Meet the locals sitting with (or in) Pasadena Unified School District trees marked for removal

On Monday, June 15, Paloma Muniz-Ochoa spent all day sitting up among the branches of a coast live oak tucked in the corner of a Pasadena Unified School District main office parking lot.

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Two days later, the Pasadena native sat at the foot of the same tree alongside fellow tree advocate Sabine Hoppner.

Muniz-Ochoa, Hoppner and Hoppner’s dog Fanny all sported red dots in solidarity with their arboreal brethren whose trunks have been marked with a similar dot denoting which trees will be removed.

“She’s an activist,” Hoppner said of Fanny.

A “No trespassing” sign that had been put up since Muniz-Ochoa’s day in the tree stood feet from where they sat in the shade on a blistering Wednesday afternoon.

Workers in orange vests and helmets walked around the parking as fences were being set up around other trees on the main office property.

Late last month, district officials announced its plan to removal contaminated soil from 11 district sites in the wake of soil tests done after the Eaton fire. In consultation with the Department of Toxic Substances Control, it came to the decision that it would need to remove about 200 trees as part of the remediation. The plan is to conduct all the removal and remediation work over the summer before students return for the new school year.

It didn’t take long for local environmental advocates to ask why no other alternatives were being used before leveling more of a local tree canopy significantly diminished by the Eaton fire and subsequent debris removal work.

PUSD said it would be planting replacement trees for those removed during the work, but that answer did not satisfy advocates who said the new trees would take years to provide the benefits of their removed predecessors.

Hoppner, a local arborist who has lived in the area for 30 years, got a call from Nina Raj, a fellow environmental advocate, who said tree removal had begun earlier than they expected. Hoppner joined Raj at the work site to prevent workers from leveling trees. Hoppner and Raj have returned multiple days to sit with trees, sometimes chaining themselves to the trunk.

Muniz-Ochoa, 17, heard about Hoppner and Raj’s efforts and decided to join and take it a step, or several steps up a ladder, further.

She grew up attending Tom Sawyer Camps at Hahamongna Watershed Park and lived near a nature conservancy in Pasadena. Muniz-Ochoa would climb oak trees in the park and observed plants and animals literally in her backyard.

The coast live oak she chose to sit in stood out to her because it’s a protected, mature tree that has stood for decades. She also noticed it had grown out of an area that was mostly asphalt in a district office parking lot.

“She’s such a sign of resilience,” Muniz-Ochoa said.

The nerves Muniz-Ochoa felt as she climbed the ladder up the tree subsided as soon as she touched the tree.

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“The moment I touched the tree and the moment I was able to get myself onto the tree I felt totally fine, I felt totally safe,” Muniz-Ochoa said.

Instead of being bored for sitting in one spot for eight hours, Muniz-Ochoa said she felt part of the tree’s community. Squirrels, birds, bugs and spiders kept her company and gave her an appreciation for her part in the large ecosystem alive and supported by the tree.

Her friend joined her in the tree for part of the day.

“His very small movements I could feel at the very top and I think that was really memorable for me just because of how this tree feels everything,” Muniz-Ochoa said.

In a Tuesday, June 16, statement where the district acknowledged it had paused work on a tree at PUSD headquarters because an active nest had been found, the district asked people to stay out of work sites.

“We ask that our community allow our environmental and safety teams the space to do their work,” the district statement read. “The soil within these closed work areas is known to contain fire-related contaminants in the soil at harmful levels to the health and safety of our school communities. Entering sites is trespassing on school property, and creates safety risks in areas where contaminated soil has been identified, and we want to keep everyone safe. The trees marked for removal are also in these fire-related contaminated areas, and we request the community stays out of these spaces for everyone’s safety.”

Hoppner began her tree advocacy at the age of 6 in her native Germany when her favorite horse chestnut tree near her parents home was slated to be cut down.

A young Hoppner stood in front of the bulldozer before her father carried her away. Hoppner ran back and climbed the tree. She cut herself and put her bleeding arm on the tree.

“I have that horse chestnut in me, I got to do right by it,” Hoppner said.

Hoppner has worked in the Eaton fire burn zone and has marveled at how resilient the surviving trees have been in the face of natural and man-made disaster. She said trees help remediate soil by sequestering heavy metals in their tissue.

Instead of cutting down trees, Hoppner said the focus should be on preservation and planting.

“I’m not going to let this happen on my watch,” Hoppner said. “I’m not going to say, ‘oh well, I’ll just step back and let them cut down that tree,’ while I’m here it’s not going to happen.”

At a PUSD Board of Education Facilities & Capital Projects Committee meeting, 70 people attended with about 20 public speakers decrying the district’s approach. A handful sported the dots Hoppne, Muniz-Ochoa and Fanny would later wear.

“There’s so many people who don’t want this to happen, there’s so many people who care about these trees and I think they just need to get the memo,” Muniz-Ochoa said.

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Correspondent Lisa Jacobs contributed to this report.