A plan to manage the forest inside the city

by Stephen Thirlwall

On November 21-22, public meetings were held to present the City’s draft Urban Forest Management Plan (UFMP) and hold group discussions toward a final report due in late 2017.

The scope of the plan is huge. Planning and operations run across various levels of federal, provincial and municipal regulations, guidelines and bylaws. Consultations involve land development interests (commercial, residential or other), community associations and other groups and residents. Plans look into various environmental and tree-related concerns. All of these interconnect around how to expand, maintain and sustain our urban forest.

While the plan is large and impressive, citizens still have many concerns. Will the plan’s implementation address real problems at the inner city neighbourhood level in Centretown, Dalhousie, the Glebe, Old Ottawa East and Old Ottawa South, areas with active interest in the plan? Will plans get caught up in red tape and not get properly implemented? Will certain parts of the city get more attention than others? Will the public be able to adequately provide input at each stage? And how seriously will public input be considered?

The 265-page draft UFMP presents preliminary assessments of tree populations within urban neighbourhoods of the city. The analyses considered relative tree canopy cover, age distribution of trees, and species suitability and diversity of the tree populations for trees larger than a certain trunk diameter.

Ottawa’s urban land, including the NCC Greenbelt but not Ottawa’s rural lands, has a 24.9 percent canopy cover. Targets for most North American cities are 30 to 40 percent coverage.

We not only have to improve our number of healthy trees but also our data collection so that we have accurate information.
Thirty major recommendations are presented, each detailed by objective and purpose, criteria for analyses, related practices, guidance, timelines, risk, and targets. Recommendations range from development of an urban forest inventory maintenance plan, to establishing internal and external working groups, to identifying incentives for encouraging tree conservation.

One very important new direction in thinking is to consider trees as green infrastructure that has equal value to all other “hard” infrastructure (e.g., streets, sewage and utility lines). So, as we work on our transforming streets, we now have to take tree infrastructure into account in order to achieve “complete streets.”

There are thousands of trees of all ages and many varieties lining our streets, in yards, on rooftops, around churches and government buildings, and along the Rideau Canal and the Ottawa and Rideau rivers. But urban forest is not natural forest. There are no woodlots as are found in the more rural parts of the city. We are lucky to have 10 large trees standing somewhat closely together. Parks and greenspaces are few and relatively small, and many are under federal or provincial jurisdiction.

Many very old trees line our streets, some requiring replacement very soon. Replacement trees, when they get planted, are small and immature. In highly paved/cemented locations, trees often don’t have sufficient space to root properly and so are inadequately nourished. Emerald ash borer infestations have devastated the ash trees. There are constant pressures to build larger and taller buildings that eliminate a lot of front and backyard greenspaces and spread long shadows. Trees with small trunk diameters are not protected and so some seem to mysteriously disappear from yards.

The urban core community associations have had consultations of their own on the unfolding plan and have put forward some of their concerns and questions.

Their main concern is a lack of opportunity for public engagement. They feel that one year is too long a time to wait between public meetings. There should be at least mid-point updates and consultations. And community associations should have some representation at invitation-only meetings with the City planners.

Some other issues are as follows. Can some federal infrastructure funding go to fund green infrastructure development?

How can the City collaborate with the NCC, who control large pieces of greenspace downtown, and work with the provincial government to have urban forest put on highway embankments? How can Hydro tree trimming be made less destructive of trees? Can there be more coordination with the public regarding a strategy for tree removal, tree planting and street redevelopment?

Tree diversity should be assessed, planted and maintained on a city block level and not just the neighbourhood level. New tree plantings should preferably be native species, locally sourced. Trees should be replaced as much as possible by trees of similar sizes. Root zones of trees planted on streets must be adequate and protected.

Proper tree inventories are necessary for all site plan developments to control tree removals. Where large scale developments take place, planting a certain number of trees should be required based on the size of the development.
Tall trees need to be considered a 100-year investment. Total cost accounting would take in not only planting and maintenance costs but also long-term benefits and cost savings. The City should establish an incentive program for homeowners to plant a tall, large canopy tree on their property. Perhaps there could be a program established to support community “tree keepers.”