A victory for tree retention in Seattle: Luma the western red cedar won’t be cut down

The City of Seat­tle announced today that it has reached an agree­ment with the Sno­qulamie Tribe, lender Lega­cy Cap­i­tal, and Lega­cy’s part­ners to pre­serve a large, healthy west­ern red cedar locat­ed on a par­cel in the Wedg­wood neigh­bor­hood, in an impor­tant and hope­ful­ly prece­dent-set­ting vic­to­ry for tree retention.

The tree, affec­tion­ate­ly named Luma, has become glob­al­ly famous this sum­mer after cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion activists ral­lied to save it. Among those activists are sev­er­al who have coura­geous­ly act­ed to pro­tect Luma from chain­saws with their own bod­ies. Tak­ing the pseu­do­nym Droplet, they have staged a week­s­long sit-in, with the help of ground crews and a sup­port­ive neighbor.

Though ini­tial­ly unco­op­er­a­tive and resis­tant to appeals to pro­tect the tree, Lega­cy, Rock House Builders (the prop­er­ty own­er), and Bad Boyz GC (the con­trac­tor) have now agreed to leave Luma stand­ing and mod­i­fy their plans for the parcel.

Tree pro­tec­tion activists scru­ti­niz­ing the behav­ior of Lega­cy and its part­ners have found that they often revise the site plans they sub­mit to the city so they can chop down trees that they do not actu­al­ly need to cut in order to con­struct new homes on those parcels, which is just deplorable. A pavil­ion set up near Luma has a print­ed copy of one of the site plans that shows the tree intact.

I pho­tographed this plan yes­ter­day when I vis­it­ed Luma. Here’s what it looks like:

Luma is locat­ed on the edge of the par­cel that Lega­cy is rede­vel­op­ing. It is esti­mat­ed to be sev­er­al hun­dred years old and is con­sid­ered a cul­tur­al­ly mod­i­fied tree. That means it was altered by our indige­nous Coast Sal­ish peoples.

The Sno­qualmie Tribe has explained that ances­tors would shape the boughs of trees such as Luma to pro­vide direc­tions to impor­tant sites. Luma was appar­ent­ly used to denote the pres­ence of a trail sys­tem that pre­ced­ed Seat­tle’s founding.

The tribe has been active­ly work­ing to save Luma for sev­er­al weeks.

This can­not be empha­sized enough: Lega­cy does not need to remove Luma in order to build new homes on the prop­er­ty it pur­chased. Luma is not stand­ing in the way of the rede­vel­op­ment of the prop­er­ty. It is not an obsta­cle or bar­ri­er to the con­struc­tion of hous­ing. Rather, it is a neigh­bor­hood icon, a cli­mate action resource, a cul­tur­al trea­sure, and a con­nec­tion to our past.

A com­pa­ny named Lega­cy ought to have under­stood that from the get-go. It should­n’t have tak­en a com­mu­ni­ty out­cry, sit-in, and glob­al media cov­er­age to get Lega­cy and its part­ners to recon­sid­er and com­mit to doing the right thing.

“Trees and hous­ing are both crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to Seattle’s future,” Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell said in a state­ment. “Work­ing togeth­er, I’m grate­ful for the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach embraced by the own­er, builder, lender, and Sno­qualmie Tribe to reach a solu­tion pre­serv­ing this cul­tur­al­ly mod­i­fied tree and allow­ing for much need­ed hous­ing. We look for­ward to con­tin­ued part­ner­ship with Tribes and region­al Native lead­ers to iden­ti­fy and pro­tect cul­tur­al­ly mod­i­fied trees in our city.”

NPI’s research has repeat­ed­ly found that mas­sive majori­ties of Seat­tle vot­ers sup­port poli­cies to max­i­mize tree reten­tion and grow the Emer­ald City’s urban forests. Years of tree canopy decline have left Seat­tleites worried.

A super­ma­jor­i­ty of spe­cial elec­tion vot­ers told us in Jan­u­ary they are con­cerned about tree loss as rede­vel­op­ment takes place. What almost hap­pened to Luma shows why they have good rea­son to be concerned.

If you’d like to read our tree pro­tec­tion find­ings, nav­i­gate to these posts:

• Seat­tle vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly favor poli­cies to pro­tect and expand the city’s tree canopy
• Sec­ond set of Seat­tle tree pro­tec­tion poll find­ings affirms vot­ers val­ue urban forests
• Two-thirds of Seat­tle vot­ers con­cerned about tree loss with hous­ing den­si­ty increasing

Our team would like to see tree pro­tec­tion embraced by more urban­ists in Seat­tle’s pro­gres­sive com­mu­ni­ty. Our urban forests are an essen­tial resource for mit­i­gat­ing cli­mate dam­age and cre­at­ing healthy neigh­bor­hoods that peo­ple want to live in. Trees pro­vide shade, pro­tec­tion from noise pol­lu­tion, and essen­tial habi­tat for birds and oth­er crea­tures. They enhance our spir­i­tu­al well-being and con­nec­tion to nature. There is no “tech­nol­o­gy” we can invent to address cli­mate dam­age that will ever be supe­ri­or to what nature has giv­en us.

Trees like Luma are not an imped­i­ment to attain­able hous­ing and denser com­mu­ni­ties. Rather, they are an asset — and that is how we need to treat them.