Oakland Fines Property Owners Nearly $1 Million for Cutting Down Protected Trees

Oakland’s City Council voted Tuesday to fine a couple nearly $1 million for removing 38 legally protected trees on and around their Claremont Avenue property.

The fine comes after weeks of contentious back-and-forth over ecological conservation, environmental equity and the enforcement of Oakland’s tree protection laws — and years after city officials first warned the property owners about removing trees without permits.

Matthew Bernard, who owns a hillside lot of more than 11,700 square feet with his partner, Lynn Warner, said in the City Council meeting that some of the trees removed from his property nearly four years ago were “dead, dying, leaning,” or in “hazardous condition.” Bernard also unsuccessfully asked the city for a resolution that would allow him to replant trees after construction on the undeveloped lot.

Around 20 public speakers, however, including a mix of residents and conservation advocates, argued that the old-growth coast live oak trees that were clear-cut from the property were irreplaceable parts of the city’s ecosystem.

“Trees of that size are not commercially available for replacement. Even with replanting, it will take decades, even centuries, to restore the ecological and protective functions that were lost,” said Erys Gagnez, a community tree specialist with the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation, a nonprofit that supports public park access. “The scale of the fine reflects this reality.”

The city fined Bernard and Warner $915,135.40 and placed a lien on their property that will prevent them from developing or selling the land until the fine is paid.

Councilmembers Janani Ramachandran, Noel Gallo, Kevin Jenkins, Zac Unger and Charlene Wang voted for the fine. Rowena Brown, Carroll Fife and Ken Houston voted against.

Public records show that city workers responded to the site on a steep slope in the Oakland hills five times for reports of illegal tree-cutting between Feb. 2, 2021, and May 17, 2022, and that Bernard received verbal and written warnings from city employees and police for the unpermitted removals. The area is residential, but otherwise forested.

At a previous discussion on April 14, the council failed to reach a consensus on what penalty the couple should face. The vote ended in a tie that Mayor Barbara Lee declined to break, but Gallo was not present and was counted as a “no.” On Tuesday, his “yes” vote broke the tie.

During the April hearing, Ramachandran said she would refuse to approve of anything less than the full penalty. While other councilmembers considered lowering the fine, Ramachandran asserted that a lesser consequence would undermine city law.

“We are called ‘Oakland’ for a reason,” Ramachandran said during the meeting. “ We have less than 4,500 oak trees in this city right now, because of the destruction and development over the decades.”

The April hearing drew over a dozen members of the public to the podium.

Among them was Saumitra Kelkar, a biologist and science educator whose Instagram posts about the removals have garnered thousands of views. He said the native oak trees in the city’s hills create a unique microclimate that holds onto moisture and resists burning.

“This was a natural shaded fuel break, which was going to severely impede the ability of a wildfire to travel through that area,” Kelkar said. Now that the trees are gone, he said, it’s going to be“much easier for a much faster fire to burn much hotter, and cause a lot more destruction.”

Kelkar, who recalled coming to the location as a college student to forage for edible mushrooms and spot native wildlife like salamanders, said it was “gut-wrenching” to revisit the site in advance of the April hearing.

”Even if Matthew Bernard is required to reforest that entire hillside, it’s going to take decades or centuries for the populations of [wildlife] to actually return,” he said.

Public works staff determined the fine based on species and the diameter of the tree stumps.

Bernard and Warner would also be responsible for compensating the city for costs. The trees felled included several in a neighbor’s yard, and one on government-owned land.

Almost all of these were native trees. City laws prevent these plants from being cut down within city limits based on size and species, even on private property.

The city does permit the removal of protected trees for construction, but documents from the city’s Public Works department show that the couple did not complete the required process before beginning to remove the trees.

Ramachandran told KQED that since the meeting, she’s received a flurry of messages from constituents responding to what happened. She said that out of the hundreds of messages received from Oakland residents, “not a single email, not a single phone call, not a single DM, not a single text message” favors “anything less than the full fine” for Bernard.

Bernard and Warner declined KQED’s requests for interviews.

But during the April hearing, Bernard told the council that he and Warner did “everything in [their] willpower” to follow the law in the plan to develop the property. Ramachandran was not convinced.

“This was a knowing violation of our Tree Protection Ordinance, and we need to comply with our existing law and fine him the amount as recommended by city staff,” she told KQED.

During the hearing, Fife pushed back on whether the tree protection law was being enforced fairly.

Fife asked, “Why a Black man should be the first to receive consequences for things that white people have been doing for centuries,” referring to the region’s history of racial segregation based on legal measures, like redlining.

Bernard is a Nigerian immigrant. Earlier, his partner, Warner, had alleged to the council that when they initially purchased the property, other residents in the neighborhood had made racist comments and threats to Bernard.

“I  did not want to bring up race, but goddamn it, it is a part of what we’re discussing,” Fife said, though she clarified that she did not agree with Bernard’s actions.

Fife was not available for comment before publication.

Ramachandran agreed that the situation and Oakland’s historical context presented racial equity issues.

“We have a very racist history in the hills. I certainly would not have been able to be [a] councilmember of this district as of not that long ago,” she told KQED.

However, she said, the city council should uphold the law as it’s written, and she stands by her commitment to the full penalty.

“I’m Indian, my husband’s Nigerian, and our son is both,” Ramachandran continued. “And the three of us would not be able to live in my district at all, given the legacy of redlining. That doesn’t mean that we should give a pass to people that look like us.”

Ramachandran told KQED she’s considering revisions to the tree protections with the rest of the council — including a statute of limitations to help the city address violations in a timely way.

“ I really do think that city staff messed up and dropped the ball back in 2021 when they had first found out,” she said. “Right then and there, they should have issued this notice of violation and brought it to council and brought forward the charges.”

KQED’s Elize Manoukian contributed to this report.