State of the Urban Forest Report: Our Coalition Response

On May 10, 2021, the City of Winnipeg released its State of the Urban Forest Report, one critical step in the process of developing a 20-year Urban Forest Strategy.

Our coalition members have pored over the report and agree it was very well produced; it is easy to read and navigate, and generally covers all the key points we were hoping it would. We’re pleased to see such clear statements on trees as assets and the need to include trees as infrastructure in asset management plans. We are thrilled that trees are explicitly recognized as essential assets but differentiated from hard assets because they appreciate in value and deliver more in services as they grow. The replacement and vacant site inventories are  valuable tools, and the sustainability report card is helpful.

On the whole, there were no huge surprises in the report, but we were left with some questions, which we outline in our response. More troubling to us is that the report missed a big opportunity to paint a clear picture of “how we got here.” The report fails to explicitly connect the dots to explain how we got to the point where we are so behind on pruning and replanting. It also fails to capture the scale of imminent potential canopy loss that Winnipeg faces.

Read our whole response here.

Image source: City of Winnipeg