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I'm David Nazar.

Just north of Los Angeles sits the Conejo Valley, a kind of hidden gem community.

According to all the neighbors who live out there that spans both the northwest part of LA County and the southeast part of Ventura County.

You may be familiar with some of the communities out there.

Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Oak Park, Westlake Village.

The Conejo Valley is famous for all that Mother Nature has to offer.

With the iconic Santa Monica mountains and the National Recreation Area, the hiking and biking, the hills, the trails, suburbia, the homeowners associations, the gated communities.

Yet despite this seemingly idyllic life and scenic beauty of the Conejo Valley backdrop, there's a battle brewing out there, a battle that involves, of all things, trees.

No.

January 2025 A tragic month for Los Angeles as massive fire swept through Pacific Palisades and Altadena, killing several people and destroying thousands of homes.

Even today, in the aftermath, this massive swath of LA looks like the remnants of a bombed out war zone.

The rebuild is going slowly, to say the least.

No one ever wants to witness a repeat of this horrific disaster.

And these days, people are afraid this could happen again and for good reason.

Now, many L.A.

residents have decided to leave these high risk fire areas.

They're seeking out other California neighborhoods or neighborhoods in other states that are not in the direct line of fire.

Certainly, if you're familiar with Los Angeles, communities like the Palisades and Altadena are not the only areas in fire danger.

There are so many Los Angeles hillside communities in jeopardy.

For example, the Hollywood Hills area.

The Coldwater Canyon, Benedict Canyon, Laurel Canyon neighborhoods.

Santa Monica mountain communities, and especially out here in Southern California's Conejo Valley, where daily summer temperatures can often get into the low one hundreds, with hot and dry drought conditions fueling the Santa Ana winds.

So obviously, fire precautions.

Fire preparedness is a primary concern, especially here in Conejo Valley communities.

Places like Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Oak Park and neighboring Simi Valley, for example.

No one living in some of these SoCal neighborhoods can forget the 2018 Woolsey Fire that burned about 150mi in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

With part of those square miles out here in this region.

In total, the Woolsey Fire forced the evacuation of some 300,000 people.

The final toll of that massive blaze, nearly 100,000 acres, burned, 1600 structures destroyed and property losses exceeding $6 billion.

So today, most Conejo Valley neighbors out here, they know the maintenance of these surrounding dry, flammable hills is vital with things like skiing, mowing, felling, and plowing of trees.

The cutting down of many of these great trees.

Unfortunately, fire experts argue, these kinds of preventive measures can often be the best and most efficient way to keep these hills safe from out of control vegetation that can spark a massive wildfire instantly.

Can I know?

Valley, California is a snapshot, a microcosm of hundreds of U.S.

neighborhoods that are an example of how urban sprawl and the concrete jungle connect with a wildland interface and put these communities at risk.

Drought prone cities all throughout our nation are dealing with this dilemma today.

However, nowhere in the US is this problem so prevalent is out here in Southern California.

Also, what's been prevalent these days in the aftermath of all the fires are the neighborhood disagreements, often among friends arguing over whether or not so many of these trees should be cut down for fire.

Precaution.

one morning I hear the chainsaws, and anytime I hear a chainsaw, it breaks my heart because I know what's going on.

Cory Jacob lives in the Conejo Valley in the line of fire.

Cory's home is in this oak Park community here in Ventura County, located a couple miles off the 101 freeway.

These dry, parched hills border her backyard, some of the same hills that were scorched beyond recognition during the Woolsey Fire.

Recently, many of the trees on these hills were cut down for safety reasons, and Cory is not happy.

And I thought, okay, maybe they're just trimming, but no, they were taking everything.

I ran outside to the, landscaping company that our HOA, uses, and I said, what's going on?

What are you doing?

And they said, fire department said, we need to get this out.

So your HOA said that the landscape has a has to be trimmed back.

So everything was cut down and it was barren and the birds were gone.

And I was crying for four days.

Cory wasn't just sad for her.

This was more than just four days of tears.

Cory explained she was kind of angry.

She's lived in this house for some 35 years, and she insists the only thing that keeps a scorching hot summer days of the Conejo Valley somewhat bearable are the giant neighborhood trees that provide lots of shade to her backyard and home interior.

Cory says without the trees, it's an urban heat island out here.

She melts in the sun with all the ultraviolet rays permeating throughout the house.

She says the trees are vital to the ecosystem out here.

it certainly cools the earth.

Cools our home.

Brings in nature.

Which I really believe that if you take away the habitats of whatever critters and creatures are here, you're disrupting the entire system.

And I get really tired of people doing that.

And all of a sudden I hear those being chopped down and nobody warned us.

so any time I see trees being removed, it breaks my heart.

I understand the fire risk, I really do.

We had the fire from the Woolsey just coming straight down behind the cul de sac, and we had to get out.

And we've been evacuated twice, I think a heavy pruning and keeping things green and watered makes a huge difference And I love to be in my garden.

And that just brings me so much peace.

But when you remove everything and.

And it's hot.

It just looked like a desert.

If I wanted to live in a desert, I'd probably go to Palm Springs.

But I really love the greenery.

And I love the animals and the birds and everything that comes here.

And I think it really brought our home, into a cooler.

Like the afternoon it comes in, and, yeah, I can get curtains and whatnot, but, I just love the the coolness of it.

Cory says she's not even going to try and contact the local fire department city, county like she used to back in the day to get them to stop the tree cutting.

She says it's just not worth the hassle.

Not worth the fight these days.

No, because I know exactly what they're going to say, which is why this happened.

And I haven't tried to do any of that because I'm sure they're going to say, look, you know, you want you live in a fire area, and we lost homes in Oak Park.

And my heart bleeds for for all of those people.

And I dread the fire season whenever the wind comes.

It makes me crazy because I don't want to lose our house either.

But you draw the limit on the trees.

Limit on the trees.

I, I'm a tree hugger.

Yes, I love trees.

Safe to say this Conejo Valley neighbor is a tree hugger.

Literally and figuratively.

Love trees?

I can't tell you how many trees I have on my own personal property.

I plant them.

I have fruit trees.

I just planted a brand new baby coastal redwood.

That's gorgeous.

I have a beautiful tree that my honeybees love.

So I plant for the ecology as well, which helps all our beautiful flowers that we have in our community.

So I'm very much into trees.

We need it.

We need trees.

Janice Metz has lived in the Camino Valley for much of her life.

Many of those years here in Oak Park near Cory J. Cole.

And for years Janice served on Mack the Municipal Advisory Council, an organization that saves trees all throughout this area.

Like the heritage oak trees, some of which have been in this neighborhood for several decades.

I love trees because they're living.

You know, we look at trees and we don't think they're living their life.

And I took a tour after the Wesley fire.

And what I find very interesting is that they're trying to blame all the stuff that was around us that was burning.

But I was the one going against 60mph wind, with all these cinders coming a mile away.

It had nothing to do with what's going to go on in my house.

None of my trees caught fire, but I could have caught fire because the cinders are coming.

So when we have catastrophes, there can be an overreaction And I know in your opinion, there has not been a good plan out here, or at least that's what you were told me off camera earlier.

None whatsoever.

Christine Dale disagrees with Janice Smits and Corey J. Cole and many of the other neighbors out here who are opposed to cutting down all the trees.

Christine says there is a good plan out here, a plan that the city, county and fire departments have implemented well over the years to keep the Canal, Valley and communities like Oak Park safe from a disastrous fire that can burn neighborhood homes to the ground in minutes.

If the land is dry enough and the Santa Ana winds are fierce enough, as was the case during the Palisades and Eden fires that completely destroyed much of those communities.

In January 2025.

I know that there have always been fires out here.

What has changed is that the climate has changed and the world has gotten so much warmer and drier, especially this area.

It's a terrible fire hazard.

Now, the Woolsey fire, I mean, it's not fires.

We've always had fires.

What we have now are mega fires that there is so much dry brush around the houses, Oak Park is newer than some of the other parts of LA and Ventura County, and it is a desert.

This is all unnatural.

It's beautiful, but it's not natural.

And this land evolved with fires.

What we're causing now are mega fires.

So I don't, I don't think we should cut down every tree.

No, but the trees that are fire dangers that are all around the homes like this for our own safety.

Christine knows all too well about those fire dangers and fire safety.

Christine says she and her cats, dogs and horses had to evacuate her Conejo Valley home three separate times over the years due to all the fire risks.

And during these past years, Christine says she's had to educate herself about all the fire challenges out here and how to mitigate those dangers.

Over the years, she's met with several firefighters and various environmental groups to find the best ways to be safe.

In the event a massive fire were to sweep through here.

I'm terrified as a homeowner.

My parents used to live in Pacific Palisades.

The home that they used to live in was just burned to the ground.

There's nothing there anymore.

Palisades has a lot of brush around it.

It has.

There were areas it hadn't been cleared in many, many decades.

It was a dangerous situation, and it's horrible what happened.

And we have a lot of the same situation out here.

I was just saying, from the end of Coreys yard there all the way through to see me is open space with brush and fires coming through here.

I mean, we also have the added problem in our neighborhood that Keenan is our one escape route.

It's the same situation as the Paradise Fire.

The fire Christine is speaking of was the deadly 2018 camp fire in Paradise, California, a mountain town in the Sierra Nevada area of northern California.

The Camp Fire leveled Paradise, killing 85 people.

Scorching more than 150,000 acres, forcing the evacuations of over 50,000 people and destroying over 18,000 structures.

The financial cost over $16 billion.

The determined cause of the fire.

A faulty PG and E electrical transmission line.

A spark coupled with the intense high speed winds and overwhelmingly dry vegetation that led to the highly combustible landscape that engulfed Paradise.

Adding to this catastrophe and the failed power line, was the fact that there were a limited number of roads leading out of town, which became gridlocked with traffic and fallen debris.

given that our evacuation route is in jeopardy, I think we have to pay really close attention to getting, neighborhoods more fireproof.

Pretty much the whole month of January, there was a new fire breaking out every day.

It was because of the Santa Ana winds and the dry conditions.

Things are especially dangerous when the winds start.

it's very much a concern.

And while these massive blazes are a great concern to all neighbors everywhere, there is also scientific research that explains wildfires, particularly forest fires, can actually benefit the environment.

they can rid forested areas of dead and decaying matter and provide natural fields during drought periods.

They can also help balance the ecosystem because they destroy disease plants and dangerous insects, and the fires even regenerate seeds because of the increased sunlight.

Unfortunately, the Palisades E10 and Woolsey fires, much like most of these massive infernos, just wreaked havoc with a perfect storm of conditions to devastate Southern California and other parts of the U.S.

with their respective wildfires.

my opinion on cutting down trees is that it needs to be very selective.

Debbie Sharpton is a founder and chair of the organization Friends of Oak Park Open Space.

Debbie is also with the Environmental Restoration Group, where she works with experts at the National Park Service, the California State Parks, and the Santa Monica mountains Conservancy, focusing on local biodiversity protection for future generations.

And Debbie is part of many tree planting projects in the area.

Debbie obviously knows that certain trees can be a potential fire hazard.

However, she, like neighbors Corey J. Cole and Janice Smith, believe the trees should not just be taken out arbitrarily, since she says most trees serve a purpose and should not be cut down.

In her opinion.

tree removal, vegetation removal in general.

So lumping trees into vegetation needs to be selective.

The old, school way of clearing down to bare soil has been proven to be wrong.

And protecting homes and for the environment.

What what the direction that the agencies have gone to with state level local levels is selective thinning.

So there are certain trees that are very flammable.

I don't have a problem with removing non-native trees, and in fact, I don't have a problem with trimming native trees.

Removing trees just because they're within a 100ft zone is wrong.

It doesn't serve any purpose for protecting humans or the environment.

The state of California has recently been cutting down many trees and other vegetation and fire danger areas all over the Golden State.

Officials say the effort is to reduce the fuel load that can lead to all the catastrophic wildfires we've been witnessing.

Wildfires that have been more frequent and more severe.

These efforts focus on both creating defensible space around homes and restoring the health of state forests.

And while the state of California tries not to cut down healthy living oak trees for fire protection like the ones found here in Oak Park of the Conejo Valley, There is kind of a catch.

While some native oaks have fire resistant features, they still have a lot of natural ladder feel that can increase fire risk.

So often, possibly even mistakenly, according to some neighbors, trees are cut down.

Many neighbors, like Debbie Sharpton, who's also a tree expert, says this should never be the case.

trees, particularly coast live oak trees, Oak trees of all species are keystone species, meaning that they are the top.

They're the top of the apex of lots of animals and plants that depend on them.

So you take away that keystone species, that apex.

You're impacting a huge umbrella of plants and animals that depend on it.

So so these trees provide shade.

They provide air.

They are carbon sequester.

They are serving our communities, our human communities with so many different services.

They shade our water, our streams.

They shade the asphalt where we're creating heat.

And so we need our trees.

I think there might be some way to keep the trees.

Keep.

Keep them watered, keep them green.

It breaks my heart when I hear that.

So I went flying outside and I see them cutting down the sister tree on the city walk.

I started crying.

I says, what is going on?

Why would he ever cut them down?

Why?

Preserving trees is not unique to Southern California.

Neighborhoods all throughout the US are taking part in the saving of Mother Nature, so to speak.

For example, in Portland, Oregon, much like in so Calles Conejo Valley, there's a project they're known as Portland's Heritage Tree Program, which began in 1993 to recognize and preserve trees with special significance to the city.

We follow the Selection Committee, a campaign of citizens and botanical experts, to find out more.

This is all part of our continuing content sharing partnership with public media and PBS stations all throughout the U.S.

for this report, we visit our public media partner, OPB, Oregon Public Broadcasting.

When Mark and Brenna Zenner bought their home in southeast Portland 16 years ago, it didn't take them long to realize that it came along with a neighborhood icon.

Wherever we're out front, somebody will note how beautiful the tree is.

One day I was out actually working on the tree, and, gentleman rode up on his bicycle and he was admiring the tree, and he.

He asked me if I knew about the Heritage Tree program.

This year, the Zenas Southern Catalpa tree is one of 25 being considered by a committee of citizens and botanic experts for membership among Portland's nearly 300 heritage trees just over 12ft.

Our Heritage Tree program started in 1993 by a group of volunteers who work with our Urban Forestry Commission and the Group of citizens.

We're looking for a way to recognize trees of special importance to the city.

So large trees, historic trees, those with special botanic value or special historic significance, and to gain recognition through city council for a special status.

That special status protects the tree from harm by development and so preserves a vital aspect of the city's character.

One of the first things that gives you a sense of place in the city is the canopy.

So on a hot summer day, you're walking along and you seek the shade of a tree.

And if you're in an older neighborhood and you see one of the most prominent members of that community, it might be a heritage tree.

One of Portland's most intriguing trees is the monkey puzzle.

All of the monkey puzzles in Portland seem to be about the same size and age, because they actually are.

They were given out at the 1905 World's Fair, part of the Lewis and Clark Expo, as gifts from chili.

And so folks came in, they went to the fair, and they came home with a little seedling that they then planted in their front yard, not knowing the size and the grandeur that it would get to be one day.

The trees are also chosen for their botanical significance.

So, for example, the Don Redwood, which was thought to be extinct but was found living in China, and those are now propagated and have been planted throughout Portland.

This American elm gracing the Art Museum Plaza was Portland's first heritage tree planted by the Berl family in 1870.

And just down the street is Heritage Tree Number two, a London plane tree planted in 1880.

This Yoshino cherry was a gift from Portland's sister cities Sapporo, Japan.

Tree number 213.

This weeping cherry is neither rare nor particularly old, but it is beautiful.

We have a split decision here.

Michael McClusky is chairman of Portland's Heritage Tree Committee.

Portland's heritage tree program is one of the more robust in the country.

It's a program that every citizen of Portland can help us refine and build.

Everybody can nominate trees to be heritage trees.

Once nominated, a tree is evaluated on several criteria.

But first, the committee has to make sure they know exactly what they're looking at.

It looks like the loblolly, but it's a little.

But I think just being on the We different than.

Yeah, we had a bit of a debate about whether or not it was a longleaf pine or a loblolly, but we're pretty sure that it's a loblolly.

It's very uncommon in Portland.

I've never seen one before.

So for loblolly, we don't have any on the list.

And that's unusual.

So yeah, it's rare and it's visible.

It's a private tree.

About half of them are privately owned.

And the landowner has to agree to put that tree into the system.

But once they do, it becomes an easement that travels with the property as it passes through various ownerships.

Yep.

Right.

Right at 100.

So I think it's about the size for what's commonly reported in the southeast.

But with our mild climate, you know, things grow fast and it's done really well.

We are blessed here in Portland by having growing conditions that are some of the best in the world for a great variety of trees, from all over the world.

Portland's mild climate, abundant rain, and sufficient warmth make it a good home for both this weeping willow that evolved to survive the bitter cold of a North China winter, as well as the southern magnolia that thrives in tropical weather.

John.

Yes, and the magnolia is regional neighbor.

The newly approved loblolly pine.

We're on to the Copper Beach.

But not all the trees that are nominated make the grade.

This is a shot of the house.

It was built somewhere between 1910 and 1912, and it seems that they planted about five of these copper beeches at that time.

And so this itty bitty guy right here is what has grown into that big beech, has nice size and dimensions, and has a nice dossier of historical materials on the property and how it looked when the trees were planted, the trees they formed.

Unfortunately, the natural character of the trees to me is gone, but it's been very poorly pruned recently and it won't recover from that.

I hate to say it.

Sad?

Yeah, sad.

Now, John, where are you?

I turned it down.

Yeah.

This is now the hammer.

No, no and no.

The final conclusion is reject.

We do the screening of 3 or 4 different levels in the process.

Did you get a hit on it?

Not yet, but at our level, we're the most discriminating.

We generally reject about three out of every four that come before us.

The evaluation process is not the only thing that strict would be the owner of a heritage tree means that you are the steward of this very special icon for the city of Portland.

That's a designation that does not come cheaply.

We as a city are able to provide assistance and to guide you and give advice and, let you know what it is that that tree needs all year.

But ultimately, it's up to the homeowner to be the caretaker.

Despite the potential expense.

Homeowners like Mark and Brenda Zenner are happy to comply.

Even though we take care of it as stewards, we feel it's our responsibility to keep the tree protected and healthy for future generations.

The case for it is that kind or type form is nice.

Beauty.

It's a good location, good condition for.

Yeah, it's a nice tree.

All right.

We have a consensus with the committee stamp of approval.

The Xena's 100 year old catalpa joins the venerable club.

It's still part of the community.

It's what makes living here so special.

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Thank you so much for joining us.