It is a shameful thing that the City of Los Angeles through the Department of Animal Control allowed the chopping down of over a dozen mature pepper trees that provided nesting locations for birds and shade for animals and customers of the East Valley Animal Shelter in Van Nuys.

It is sad that the trees were destroyed in order to hang banners and that this was arranged and funded by animal welfare activists Pamelyn Ferdin, of Animal Defense League-Los Angeles, and Steven Jay Bernheim of the Bernheim Foundation.
It is also really dysfunctional, though not surprising, that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is touting the Million Trees LA initiative, a tree planting program, while another city official is cutting mature trees down.

It is ironic that “the pepper trees were integral to the $23.2 million,
LEEDS-certified East Valley shelter. Financed by voter-approved
Proposition F bonds, it opened in May 2007 to replace the old Van Nuys
pound.” (Daily News ( Los Angeles) 

LEEDS stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”!

I believe that those of us interested in animal welfare should be mindful of conservation and environmental issues as well. Protecting the
environment helps us all, not just a specific bird in a specific tree. Safeguarding the planet’s resources sustains both animal
and human life forms as the ecosystems and food chains are all
interconnected and symbiotic. To do otherwise seems inconsistent and self-defeating.

“The sun, the moon, and the stars would have disappeared long ago, had they happened to be within reach of predatory human hands.” – Havelock Ellis