8 Ocean Beach Torrey Pines Designated as Heritage Trees

Torrey Pine on Saratoga Avenue in OB that was chopped down by the city in Feb 2016.

Update on the OB Torrey Pine Trees for November

By Kris Schlech

Save Peninsula Trees has been active this past month! We received our (official) letter from the City and eight OB Torrey pine trees have been designated as Heritage Trees. They will forevermore be identified as such on the City’s Master Tree Inventory.

There are other trees in OB we’d like to identify and nominate, but this is a wonderful start and OBceans should feel proud to be the keepers of such national treasures! We also created a flyer with loads of useful info about Torrey pines, the Green Store has copies, or ask for one digitally through savepeninsulatrees@gmail.com.

There are plans that Jeremy Barrick, the City’s Urban Forester, will be coming to the next OB Planning Board meeting to talk with the community about the City’s tree programs and practices.

Several OB tree folks attended the City’s Urban Tree Workshop that was held in October. The key talk was an excellent presentation of the Urban Tree Canopy Assessment results, a software program that not only maps trees geographically, but provides the ability to group data and map layers in dozens of ways.

The City’s website describes the program as:

“…users can set tree canopy goals for how many (and where) trees can be planted, correlate tree data with other community data layers (demographics, health, thermal load, stormwater runoff), and incorporate data into climate action plans, general and community plans, and project designs.”

It’s a fascinating and powerful tool and will eventually be available to the public.

Another good result of the tree workshop was connecting with Anne Fege, who heads the City’s
Community Forest Advisory Board (CFAB). We have met with Anne twice, first to discuss getting representation for District 2 on the CFAB Board. Anne was helpful with outlining the process, and our nomination of Virginia Wilson was submitted to the City- we just await confirmation.

OB will now have excellent representation at these meetings, and kudos to Virginia for stepping up! The advisory Board meets once a month, and there are other vacancies on the Board, if you are interested contact email above for more information.

We recently again met with Anne, this time to discuss tree advocacy and how as a community we
might further public awareness. Anne connected us to some excellent resources on tree stewardship and advocacy that can easily be adapted for many communities, and we are considering hosting a series of workshops and creating a small guidebook for OB Tree Advocacy. Stay tuned!

Many thanks to all who have continued to show interest and support of our urban OB trees. In the face of so many issues we can’t seem to change lately, it is gratifying to see that we can still improve our future, one tree at a time