Why Some Bay Area Homeowners Poison Their Trees

The fine

Poisoning your own tree sounds insane until you see the fine. In Palo Alto, cutting down a protected tree without a permit costs $10,000 per tree¹ or twice the cost of replacing it, whichever is higher. A native oak is protected² once its trunk is 11.5 inches across.

Oakland fined a couple $915,000 this year for cutting down 38 protected trees. The city also put a lien on their lot, so they can't build on it or sell it until they pay.³

Some people don't cut them

They poison the roots, wait a year, then apply for a dead tree removal permit. The lot clears and the view opens up.

The motive is freeing the dirt. One oak in the wrong spot decides how much house you can build.

Except cities caught on

A dead tree still needs a permit to remove⁴ and a good arborist may be able to tell it was killed on purpose.

If so, they pay anyway. Palo Alto's code names poisoning as a form of removal, and the penalty starts at the same $10,000 per tree. ⁵

The city can also freeze development on the lot for up to five years. The tree they killed to build might just become the reason they can't.