On April 15, groundskeeping crew, students, community members and self-described “hippies” gathered around the foot of a tree between Knight Library and the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. An invitation stapled to the tree had invited them to “A chance to acknowledge the loss and share a tree-ful moment.”

The tree, a pin oak which had stood for nearly a century, had to come down after an aggressive oak bracket fungus infection was discovered.

“This condition and the high traffic nature of the area necessitate its controlled removal to avoid a catastrophic failure,” a notice of tree removal stapled to the oak said.

The 3,500 trees that cover University of Oregon’s 295-acre are a major characteristic and selling point for the university.

This year UO Head Arborist Beckett DeChant began holding commemorative ceremonies to honor the removal of campus trees — the first of their kind held by the university.

At the ceremony, Associate Professor of Religious Studies Jeff Schroeder read a prayer that students in his class, Religion and Climate Change, had written.

“May we learn to be grateful, may we learn to give back to the earth,” Schroeder read in the opening.

At the close of this gathering, some attendees hugged the tree or placed a hand on its trunk.

Five days later, the tree was brought down, its wood turned into chips or used as nurse logs: portions of fallen trees that are left to provide support for other plants in the ecosystem.

“One of the things that I hope comes from this is some sort of nucleus of people who do care about trees and what is happening to them across campus,” DeChant said at a subsequent gathering on April 23, at a Douglas fir between McKenzie and Lillis Halls.

The Douglas fir, which stood since 1890, had developed Schweinitzii butt rot, a fungus that weakens the structural core and is only visible in late summer and early fall.

“It’s not surprising,” DeChant said. “Because of the age class of these trees and the injuries that have happened over the years.”

DeChant pointed to what he believed to be a “well-healed lightning strike,” which could have been the entry point for the infection — possibly decades ago.

In addition to the fungus, a large number of ants were found, suggesting cavities in the tree where they were living.

In a forest or unpopulated area, these growths would not be cause for alarm, but their proximity to high traffic walkways, lecture halls and bike routes made leaving the tree “too much of a gam- ble to sleep well at night,” DeChant said.

The Douglas fir came down on April 24. Like the pin oak, the tree was turned into woodchips and nurse logs to be placed in the same area where it once stood.

“I love walking around the campus,” Schroeder said. “I love beauty. I love the old trees and I do hear that the beauty of this campus and all of its trees and greenery is a major draw to students.”

Kaden Applegate, a student from Colorado, agreed, as he walked by the ceremony on his way to class in McKenzie Hall.

“I think it’s one of the huge reasons I came to UO, actually, was the kind of incorporation of nature, even in a city,” he said. “A lot of other schools I looked at had no green spaces and so I think it was just really important for me to have a connection with nature.”

One of those trees, reportedly a 50-foot white pine, collapsed in February 2025 amid a prolonged windstorm, striking a student, Olivia Rose Edwards. Edwards has since sued the university and Fortis Construction Inc. for injuries that left her paraplegic.

Edwards’ complaint also alleges that Fortis Construction Inc., who was at the time renovating Villard and University Halls, “Had a duty to curtail the risk of foreseeable danger.” The suit says that the temporary path created by fencing erected by Fortis during renovations made them responsible for the harm sustained by the falling tree.

Edwards also alleges that the university removed evidence of the tree collapse prior to it being inspected by experts to determine the cause of the collapse.

“Despite the university being on notice of its requirement to preserve evidence of this Matter, specifically including the remains of the tree, the university destroyed the remains of the tree,” the complaint read.

The university has since denied wrongdoing.

A wide and storied variety of trees can be found across campus: The Douglas fir between the Erb Memorial Union and Carson Hall grew from a seedling that orbited the moon on the Apollo XIV mission. The Dawn Redwood near Pacific Hall was once thought to be extinct before its rediscovery in China in 1943. The eight Pyramidal English Oaks on the Memorial Quadrangle were planted in memory of the senior class president who drowned in a canoeing accident at the Mill Race in 1939.

These are just some of the “Campus Trees of Interest” identified by Campus Planning & Facilities Management.

In their Campus Tree Plan, some benefits of trees are recognized as “aesthetic, environmental, educational, historical, and psychological,” the document said.

Maintaining the thousands of trees is a year- round task for the landscape and grounds crew.

According to records obtained by The Daily Emerald through a public records request, upwards of $50,000 a year is spent on tree maintenance alone by the university. These costs cover regular upkeep, debris management and the removal of old or damaged trees.