Activist Julia ‘Butterfly’ Hill​ visits Pasadena with a message: ‘Stand strong’ against PUSD tree removals

Almost 30 years on from her two-year stay in a California redwood, environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill looked up with pride Wednesday, July 8, as Pasadena’s next generation continued the fight to preserve trees.

Hill, along with fellow tree-sitter and activist John Quigley, visited the Pasadena Unified School District main office property Wednesday afternoon, where local tree advocates have been sitting with and in trees for the last month.

A small group had gathered inside fencing put up by removal crews on Oak Knoll Avenue and 16-year-old PUSD student Lila Stevens climbed up and sat in a tree.

“One of the things I’m deeply passionate about is supporting young people, because the choices that are being made today are affecting the world that they’re inheriting,” Hill said. “People aren’t taking responsibility for that long-term impact. They’re thinking short-sighted.”

Hill was tagged in a post on social media of 17-year-old Pasadena resident Paloma Muniz-Ochoa, who last month spent eight hours up in a tree on the district office property. Hill reached out to local advocates to see how she could help and then called up Quigley.

In 2002 and 2003, Quigley spent more than 70 days in a valley oak in the Santa Clarita Valley, which helped save the historic tree.

Hill gained national notoriety when she lived in a California redwood tree in Humboldt County for 738 days between 1997 and 1999.

“I saw a couple videos of Paloma and was so inspired by the purity of her voice and it brought me back to my early days as a forest activist,” Quigley said. “I’m just honored to be here and it’s so cool to see this generation rising up and this is just a classic situation of myopic bureaucrats who are making a decision that they think is an easy one, a safe one, but it’s not the best one for the health of the community.”

Hill stopped by the PUSD main office a few hours before she was scheduled to appear at a fundraiser event put on by Friends of PUSD Trees at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church.

“I tell people, if you like to breathe you’re an environmentalist, whether you think you’re one or not,” Hill said.

Since early June, a group of tree advocates have tied themselves to trees or sat for in them for hours on end in an attempt to prevent more than 100 tree from being removed. PUSD is removing the trees as part of a soil remediation project necessitated by contaminants left in the soil from the January 2025 Eaton fire.

“You have to kind of do something to bring people’s awareness to what’s going on,” Hill said.

In a Wednesday morning statement, a district spokesperson said any delays to the work being done this summer keeps students “further from safely returning to fully restored campuses,” for the 2026-2027 school year.

The statement came in response to the city of Pasadena notifying PUSD that its work is subject to the city’s tree protection ordinance, which requires a permit to remove a protected tree.

“PUSD continued removal activity at various sites which has resulted in the posting of stop work orders,” City spokesperson Lisa Derderian said in a statement. “The city must conduct inspections to determine what trees are protected and therefore subject to the ordinance. The city has not been granted permission to conduct the inspections, and the stop work orders remain in effect.”

Local tree advocate Jessica Richards said PUSD has the opportunity take another path to address contaminated soil that does not impact trees.

Hill urged the Pasadena City Council, which is meeting in closed session Wednesday night for the “consideration of initiation of litigation,” to step up to protect the endangered trees.

“I’m calling, and the community’s calling, on them to actually stand strong and say ‘enough is enough’ and take any action they possibly can to be an ally with this community,” Hill said.