TAKING STOCK IN CITY FORESTS
Council making tree cover a priority
They clean our air and water. They cool and calm us. They protect our homes from flooding. They’re the “quiet workhorses of our community,” said Coun. Irek Kusmierczyk. They’re trees and they’re going to be a big issue here. Increasing Windsor’s tree canopy was voted one of council’s two priorities at its strategic planning meeting Monday. Kusmierczyk called it the “surprise Oscar.
“It was really interesting and really heartening to see,” he said. Councillors debated all the usual issues: economic development, flooding, sidewalks, bike lanes. The thing about trees is they play a vital role in all those goals.
They filter particulate matter out of the air and absorb carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas. They pull in water, reducing run-off into sewers. They shade buildings, sidewalks and parks, saving energy and allowing people to get out in the summer. They boost mental health. Studies show they increase property value.
“They’re considered vital to quality of life,” said Kusmierczyk, who proposed increasing the city’s canopy cover.
When it comes to trees, Windsor is at a critical juncture. The first inventory of the city’s trees in three decades will start in May. A team of four foresters will literally touch every city-owned tree along every street and, if there’s enough money, in every park. They’ll count them, identify them and take their GPS co-ordinates to determine their exact location. They’ll literally wrap their arms around them to measure their circumference. They’ll assess their age and health.
All that will cost about $4 a tree or about $250,000, “which is really not bad,” said the city’s forester Paul Giroux. “Can you imagine having to make sure every single nook and cranny of the city gets looked at, every tree gets measured?”
That’s not all. Then they’ll take aerial photographs of all of Windsor’s trees — along streets, in parks and natural areas like Ojibway and people’s yards — and use Lidar, a kind of laser survey, to examine the canopy. All that information will be used to write Windsor’s first urban forest management plan, expected by the end of next year or early 2021. There will be dozens of recommendations and that’s when trees will become a big issue. The recommendations will include targets. Windsor’s tree canopy is estimated at about 20 per cent. Many cities are targeting 30 to 40 per cent. It will cost an additional $2 million a year just to properly trim our existing trees. As for planting significantly more trees?
“That’s going to be a whole new ball of wax,” said Giroux.
The plan is also expected to recommend a tree-cutting bylaw that covers private property. It could stop people from cutting down trees in their own yards. “How could we not look at that?” said Giroux. “If we really want to get serious, there’s no sense in just planting trees while others come out unnecessarily.” Do you want to cut down your oak tree because you don’t like the acorns?
“A very proactive, progressive city would say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not going to give you a permit for that,’” said Giroux.
Many cities already have treecutting bylaws covering private property. People from Toronto move here and they can’t believe we don’t have one.
“We’ve got some exciting times ahead, some big things to discuss,” Giroux said, knowing the controversy this could cause. “But this is the way to do it. We’re going to present a plan and we’re going to see how important this is to the residents.”
Here’s something else to consider: trees are now considered municipal assets just like roads and sewers. They’ll be part of Windsor’s new asset-management plan. That’s because they have a purpose. They’re also one of the few assets that actually increase in value — exponentially — over time. Roads deteriorate. But trees, as they grow, filter more particulate from the air, sequester more carbon dioxide, pull in more rainwater and provide more shade.
Nashville considers its trees so important that Mayor David Briley last fall launched a campaign to plant half a million trees by 2050. He enlisted corporations, non-profit groups and ordinary citizens.
The campaign is called Root Nashville: Plant a Tree, Grow Our City. The goals are diverse, from lowering hospitalization rates for pediatric asthma to encouraging people to walk along commercial corridors. “Streets with trees are better for business,” one councillor told the media.
This region is blessed with lakes and rivers, but we don’t have many trees. The ones we have are special, like the protected Kentucky coffee tree, because they don’t grow in most of the rest of Canada. But farming, development, disease, insects and storms have cost us many of those trees.
The proposed plan to manage our urban forest will offer a crossroads, said Kusmierczyk, sounding a lot like the Lorax. Last year, council cut $54,541 from the city’s budget for mulch that administration advised was needed to help new trees survive. This time, let’s hope we’re smarter.