Activists and public officials are at loggerheads over the cutting of 650 trees in Oxford Basin Lagoon
Eriyah Flynn tried to make a stand for one of the two tall eucalyptus
trees that remained at Oxford Basin Lagoon shortly before they were cut down on Jan. 15
Photo by Jonathan Coffin
By Joe Piasecki
Where Los Angeles County officials see progress toward restoring native flora and fauna to Marina del Rey’s Oxford Basin Lagoon, a small but vocal group of environmental activists sees only destruction: a wasteland punctuated by dead stumps.
In the span of a month, county workers cut down nearly all the trees — about 650 of them — in the 10-acre open space area and flood control retention basin between Washington Boulevard and Admiralty Way.
The plan is, after dredging some 10,000 cubic yards of polluted sediment clogging up the flood control works, to repopulate the area next year with 745 native trees and 45,000 native or drought-tolerant plants. With the addition of a perimeter walking path and wildlife observation areas, the $12-million project is designed to be a win-win-win for water management, recreational visitors and coastal wildlife alike.
“We want an amenity for the community and the environment,” Los Angeles County Department of Public Works Deputy Director Gary Hildebrand said. “All of the biologists from the different agencies involved reviewed this and concurred with the concept of removing the existing vegetation and replacing it with native vegetation.”
But critics of the project say wildlife has nowhere to go in the interim and it will take many years to replace the height and canopy coverage of the trees that have been cut down.
Some of the 31 eucalyptus trees within Oxford Basin Lagoon stood upwards of 80 feet. The largest of the incoming native trees —including 18 coast live oak, 11 cottonwood, plus laurel and sycamore — will be about 12 feet tall at planting but grow as high as 80 feet, said public works spokesman Kerjon Lee.
On Jan. 15 about a dozen protesters gathered on the sidewalk along Admiralty Way in a last-ditch effort to save what were the last two large eucalyptus trees, the group standing underneath the trees to prevent workers from cutting at branches. Sheriff’s deputies eventually cleared the area and the trees came down just before sunset.
“What’s going on here is a travesty. It’s an environmental crime,” said activist Eriyah Flynn. “They’ve totally denuded the entire area, so there’s nothing for these birds for many months.”
Patricia McPherson, president of the nonprofit Grassroots Coalition that emerged during the battle to save the Ballona Wetlands, rattles off a number of species spotted during that day or during several earlier demonstrations: egrets, an osprey, a red-tailed hawk, a Cooper’s hawk and numerous Monarch butterflies.
“This was a bird sanctuary. These are legacy trees. It’s pure vindictiveness at this point,” McPherson said.
Gradually removing the existing trees was deemed unfeasible due to dredging work and infrastructure upgrades to better filter storm water, increase dissolved oxygen and improve tidal exchange with Marina del Rey harbor, according to county documents.
Public works officials also say they scheduled the tree removal — announced in 2013 and approved by the California Coastal Commission and other agencies last year — to avoid the January through September bird-nesting season and that a more gradual removal process would have had a greater impact on wildlife.
Kathy Knight, conservation chair of the Sierra Club’s Airport Marina Group, sees evidence of immediate harm in photographs of an osprey perched on a now-gone tree and a cluster of butterflies clinging to a branch in the lagoon late last year.
A Nov. 19 biological field survey found no active nests within 500 feet of the lagoon, renovation project manager James Kearns told Coastal Commission members on Jan. 9.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, who represents Marina del Rey, also isn’t buying into complaints.
“It’s disappointing that, at the 11th hour, a small group of people is being misleading about a project that will actually increase the number of trees and provide new opportunities for recreation in the area,” Knabe wrote in a statement to The Argonaut. “Oxford Basin is a project that has been in the works and extensively reviewed for over five years. … We have designed a space that will improve water quality but also add walking trails and create new habitat for native species. “
A marshland converted into a farm and then a dump in the early 1900s, Oxford Basin Lagoon became a flood control area in 1959 and was designated a bird sanctuary by county supervisors in 1963. But according to public works documents, the lagoon’s already limited biodiversity and habitat value degraded as it became a dumping ground for unwanted pets in the 1970s and 1980s and the health of the trees declined further over the past 25 years.
Hildebrand acknowledged that some birds may have been using the area, “but it wasn’t the best habitat” for them to thrive, he said.
A 2010 county entomology report did not find sustainable food sources for Monarch butterflies in the lagoon, but the renovation will include more than 200 caterpillar-feeding milkweed plants, according to county documents.
Hildebrand and Lee point to recent county flood control projects that have been celebrated for embracing environmental stewardship alongside technical refurbishment: the Dominguez Gap Wetlands restoration in Long Beach, the refurbishment of Tujunga Wash Greenway in Valley Glen, and the Los Angeles Riverwalk project in Studio City.
“There’s a similar approach to Oxford Basin,” Hildebrand said. “There’ll be greater benefits to wildlife with the native vegetation.”
joe@argonautnews.com
The 2010 entomology report stated “it is unlikely that Monarchs will choose the site in it’s present condition for overwintering”. The report was wrong and there was no biologist on the site until after the trees the overwintering Monarchs were using on the site were cut down.
We have lived in the area for years, despite what Mr. Knabe says, no public notices were posted in this area. We go to many community meetings, and we didn’t hear about this until mid-December when they were literally days from chainsawing everything down. We made calls to Knabe’s office, and spoke specifically about these majestic Eucalyptus trees which fell on deaf ears. At the California Coastal Commission meeting in January, project manager Jim Kearns was asked specifically by a commissioner to “save these trees as they are obviously important to the species that live there, those species need them, and don’t care if they are “native”.
ONE WEEK later they sawed them down, yes with a huge police presence, (as I happened to be driving by at the time). It was a travesty…a 50 year old tree felled because of political ineptness and callousness. I live on the canal and have seen many birds displaced by this destruction, one and two dozen at a time flying around like they don’t know where to go. It is maddening to me on so many levels.
People witnessed the County of LA cutting down eucalyptus trees that had monarch butterflies in them, while it was raining. Monarchs cannot fly when their wings are wet, so they went down with the trees. And the County cut the branches up while the monarchs were in them. This is a terrible thing to do to this beautiful form of life whose numbers have gone down 90% in the past year and may be listed as endangered in the near future. Also, it is important to save as many eucalyptus trees as possible where the monarchs have been seen, because they need a clove of these trees for their over-wintering sites. As we understand, the County is planning to cut more of the eucalyptus trees in the next few months.
Dr. Rudi Mattoni who helped restore the El Segundo Dunes always said “The first rule of restoration is do no further harm.” That was definitely not followed by the County.
The 80′ plus Eucalyptus trees that were cut down along Admiralty Way had no reason to be felled.
Other nonnative trees along Admiralty were spared from destruction. The shoring activities that are necessary in the future months are further east of any of these Eucalyptus trees. Even if the trees had been located further east, numerous methods to work around the trees are readily available. The non native and native pines along Admiralty will be worked ‘around their drip lines’ which could have been, SHOULD HAVE BEEN the solution for keeping the Osprey’s Eucalyptus trees intact as a natural high safe haven and shelter for this bird.
The Eucalyptus tree in this story’s photo by Jonathan Coffin, was regularly used as a resting and feeding station for the Oxford Lagoon’s Osprey–a California Dept. of Fish & Wildlife listed Species of Special Concern and had formerly been on the Endangered Species List. The County callously rejected the new information regarding the Osprey’s presence and use of Oxford Lagoon and its chosen use of the Eucalyptus trees. These trees were the only natural high perch available to and regularly frequented by this Osprey.
The Monarch butterflies were missed in the County report, the Osprey was totally left out of the report. What sloppy field work on the part of the County’s contracted ‘biologists’. Once discovered by the public, the County should have responded in a prudent, wildlife protective manner but, did not. Ca. Coastal Commissioners asked that the Monarch trees (Eucalyptus trees along the bike path) be spared due to the new information and the County finally relented on a temporary basis. I fully believe that Vincent Yu of the Dept. of Public Works will carry out his stated goal to destroy the trees when winter passes. Commissioners also asked for a vehicle to stay the Eucalyptus tree destruction with one Commissioner articulating that the Osprey’s Eucalyptus trees should be spared and not just chopped down because the County had garnered permits to legally chop them down. The County turned its back on any kind, environmentally sensitive action.
CDFW also asked the Eucalyptus trees be spared. CDFW practices of keeping nonnative Eucalyptus trees in habitat areas where they are known to be used by wildlife, hence a valuable resource that needs to kept alive and in place, were callously ignored by the County.
The County has relegated the Osprey to use of power poles as high perch at Oxford Lagoon.
We will all be very lucky if the County has not shoved this wonderful creature into an early death from electrocution or other untimely end by virtue of its callous, deadly actions.
We no longer have the beauty and grace that the Eucalyptus trees have graciously and valiantly provided since they were planted by the County in 1963.
We will continue to work to stop such abuse of nature and the public’s dollars.
Wow, it is unbelievable how unethical the county has been and continue to be in their statements regarding the removal of the 650 trees. I was present to see an Osprey perch on a Eucalyptus tree, which made the news on Los Angles CBS. I was told frequently there were no biologists on the site of the removal, and one, who was there was rather negligent often turning away from the removing process. In videos there is no lightly shaking of the trees, so perched critters such as monarch butterflies could be forewarned that they are about to go down. It is an unjust cruelty what happened – unjust and illegal. The county did not go through the proper channels for the trees to be removed. They have been protected since the early 60’s as part of this only L.A. County public bird sanctuary.
I gather petitions from many people in the last weeks of the destruction. The signers were truly upset the county could go against it’s own laws to destroy habitat, and their decision to do so will change the ecosystem of Marina Del Ray.
Wish there were more vegans in government. I believe their eyes would be more open to what they have managed to do with fabrications in the name of greed.
BTW- Seriously Gary Hildebrand???
“Hildebrand and Lee point to recent county flood control projects that have been celebrated for embracing environmental stewardship alongside technical refurbishment: the Dominguez Gap Wetlands restoration in Long Beach, the refurbishment of Tujunga Wash Greenway in Valley Glen, and the Los Angeles Riverwalk project in Studio City.
“There’s a similar approach to Oxford Basin,” Hildebrand said. “There’ll be greater benefits to wildlife with the native vegetation.”
While Grassroots Coalition appreciates the use of native plants and thoughtful careful restoration projects, what you cite here in comparison to Oxford Lagoon is greatly lacking in comparability.
I suggest anyone go online to the projects you cite to see just how different they are.
1.” Dominguez Gap…a manmade wetlands along the LA River for the purpose of ground water recharge. This uniques system works naturally using wetland plants to cleanse the water before pumping it back into the ground.”
a. The Oxford Lagoon project has not figured out what to do with the contamination load that is inputted into the lagoon, there is no cleanup prior to its entry into the lagoon, the trash and fetid odors pumped into the lagoon have long been a source of complaint from the surrounding community. The experimental change for hopeful ‘water quality improvement’ is a berm that theoretically will circulate incoming Marina del Rey saltwaters. However, according to the County’s own reports, it is the Marina that is the largest source of contamination into the lagoon and Supervisor Knabe, in defiance to the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board, has said no to any Marina clean up and instead says let’s use more taxpayer money to study the situation.
WHAT RECHARGE SIMILARITIES?? The County cant even figure out if anything can live in the Oxford Lagoon waters due to the failure to provide for a healthy environment that is either saltwater, freshwater or even harder to figure…a delicate balance of brackish.
SO HOW DOES CUTTING DOWN ALL THE EUCALYPTUS TREES HELP THIS?? Granted the County is turning a protected and dedicated Bird Sanctuary into an urban parkway…that I think we all agree the County is doing. Therefore, sadly, the primary protection to wildlife is being sacrificed by the County.
btw–if you go look up the project…aren’t those Eucalyptus trees along the top of the wash??
2. Tujunga Wash– but for rusty fence and flood control, not remotely the same as Oxford Lagoon. Again, aren’t those Eucalyptus trees along the ridge above the wash???
“The project is designed to balance groundwater recharge, flooding and erosion concerns..”
The revamped site features new, green fencing and vegetation compared to the rusted, chain fence and bare dirt banks that existed before.”
Oxford Lagoon was designated as a Bird Conservation Area in ’63 when, after six years of state and local planning a palate of plants were planted on the public’s dime to attract song birds and other birds. Those trees all have flourished and created the high trees and lower canopy that protected this site from human intrusion. Granted there were sewage pipe breaks, tidal gates that
often didnt work etc but, that too was human neglect not, a problem from the full growth of trees that existed until the County decimated everything.
3. Los Angeles Riverwalk…you have got to be kidding. A more urban landscape would be hard to find. It looks like a mall scape with wooden arbors and pretty plum trees (not native), lots of
chips for ground cover around the pretty plants.
It would be difficult to add anything significant to the comprehensive and accurate statement articulated before me but I will say this. The statement that the dredging was not feasable without removing the trees was most likely a lie. I proposed the scenario to someone in the business of dredging and removal of contaminated soils and their response was this, and I am paraphrasing here as it was an oral conversation. “I’d have to see the location to say for sure but there are very few circumstances where dredging requires complete denuding of the area abutting the body of water where the dredging is to take place. Certainly there are cases where overhanging branches will need to be cut back, or smaller trees removed entirely in order to get the drege into place, but to date I’ve never seen a case where we had to remove tall trees. Working in tight spaces is more costly, it is very likely they denuded in order to use larger equipment and to get trucks into place that might avoid the use of barges and other costly additional handling of the sediment being excavated.”
I have been watching these despicable acts by the Board if Supervisors since 1985. I have been active in petitioning the Supervisors and the state Senate for some relief. At this point I am most angry with the Marina and surrounding area residents.
You all show up in small numbers and late in the game to make any difference. There should have been hundreds of citizens with signs,blocking traffic and entree to the workers so they could not cut a damn thing. A small cadre of 20 people is worthless.
You can bet the media in the form of print and television would have covered such an outpouring broadly and PERHAPS we might have been able to get the County BOS to sit down for a meaningful discussion.
So where where you when you might have made a difference?
I would agree regarding the need for Marina and surrounding area residents to engage no matter the hour. The total denuding was a surprise holiday massacre, at the eleventh hour meeting with County, Public Works, it was our first view of a map exposing all that was to be removed. While DPW, Vincent Yu stated he would consider our requests of using a phased approach and leaving key trees due to newly discovered wildlife activity on specific trees, clearly he had no intention to do so. But, what we also discovered was his changed plan for the site, namely to not dredge the basin itself which was further proof of this project not being worthy of Proposition 84 bond funding but instead a vanity project to turn it into an urban park rather than a wildlife haven. For this information please watch the YouTube– Meeting with Vincent Yu –placed online by Jeanette Vosburg. There are further legal actions that are still pending now as there were when the trees were cut down. Process can be painfully slowed down by those with the power to do so.
Per the few being worthless, I think not. The old saying that it is the few that make the changes, still holds and we continue still with the Oxford Lagoon issues. I would ask for more to join in now as this battle to save nature and stop the illegitimate use of public bond dollars rages on.
CORRECTION to NAME OF DPW COUNTY EMPLOYEE.
The grey bearded DPW employee, JIM KEARNS,Project Management II ,
has provided the overt leadership on the Oxford Lagoon project.
We had been given to understand that this person was Vincent Yu. We have been in communications with a Mr. Vincent Yu and senior DPW officials, including Jim Kearns regarding this project. The videoed meeting between the Friends of Oxford Lagoon and DPW has Jim Kearns at the table’s head as project manager for Oxford Lagoon.
the monarchs need overwintering trees as well as food. It is well documented that monarchs use mature eucalyptus all along the california coast from marin to san diego. The of Goleta established a monarch preserve that is a large grove of eucalyptus. I saw a few monarch butterflies in the area of the Oxford this year after most of the trees were cut down and I saw hundreds on the Eucalyptus in the Goleta . It is important that biologists and decision makers know that wildlife use nonnative trees. When they do the trees should be protected until the native trees mature.
Thanks, Joe, for your detailed and balanced article about why there is now an ugly water-filled gash in the earth where trees used to flourish. I only hope that the walking trails and new access to the site help offset the destruction. It’s a shame that the displaced wildlife won’t be there to enjoy it.