Mountain View Cemetery wants to cut down hundreds of coast live oaks, the tree that gave Oakland its name.

The nonprofit board that operates the cemetery is seeking the city’s OK to remove at least 200 trees, some more than a century old, and move 115,000 cubic feet of soil to develop three areas in the back reaches of the cemetery.

The clearing would make room for about 6,000 more plots over 15 to 20 years.

“We like trees, too,” said cemetery General Manager and CEO Jeff Lindeman, who estimates there are about 5,000 on Mountain View’s 220-some acres.

But without the expansion, he said, the cemetery would become “close to capacity in a handful of years.”

The city Planning Commission was presented a 600-page draft environmental impact report this summer, and planners are going through commission concerns and public comments as they prepare a final report.

That review will take at least three months, city planner Catherine Payne said. The Planning Commission then will decide whether to approve the project.

The planning department’s role is to neither endorse nor oppose the project, Payne said. Planners only analyze its compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act and local ordinances.

Oakland has a tree protection ordinance that requires permits for removing coast live oaks of 4 inches or more in diameter, and most other trees 9 inches or more in diameter.

The ordinance does allow a tree to be cut down in some cases, including to prevent a hazard, preserve a view, avoid unconstitutional taking of property, or follow accepted forestry, landscape design or vegetation management practices.

It lists four grounds for refusing a permit: If redesigning a project would make tree removal unnecessary; if the tree is one of an interdependent group; if drainage, erosion, windscreen or land stability issues that could result have not been addressed; or if the tree’s value is more than the cost of preserving it.

If a permit is granted, each tree must be replaced with a sapling from a list of tree species, including coast live oaks and redwoods, in a 24-inch nursery box, or with three saplings from 15-inch nursery boxes.

Mountain View Cemetery’s proposal includes a replacement provision.

Payne said that in large part explains why, her office wrote, “Tree removal is identified as a less-than-significant impact with the incorporation of standard conditions of approval, including compliance with the city of Oakland protected tree ordinance and related tree replacement requirements.”

The draft environmental impact report includes redesign suggestions that would save 24 coast live oaks and one eucalyptus which, though not protected by law, is “a dominant tree in the existing landscape.”

The California Native Plant Society has been the most vocal opponent of the plan. Its 17-page response to the report urges revisions to the landscape plan that would rethink the removal of “huge trees approaching 100 to 200 years in age … a very important ecological web of life.”

“They’re not giving much due to the value of the existing oak trees,” Jean Robertson, conservation committee chair of the group’s East Bay chapter, said in an interview.

“Those trees have been there for a very long time. Let’s not be so hasty,”she said.

Both the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club said they were not aware of the proposal in time to formulate an opinion, although the former did note the cemetery is a sanctuary for wildlife, migrating birds in particular.

In December 2014, some 45 different species of birds (486 individuals) were spotted there, from finches, robins, woodpeckers, sparrows, hummingbirds and bluebirds to hawks, mallard ducks, wild turkeys, cormorants, coots and 51 crows.

The plant society argues that the replacement trees take a lot more water to nurture, and the substitution of redwoods, as proposed in the project, is inappropriate to the site, given their different environmental needs, particularly water requirements.

“You can’t just trade one species for another willy-nilly,” Robertson said. “It would take generations to replace these native coastside oaks,” she said.

“The whole reason they’re doing this is to build up their endowment fund,” she said. “It’s bizarre to think they’re protected. They’re not. It’s government-speak. It’s get out your rubber stamp.”

Mountain View’s Lindeman also mentioned the endowment that funds the cemetery’s upkeep. Burials, he said, run from $15,000 to $25,000, depending on location. There’s also a separate endowment fee that is dedicated to the cemetery’s perpetual care.

“This development is important to the cemetery’s long-term goal of augmenting the trust fund,” he said in an interview.

The plant society also cites the brief one-year time window in which the cemetery is promising to nurture the new trees, and points out that some oaks in more visible parts of the cemetery, such as at the entrance, are suffering from the watering that the surrounding lawns require.

“The irony of the cemetery is that old established oaks lower down are slowly dying from overwatering, while healthy existing oaks higher up, that require no summer water in these so-far-undeveloped areas, are slated to be ripped out,” the letter reads.

Contact Mark Hedin at 510-293-2452, 408-759-2132 or mhedin@bayareanewsgroup.com.