Urban Forest Strategy & Tree Wrapping Event
By Carol Thiessen
Winnipeg’s Urban Forest Strategy
Hot off the presses! The City of Winnipeg has released a draft of its first comprehensive forest strategy. The plan provides a 20-year vision for how to protect, preserve and enhance Winnipeg’s tree canopy. And it’s now open for public consultation.
The draft strategy recognizes the grave risks that face our collective urban forest including Dutch elm disease, emerald ash borer, extreme weather events and climate change.
Its big goal is to see Winnipeg’s tree canopy cover increase from 17% to 24% by 2065. This refers to the amount of the city covered by urban forest, and is only deemed possible if Emerald Ash Borer is slow to establish and elm loss is kept at low levels. Otherwise, keeping canopy levels at 17% will be a much lower target.
Further targets include:
● Public tree replacement of 1:1 (one tree replaced for every tree removed). Currently, less than one tree is planted for every three trees removed.
● Public tree loss annually of no more than 1.5%. For comparison, in 2020, 1.4% of public trees were lost.
● Pruning cycles: 7 years for street trees, 12 years for park trees. The current pruning cycle has lengthened to 31 years.
● More diversity in public trees: no more than 10% of any one species; no more than 20% of any genus. Currently, 58% of public tree inventory is ash and elm.
With the enormous risks to Winnipeg’s crucial tree canopy, this strategy will help determine what our city will look like in the coming years and decades. It needs to set an ambitious path forward. But has it done that? Are these the right targets? Will there be sufficient resources to ensure success? This strategy gives no budget numbers so that will be the major question going forward.
Trees Riverview has just begun our review and we will be asking these questions–and providing our feedback. We encourage you to participate in the consultation and add your voice to the discussion before June 22. Find out more: https://engage.winnipeg.ca/urbanforest
Tree Wrapping Event
In an effort to preserve our neighbourhood trees, Trees Riverview organized a tree wrapping event along the Red River (near Balfour Ave and Churchill Drive) on Saturday, May 28.
We wrapped approximately 100 trees in stucco wire to protect them from beaver damage—which has been prevalent on our riverbanks in recent years.
Kevin Land, wildlife & stewardship technician for the City, joined the nine volunteers to provide guidance and some learning on how best to protect from beaver damage.
We learned that the City doesn’t relocate beavers, as this just moves the problem of tree damage to a new neighbourhood. In addition, moving a beaver into another beaver’s territory could be a death sentence for one of them. Beavers are highly territorial. Lethal traps are also a last resort—only if the infrastructure is at risk.
Stucco wire is strong so beavers can’t get through it. Wrapping trees loosely means they can continue growing for years before the wire needs to be replaced.
Not all trees should be wrapped, leaving lower-value trees for the beavers. “Some trees are for wildlife and some trees are for people,” Kevin told us. Willows are resilient and will resucker. Poplars are highly desired by beavers.
Depending on the levels of damage next fall when water levels are lower, Trees Riverview will consider another tree wrapping event. A huge thank-you to volunteers who came out for this event!
Tree planting
A big shoutout to Steve Newton and Jean Altemeyer who organized another (non-Trees Riverview) community greening event—this time tree and shrub planting near the river. You will likely have seen the hundreds of bare root stock planted in row upon row standing like memorial crosses close to Ashland Ave at Churchill Drive.
Volunteers included community members from Riverview as well as some kind helpers from Kingston Row/Crescent, along with students from College Churchill High School. They planted more than 1100 trees/shrubs over four planting days.
The trees/shrubs are a mix of 9 species for good diversity, including dogwood, linden, Manitoba maple and saskatoons.
Again, City naturalist staff were on hand to distribute supplies and offer direction. The City provided the bare root stock and planting supplies, with funding from CN (among other sources).
Steve came up with the idea after participating in a community planting in another neighbourhood. Their goals: help diversify tree species, offset beaver damage and other tree loss in the neighbourhood, decrease the amount of monoculture grass (while leaving plenty of space for much used playing fields and cross-country ski trails), and engage the community and enhance the beauty around us.
