SF Chronicle: UC Berkeley begins felling trees for stadium

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer

Berkeley's 21-month tree-sitting spectacle came to an anguished, tearful climax Friday when UC Berkeley began clearing the Memorial Stadium oak grove to build a sports training center.  Arborists wielding saws began thinning a portion of the grove as several dozen protesters shouted, wept and hollered from the median on nearby Piedmont Avenue. The day before, a state appeals court refused a request by the tree-sitters and a neighborhood group to stop the project.  "It's surreal to see the grove finally be cut down after so much energy and effort and spirit was put into protecting it," said Daria Garina, a UC Berkeley junior and supporter of the tree-sitters. "It's tragic and awful."  Workers in two cherry-pickers stripped most of the branches off the redwood where the tree-sitters reside as protesters swatted them with sticks. An arborist was injured when a tree-sitter threw a glass bottle at his head. The arborist was treated by paramedics and returned to work.  The university plans to continue removing trees today. Friday morning, the university told the tree-sitters that the agreement to provide them with food and water would end in 72 hours, and the university might begin forcibly extracting them if they do not come down voluntarily, said spokesman Dan Mogulof.

"We'd like them to comply with the law and come down on their own," Mogulof said.  Meanwhile, a group of oak tree advocates and a Berkeley Hills neighborhood group asked the state Supreme Court late Friday to block the project. Attorney Stephan Volker filed the request on behalf of the California Oak Foundation and the Panoramic Hill Association, asking for a new order preventing the university from beginning construction and also for a review of the case. The plaintiffs, along with the city of Berkeley, originally filed suit in December 2006 to stop the $125 million athletic facility, saying it posed a serious safety and environmental hazard because of its proximity to the Hayward Fault. The oak supporters also wanted to save the grove, where the university plans to remove several dozen oaks, redwoods, laurels and other trees to make way for the training center.  The university has said it would plant one mature tree and two saplings for each tree that is removed, but the plaintiffs argued that was not sufficient replacement for the 100 or so mature trees that would be chopped down. Most of the trees in the grove were planted when the stadium was built in 1923, but a handful predate the Neoclassical landmark.

The mood was tense at the grove Friday afternoon as chain saws sliced through the oaks and redwoods the tree-sitters had occupied for nearly two years. Protesters, some of whom have been at the grove since tree-sitters climbed into the first redwood in December 2006, shouted encouragement to the four remaining tree-sitters, yelled at police and arborists and tried to console each other.  Xander Lenc, a UC Berkeley sophomore majoring in history, said he was proud to have participated in the tree-sit protests.

"This protest is going to influence and inform those that come after it," he said as he watched from the Piedmont Avenue median. "This was such a beautiful grove. To see the university so callously strip it down has been really eye-opening." At the high point of the protest, about 20 people were living in the foliage in an intricately linked series of platforms and tree houses, gliding between encampments via ropes and pulleys. Picnics, rallies and Native American healing ceremonies were common events. In early 2007, three grande dames of Berkeley politics - former mayor Shirley Dean, Save the Bay founder Sylvia McLaughlin and Berkeley city Councilwoman Betty Olds - climbed into the trees for an afternoon to show their support.

The protest drew jeers, guffaws and admiration from around the country as it became the longest-running urban tree-sit protest in the nation. When the Cal Bears football team opened their season against Tennessee in 2007, thousands of visiting orange-clad Southern football fans beheld the spectacle with disbelief.

In an effort to control the protest, the university erected a pair of chain-link fences around the grove, obtained a court order banning the protesters from university property and began arresting those who climbed down from the trees or assisted the tree-sitters from the ground. Tension between the police and protesters occasionally flared, and in a few instances tree-sitters pelted police, arborists and private security guards with feces and urine.

In recent weeks, the protest began tapering off as interest waned and court decisions began piling up in favor of the university. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller ruled over the summer that the university's plan to build the center is lawful, and the state Court of Appeal on Thursday rejected the plaintiffs' request for a new injunction stopping construction.