Arborist Loren Westenberger moved a 100-year-old live oak 120 feet from the center of the lot where an addition to the Church of Scientology is being built in Clearwater, Florida.
ew organizations today are not faced with environmental issues—whether they be on the order of the waste of natural resources in day-to-day operations or the full-scale destruction of geographical regions for the sake of development.

Strategies and technology for protecting our planet are consistently being developed. As these become more accessible, they will increasingly be integrated into our everyday lives at home and at work.

Such was the case with the recent record-making preservation of a mammoth, century-old oak tree in Clearwater, Florida.

When the Church of Scientology planned to start major construction at the end of 1998 on a new facility in Clearwater, Florida—the home of its international advanced spiritual retreat—it was confronted with the question of what to do with an oak tree that stood close to the middle of the lot. This was no ordinary tree. It stood 65 feet tall and weighed about 125 tons. Its trunk was 44 inches thick, and its boughs reached more than 40 yards across the lot. The tree’s life began when the city’s name was two words, Clear Water and when Fort Harrison Avenue and Cleveland Street were paved with shells from a local Indian mound.