The removal of 50-year-old Cypress trees that have stood at a California elementary school for decades has drawn rage from locals.

14 trees located at Del Mar Elementary School in Morro Bay are coming down to make room for two new preschool classrooms, KSBY reported.

“We needed a wider fire lane, as well as (disability) accessibility pathways which caused us to have to move the footprint of the building into the hillside some and putting up a huge retaining wall behind those,” San Luis Coastal Unified School District Assistant Superintendent Ryan Pinkerton told KSBY.

Community members, however, gathered at the church next door this past Wednesday for a “grief and grievance” ceremony.

The 14 trees provided shelter to owls and birds and were a windbreak for the houses on the hill above, neighbors said. They were important to the community garden and church behind them.

“Trees are significant to Morro Bay residents,” said resident Betty Winholtz. “I mean we’re a bird city where [would] the birds live? They live in the trees.”

“It’s very heart-breaking to see a city that we call Tree City USA allowing this to occur,” said another resident Michelle Howard-Leicester to KSBY.

The city of Morro Bay, in fact, has been named a “Tree City USA” community by the Arbor Day Foundation for over 23 years. To maintain such a distinction, a city must have a tree board or department, rules protecting public trees, an annual celebration and a community forestry program.

Pinkerton said the district has obtained a permit for the the tree removals. Thirty new trees will be replanted on another side of campus as part of an agreement to double the number of removed trees.

There have been worries, he added, that the existing trees could become a safety hazard with decay inside of them.

“In this case again it’s not that we wanted to cut down trees, we would’ve left them but it really was a safety hazard both for kids and the new buildings that are going to be put in those areas,” Pinkerton said.

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