City to Weigh Ban on Topping Oaks

Moving to protect one of the area’s most distinctive natural features, the city of Agoura Hills may ban the practice of topping oaks, which experts say can harm or even kill the stately trees.

An ordinance banning the topping of oak trees is scheduled to be introduced at tonight’s City Council meeting and could become law as early as next month.

The proposal comes after a billboard company chopped the tops off a cluster of oak trees that partially blocked the visibility of one of its signs near the Ventura Freeway last year, said Agoura Hills Planning Director David Anderson.

That practice leads to unnatural growth patterns and can make trees susceptible to disease, said James Dean, the city’s oak tree consultant.

“When you top a tree, you cause it to react by putting out lots of weakly attached wood that shoots up from the cutting point,” Dean said. “Then you need to do more pruning, and it becomes an ongoing thing. The whole process opens the trees up to disease, which can be fatal.”

Dean said protecting the trees, which in some cases can live for more than 1,000 years, has become a passion among many residents of Conejo Valley. As the region has become heavily developed during recent years, thousands of oaks have fallen victim to the saw, he said.

“The trees are truly our monuments,” Dean said. “Some of them were around long before George Washington was alive and they are, in a sense, our measure of time. There’s a feeling that we need to protect the ones that are left.”