"I've got the same feeling I get when I see cattle on their way to slaughter," he said. "Don't get me wrong — I'm not a doggone tree-hugger. It's just that sometimes making the world a better place means saving the better things in it."
Owens is a leader in an eleventh-hour campaign to prevent the county from cutting down 179 coast live oaks and an estimated 70 sycamores in an 11-acre canyon area overlooking Arcadia that is scheduled to become a spreading ground for 500,000 cubic yards of silt, rocks and vegetation scooped out of Santa Anita Reservoir.
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There is more at stake than the fate of the old oaks and the quiet seclusion they provide for woodpeckers and warblers, salamanders and deer.
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Owens, a Monrovia city planning commissioner who lives a half-mile from the grove, has been trying for several weeks to persuade department officials to dump the sediment on adjacent county lands that are devoid of trees.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oaks-20101204,0,1304653.story