Trees Cut Down Near Malley Center

Decision comes after Facilities determined they posed a safety hazard and abided by campus tree care plan

While walking to class, students may have noticed an altered natural landscape near popular campus locations. After finals in December, the Facilities Department removed a number of trees by the Malley Center and removed branches on the west side of O’Connor, significantly altering the appearance of these spots.

Near Malley, the long-standing Modesto Ash trees were removed after facilities determined that they posed safety concerns to people and buildings. Katie Leisenring, the facilities operations sustainability coordinator, explained that the potential hazards the trees’ structural instabilities caused outweighed the importance of maintaining the canopy. 

“Facilities made the decision to take out the trees outside of Malley because they were 40 to 50 years old,” said Leisenring. “At the crotches of the trees, they were prone to splitting. That poses a safety risk towards people.” 

This is not the first time trees have had to be unearthed near the building, explained Chris Young, the assistant director of buildings and grounds. 

“5 trees at Malley have been removed over the last 8-10 years due to limb failure,” Young said. 

Despite the removal, Facilities is slated to plant Raywood Ash trees to create a new canopy outside of Malley. This planting is scheduled to occur around late February. According to Leisenring, these trees would not be prone to the same structural problems as the Modesto Ash trees. 

Students may also notice many branches removed from the tall evergreens on the other side of campus near O’Connor. The pruning was implemented to prevent the trees from interfering with each others’ growth and causing damage to the building, and is part of a five-year maintenance routine. 

The process of clearing branches and taking down the trees near Malley and O’Connor was well-considered, according to the Center for Sustainability. Lindsey Kalkbrenner, the director of the Center, states that these decisions represent a holistic approach to properly managing the campus environment. 

“They were very deliberate in their decision-making process,” Kalkbrenner said. “Their plan is to make sure that we can still have an urban canopy in a way that doesn't hurt people, because branches had already been breaking.”

Kalkbrenner says that the replacement and further addition of trees will be a net positive for the Center for Sustainability’s mission of achieving climate neutrality.

“If we look at the big picture, we’re moving in the right direction because they’re replacing those trees with more trees than were there,” Kalkbrenner said. “We always have to approach sustainability from a systematic perspective, and you have to account for peoples’ well-being at the same time. I think, ultimately, we're going to come out on the positive end of things.”

Any consideration of tree removal on campus must abide by the Tree Care plan, which was instituted in 2017 and is enforced by Facilities. The plan stipulates that trees determined to be “structurally weak, invasive, a safety hazard, or in competition with desired species,” will be removed or relocated by a contractor hired by University Operations unless it is small enough to be managed by the Facilities crew. There are currently no plans to cut down any other trees on campus.

Leisenring hopes that discussions regarding the state of campus trees, such as the ones that were once by Malley, will encourage students to participate in more Sustainability programs. On March 7, the Center for Sustainability will be hosting an Arbor Day Event in the Mission Gardens from 2:00-4:00 p.m. where students can learn how to participate in the Center’s Tree Trackers program.

Leisenring assured that Tree Trackers will not be affected by the recent tree maintenance decisions. Given that the campus has over 2,000 trees, the pruning and removal of a few will not impact students’ ability to gather data on their health and potentially adopt one.