120-year-old live oak spared.

"I am amazed to see the number of people who will stand up for a tree," said Kelli Peltier, neighbor to an ancient live oak standing alongside state highway 90 (the Old Spanish Trail) near New Iberia, Louisiana. New Iberia, situated along Bayou Teche, is known locally as the City of Live Oaks. That's because it's home to dozens of 100-plus-year-old oaks registered with the Live Oak Society, an organization dedicated to preserving southern live oak trees.

The oak near Peltier's home, named "Mr. Al" after her grandfather, has a circumference of 20 feet 7 inches, a canopy spread of 104 feet, and is estimated to be 120 to 150 years old. When she learned the oak was slated for removal by the state Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD) as part of a road construction project, she began a search for help.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

She found it through Susan Hester Edmunds and several other willing members of The Optimist Club as well as a variety of private citizens and conservation groups in and around New Iberia. According to Edmunds. The Optimist Club plants a tree every year as part of its Arbor Day celebration. "This year when the issue was brought to our attention, we decided that instead of just planting a tree, we'd try to help save one."

Volunteers began a letter-writing campaign and sent an online petition to the DOTD and state officials. The DOTD was sympathetic, but its choices were limited by strict rules relating to future plans to expand the state highway into a portion of Interstate Highway.

But with urging from concerned citizens, DOTD engineers and administrators went back to the drawing board and devised a plan to save "Mr. Al." According to a February 13, 2009 letter from Gordon E. Nelson, Assistant Secretary of Operations for the DOTD to the New Iberia Optimist Club, the DOTD will construct a cul-de-sac at each end of the service road and leave the old oak in the middle. The highway will pass around the old oak and allow it to live for, it is hoped, another 200 years.