The world's oldest oak tree has been spared from destruction in Southern California after a years-long battle to protect the land around it. Conservation groups fought the city of Jurupa Valley to protect the Jurupa Oak, an ancient Palmer's oak, from a new development just 550 feet away, warning it could cause environmental harm.
The Jurupa Oak is not known for its height, but rather its length. The shrub-looking oak covers nearly 80 feet of Jurupa Valley. Tribal groups and environmental organizations had called on the city to create a 100-acre buffer for the tree, but their demands were denied in the approval of the development, which includes around 1,700 homes, a business park and a school.
The Center for Biological Diversity, along with other conservation groups, escalated the fight by suing the city in October 2024. The lawsuit claimed that the city approved the project without assessing the potential harm to the 13,000-year-old tree. City officials failed to “reduce the project’s wildfire risks, greenhouse gas emissions, wildlife harms, water supply concerns and other environmental consequences,” the centre said in a press release at the time.
On Tuesday, the centre celebrated an agreement reached by the conservation groups and developers to protect about 55 acres of open land near the oak tree. “I’m relieved that we can steer development away from an oak that’s so special it can’t be found anywhere else in the world,” Aruna Prabhala, a senior attorney at the centre, said in a statement.
Jurupa Valley Mayor Brian Berkson told The Independent he was “very pleased” to hear of the agreement. Berkson said that he had voted against the development in 2024, “based on my belief that the 450 foot buffer of protection of the Jurupa Oak was arbitrary and did not protect the Oak well enough.” The agreement also expands the buffer around the oak, moving the nearest border from 450 feet to 1,000 feet away from the tree.
