Advocates hope budget boost means Winnipeg is turning over a new leaf to address its 'tree deficit'

advocates hope budget boost means winnipeg is turning over a new leaf to address its 'tree deficit'

The City of Winnipeg plans to increase spending on its trees by 45 per cent over the next four years, with an additional $1.9 million earmarked for urban forestry in the city’s preliminary budget for 2024.

Winnipeggers could see more pruning and planting of trees as the city plans to bolster its spending on urban forestry by close to 50 per cent over the next four years.

The city’s preliminary 2024 budget includes $17.7 million for its trees in 2024, an increase of close to $1.9 million compared to last year.

Over the next four years, that spending is set to increase by 45 per cent, with some of that money earmarked over the next two years to reduce the time between pruning cycles.

Larger funding increases could come in 2026 and 2027 to help the city plant trees more quickly.

Christian Cassidy, executive director of non-profit advocacy group Trees Winnipeg, said it’s a step in the right direction but worries it won’t be enough to make up for the thousands trees the city has lost.

He says the city has been losing more trees every year than it has replanted, leading to what he calls a “tree deficit. “

“You’re not rebuilding that tree capacity that you’ve lost over the last 20 years,” he said.

Reaching pruning targets 

The proposed funding increases come after city council adopted a new urban forest strategy in December that calls for the city to hire more than 40 new staff and spend millions more every year in order to plant and prune more trees.

The city’s current pruning cycle is 16.4 years, while industry best practice is seven years on average, a city spokesperson said Friday.

The strategy calls for pruning once every 12 years for trees in parks, and once every seven years for trees alongside streets.

That pruning is crucial to the health of the city’s tree canopy as it makes trees less susceptible to disease and getting damaged by the weather, said Richard Westwood, a professor in the department of environmental studies at the University of Winnipeg.

“By keeping them well pruned, we generally have the opportunity to keep them healthier,” he said.

Not pruning enough can also lead to safety hazards if branches are breaking and falling down on their own, he said.

“Keeping the trees as structurally intact as possible increases their wind firmness and also decreases potential safety situations where we may be losing large branches in a storm and that damaging automobiles or even worse,” he said.

“There’s a lot of benefit to trying to keep to the pruning targets and the longer you go then it becomes more challenging because it becomes more expensive to do each tree.”

Trees improve quality of life: author 

Writer Ariel Gordon, who wrote a book about her love for Winnipeg’s trees, says thinks the city’s trees need to be treated the same as other infrastructure like sidewalks or roads.

“I want every library and every pool to stay open, but I also know that over the long term, if we want to keep our trees, if we want to make sure that our city is livable in the long term, we need to invest in those trees,” she said.

She pointed out research has shown trees help keep homes cool in warmer months while also improving people’s quality of life.

“The other thing that trees do is they remind us that we are part of the natural world. We’re part of that urban ecosystem, and we’re animals,” she said.

“And if we can connect with those trees that are in our yards and on our boulevards [we] realize that not only do we need them, but that we actually do better.”

The city’s standing policy committees will hold public hearings on the budget in a series of meetings beginning March 1. Council will meet to consider the budget on March 20.

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