig on South Marengo Avenue gets designated as a Landmark Tree; that astronauts can see Pasadena\'s canopy of trees from space. But the BFO has entered the news, including the front page of Sunday\'s Star-News through the photo and story by staffers Greg Andersen and Emanuel Parker, because it has suddenly become an endangered tree. Arborists and city workers charged with overseeing such things believe the oak is on its last legs. They point out, quite rightly, that trees have a life cycle, too, that nothing lasts forever. And certainly anything as big as a branch from a 250- year-old tree could be harmful or deadly to a person if it were to land on her or him. But it is most disingenuous for a Riverside arborist who also happens to be a lawyer to say that when \"oaks fall, they tend to kill people or make quadriplegics out of them.\' In fact and of course, when oaks fall, there tends to be no one standing anywhere near them, and no one gets so much as a scratch. We understand that a city has liabilities and doesn\'t want to get sued in the event the odds were defied and someone were hurt whenever the BFO decides to come down. And the city of Pasadena has certainly tended well to this particular tree, cabling, propping it up, taking good care. But a solution would seem to already be in hand. Some of those famous cousins of the BFO, those giants up in Sequoia National Park, also present a bit of a danger from falling branches and such. Rangers have surrounded them with low fences that warn people to stay back a bit, out of harm\'s way. Proper warning signs on such a fence surrounding the BFO should take care of the lawyers\' liability concerns not to mention should protect the public. And thus a magnificent tree, a veteran older than our nation itself, a silent witness to Southern California history, would be allowed to live out its natural life span. There\'s a meeting on the Bird Fountain Oak\'s fate today at 5 p.m. at the Jackie Robinson Center, 1020 N. Fair Oaks Ave. That\'s our suggestion for the public comment period. And we hope it\'s one that\'s seriously considered in the name of preservation, public safety and common sense. |
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