When Trees Come Down: Inside Santa Barbara’s Urban Forest Debate

Trees evoke a lot of emotion.

For some residents, a particular oak, eucalyptus, or stone pine becomes their tree — a calming presence of bark and green canopy that provides shade, beauty, permanence. You may not realize how much comfort it brings until the day that it’s gone.

The removal of trees that are decades — sometimes generations — old can feel like a loss. Yet these removals typically happen for defensible reasons: aging infrastructure, fire safety, disease, or construction.

In Santa Barbara, one project now drawing attention to that tension is the Vic Trace Reservoir Replacement Project in the Alta Mesa neighborhood.

The aging reservoir — built in the 1950s — stores 10 million gallons of treated drinking water and serves roughly 60,000 people, or about 70 percent of the city, including downtown, the Mesa, and the Westside.

To replace the aging structure and address seismic risks, the city plans to construct two underground five-million-gallon tanks on the site. The project, estimated at roughly $100 million, will also involve pipeline work and therefore excavation — it will require removing trees.

According to city plans presented to the Parks and Recreation Commission, 55 of the 108 trees on the property would be removed to accommodate construction. The trees slated for removal include seven coast live oaks, two other native species, and dozens of ornamental trees, including 26 eucalyptus, which are not native to California and are highly flammable. 

City officials say the tree removal decisions were made carefully.

“We completed a major outreach plan for the project, a strategic communications plan … and then did a lot of stakeholder research,” said Kelly Bourque, senior project engineer for Santa Barbara’s Public Works Department.

That research included biological surveys, archaeological studies, habitat assessments, and a detailed tree mapping analysis. Ultimately, engineers determined that removing about half the trees on the site was unavoidable.

“We very strategically picked exactly the 55 that we knew were likely going to have to be removed for the project,” Bourque said.

Tree removal also raises questions about wildlife habitat — particularly for birds of prey that often nest in tall eucalyptus. To address that, Bourque said the city consulted with the Ojai Raptor Center. Plans now include perches, owl boxes, and expanded shrub areas to support hunting habitat.

“Raptors don’t love dense forests,” Bourque said. “They love looking down at open areas.”

Fire safety also played a role in the design. “We worked with our local fire department on what makes the most sense,” Bourque said. This includes replacement planting. “Even if we could plant twice as many trees, that might not be the most fire wise decision,” she added.

Under the plan, the site will be replanted with native species, using trees large enough to establish successfully but not so mature that transplanting becomes risky.

“We can never put back the exact same tree at the exact same height or age,” Bourque said. Instead, the city plans to install 15-gallon trees, which she described as adolescent plants.

“Installing mature trees are way less likely to survive long term,” Bourque said. “So we’re  installing adolescent trees that are much more likely to survive and thrive.” The project will also include a multi-year monitoring plan to ensure this.

Vic Trace is only one of several recent projects that have made tree loss newly visible in Santa Barbara. Along Mission Creek downtown, ornamental sycamores were cut down this winter to make way for the next phase of flood-control widening between Gutierrez and Haley streets. At Jacaranda Court — the new 63-unit housing complex rising at Castillo and Carrillo streets — project documents show the removal of eight king palms, 15 tipu trees, and one jacaranda, despite the development’s name.

For horticulturist Carol Bornstein, the larger concern is cumulative habitat loss. “I felt like it was death by a thousand cuts,” Bornstein said.

Bornstein, who holds a bachelor’s degree in botany from the University of Michigan and a master’s in horticulture from Michigan State University, has lived in Santa Barbara for decades and previously worked at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

She says the issue extends beyond individual trees.

“When you break up these corridors of natural landscapes, you’re not just losing the plants,” Bornstein said. “You’re losing all of the organisms that depend on those plants.”

Zooming out, the majority of tree loss in Santa Barbara County has occurred far from city streets and parks. According to data compiled by Global Forest Watch, wildfire has been the primary driver of tree cover loss across the region.

The county experienced a net change of -4.6 percent in tree cover between 2000 and 2020. “From 2001 to 2024, Santa Barbara lost 110 kha [kilo hectares] of tree cover from fires and 4.2 kha from all other drivers of loss,” the organization reports. Much of that loss occurred outside city limits, in the mountains.

Within Santa Barbara itself, however, trees remain a central part of the urban landscape. The City of Santa Barbara Urban Forestry Program, part of the Parks Division, maintains approximately 35,000 street trees, more than 9,000 public trees in parks and landscaped public facilities, and roughly 30,000 additional trees.

Bornstein says the ecological importance of certain species makes individual removals especially significant. In particular, she points to coast live oaks, one of the native species slated for removal at the reservoir site.

“They are keystone species,” Bornstein said. “Hundreds of different organisms depend on oak trees for at least some portion of their life cycle.”

Even dead trees, she added, can still provide ecological value — “They can be nesting sites and perching sites for lots of creatures,” Bornstein said.

At the same time, she acknowledges that replanting younger trees can be beneficial.

“I am a strong proponent of planting younger plants,” she said. Smaller trees, she explained, often establish more quickly than large transplanted ones. Still, she emphasized that felling a tree that is generations old cannot be undone. 

For Bornstein, the future of Santa Barbara’s urban forest ultimately depends on how residents care for the landscape around them. “These ecosystems make the quality of life for us that much better,” she said.

Back at the Vic Trace Reservoir, the upgrade project remains in the planning stage. The next step is a draft Environmental Impact Report later this year, followed by public hearings before the Planning Commission. 

“The community still has numerous opportunities to provide feedback,” Bourque said. Tree removal, she noted, cannot begin unless the project receives final approval.

For the people who live nearby, though, the debate often comes down to something simpler: One of those 55 trees might be their tree.