Sonoma fire survivor mourns ‘murdered' trees

It was bad enough when Ramona Nicholson’s family home, her father’s house, 10 outbuildings and her beloved blue Jaguar XK8 convertible burned in the October wildfires. But then, two weeks ago, she was hit by another unexpected loss.

“I was taking a walk around my property and I discovered that seven healthy oak trees had been cut down,” Nicholson said. “I was just heartbroken because most of my property burned during the fires and many, many of my oak trees died, but those trees made it through.”

The 40-foot-tall trees were sawed off at the base and left where they fell on a knoll on the back portion of her 160-acre Napa Road property in unincorporated Sonoma. The fire survivor isn’t sure when it happened, but the last time she had walked that part of her property was Sept. 13, and she discovered the loss last Friday.

“It’s a violation,” Nicholson said. “First of all, that they trespassed, and secondly that they murdered the trees.”

under section 384(a) of California’s Public Health and Safety Code, it is illegal for a person to “willfully or negligently cut, destroy, mutilate or remove plant material that is growing upon … land that is not his or hers without a written permit from the owner of the land.”

Nicholson has installed motion sensor cameras around the site in case a repeat incident should take place.

Nicholson is in the process of rebuilding her family home, which her parents purchased in 1961. She checked with the work crews who are rebuilding and fixing her fences to makes sure none of them mistakenly chopped down the trees “before I jumped to the conclusion that an outsider had done this,” she said. Once she was assured that this hadn’t happened, she called the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department.

“This is not a common occurrence. I don’t know how it happened,” said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum. “I don’t know why someone would do that, if it was blocking someone’s view or a misunderstanding with an arborist. They clearly didn’t do it for firewood if they left the wood sitting there.”

The sheriff’s office is investigating the case, but has no leads at present, Crum said.

“The motive is unknown at this time,” he said.

With the trees felled, there is now an unobscured view of the San Pablo Bay from the area, according to Nicholson, who wondered if that had anything to do with the felled trees.

Presently, the trees are still on the ground, but “a friend came up with the idea, since I lost my house in the fire and the trees are so big, we came up with a little lemonade,” Nicholson said.

“We are looking into whether we can somehow salvage and mill the wood and use it as part of the rebuilding of my home,” so the trees can live on in a different form, she said.

Reach Janis Mara at janis.mara@sonomanews.com.