Saplings planted in Westwood to replace dying Aleppo pine trees
have been vandalized over the past few months, after a two-year
effort to replant the trees.
Alii Ontiki, a landscaper and homeowner who has lived in
Westwood since 1978, said he witnessed party-goers vandalizing the
newly planted saplings on more than one occasion.
“They get drunk at nighttime … they break the
trees,” Ontiki said. “These are beautiful trees that
they just replanted. They kick them and break them.”
Ontiki said one sapling has been uprooted numerous times, and
though he replanted the sapling after each uprooting, the tree
remains in poor condition.
Several years ago, home owners on Kelton Avenue noticed the
Aleppo pines, planted in the 1920s, were leaning over, said Shelley
Taylor, president of the North Village Improvement Committee.
Taylor said when Aleppo pines die, they “keel over and
fall,” and two years ago one fell from a neighbor’s
yard onto a building she owns.
“(It) did about $20,000 of damage and almost killed a
tenant,” Taylor said.
Taylor said before the tree fell on her building, she called an
inspector who examined the tree and told her the tree was falling
over but the city would not remove the pine because it was not
diseased.
Though the city’s public works department eventually
removed some of the dying pines, Taylor said several more of the
Aleppo pines fell down.
After the pine damaged her property, Taylor worked for two
years, calling and speaking with the city’s public works
department.
“I made such a pest of myself that they said, “˜OK,
we’ll give you some trees,'” Taylor said.
The city provided about fifteen Canary Island saplings that were
planted in January and February this year along the 400, 500 and
600 blocks of Kelton Avenue.
Taylor said unlike the Aleppo pines, Canary Island pines do not
fall over when they die.
A magnolia sapling that was planted near the corner of Levering
Avenue and Roebling Avenue is also among the damaged trees, Taylor
said.
Taylor said trees are important not only because they benefit
the aesthetics of a neighborhood ““ they also benefit
residents by providing shade so air conditioning does not have to
be turned on as often.
After all the effort put into the tree replanting project,
Taylor said she was disappointed by people’s treatment of the
saplings.
“It take a long time to grow a tree and not a long time to
kill it,” Taylor said. “It’s just really
disheartening to have worked for two years to get them to replant,
and see that this is how the residents respond to all those
efforts.”
Ontiki said if the vandalism continues, the trees likely will
not survive.
“I see them all on the floor and I pick them up and put
them back into place, but if a tree is broken, there’s not
much you can do,” he said.
Lan Pan, a third-year applied mathematics student, lives on
Kelton and has seen the damaged trees. Pan said though people may
vandalize the trees only when they are drunk, she is still
disappointed by their actions.
“It’s ridiculous. I don’t know whether I
should feel mad. It just sort of puzzles me … what’s the
point?” Pan said.