UCLA Fells Trees on Westwood Blvd.

A chain saw’s whine drowned out protesters Tuesday as the oldest trees at UCLA--towering eucalyptuses that line its main entrance--were cut down.

Officials said they feared the historic trees were about to fall down.

The trees were among 100 eucalyptuses planted in 1929 by the Daughters of the American Revolution as the Westwood campus was being built. They shaded both sides of Westwood Boulevard through the campus between La Conte Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.

Workmen using hydraulic lifts and grinding machines made quick work of the trees as onlookers near the UCLA alumni center looked on disapprovingly.

“It’s typical California,” said neuroscience student Leslie Lusk, 20, of Tustin. “Just knock down anything that’s historical or has meaning and put in a palm tree.”

Actually, say UCLA officials, they intend to replace the eucalyptuses with Canary Island pines. Most will be small, but about a dozen will be mature 40-footers relocated from a nearby site being developed for student housing.

Canary Island pines are “more appropriate for roadway borders” than eucalyptuses, Peter Blackman, a campus administrative vice chancellor, advised other UCLA administrators in a memo.

Blackman said a row of eucalyptuses along UCLA’s northern Sunset Boulevard boundary near University Elementary School also will be chopped down and replanted with small pines.

Only the thick stumps of eucalyptuses already removed from UCLA’s south entrance remained Tuesday. A pair of bronze plaques cemented into the ground near the intersection of Le Conte and Westwood were still in place, however:

“Trees presented to UCLA by California State Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1929, honoring presidents of the United States.”

The chain-sawing was condemned by environmentalists who contend that the community was not informed in time to have independent arborists evaluate the eucalyptuses.

“It’s outrageous,” said Westwood lawyer Catherine Rich, a UCLA graduate who heads The Urban Wildlands Group and is a past president of the Los Angeles Audubon Society.

“In the old days UCLA had a tremendous commitment to trees. Now they lean toward trees in pots--and those kinds don’t count,” she said. “The landscaping at UCLA is a wonderful legacy that is being treated shamefully.”

Jan Scow, a registered consulting arborist from Sherman Oaks, traveled to UCLA to photograph the chopping. “To remove them all in the name of safety is misrepresentation,” said Scow, also a UCLA graduate. “There was no reason to remove some of these trees. This was overkill.”

But the action was defended by Jack Powazek, UCLA’s assistant vice chancellor of facilities. He said that about 30 of the original DAR eucalyptuses have already been lost to disease or old age--including one that fell on a car last fall. That incident prompted the university to have arborists inspect all of them.

“It’s strictly a safety issue,” he said. “The possibility of a tree falling and hurting somebody or killing them is something we cannot ignore. We didn’t leap out the first time a tree fell and say, ‘Let’s cut them down.’ It took us a while to get to this place.”

And it will take a while for the new trees to grow enough to replace the old ones, grumbled those watching the shower of sawdust fall on the campus.

“I’ll miss them. They were beautiful trees,” said Hulin Huang, a mechanical engineering staff researcher. “This is very unfortunate.”