Page 4366 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 25 October 2017
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environmental and social fabric of Canberra. It is also one of the key responses in our preparing for a warming environment, increasing our resilience and sequestering carbon.
We are fortunate, and indeed the envy of many cities across the world, to have such a diverse, healthy and well-established urban forest. More than 750,000 trees which are growing on public land are managed across Canberra’s urban landscape, including those on residential streets, major roads, median strips, shopping centres and other open spaces throughout the ACT’s urban area. Even that impressive number excludes the trees located in our precious nature reserves right across Canberra.
Living infrastructure, which includes trees, open green spaces, waterways and plants placed on the sides and tops of buildings, can provide an enormous benefit to our adaptation to future climate change. Trees help moderate temperature extremes and weather events, provide shelter and improve amenity and property values. All of these benefits, if properly considered, vastly outweigh the cost of planting and maintaining them.
The importance of Canberra’s urban trees to a liveable and sustainable city is highlighted through the government’s broad policy direction. This outlines the approach and identified challenges associated with climate change, population growth and urban heating to provide a more compact city with adequate shade and protection.
The Tree Protection Act 2005 is an important piece of legislation that helps protect Canberra’s urban forest. As we know, there is currently an amendment bill to that act seeking to implement minor technical changes before the Assembly. In 2011, the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment released the final report on the investigation into the government’s tree management practices and the renewal of Canberra’s urban forest.
One of the recommendations of this was the establishment of a tree curator position. This role is currently being undertaken by the conservator. Given that the conservator’s primary role relates to conservation issues and the Tree Protection Act is much broader, involving native and non-native trees, it is relevant that the role of the tree curator be reviewed to support the delivery of improvements in canopy cover for Canberra’s urban forest.
As noted, there are also a number of municipal infrastructure standards maintained by Transport Canberra and City Services that all government directorates, developers and contractors adhere to when planning and constructing areas within urban environments.
Further work is required to prioritise new and replacement planting locations, including incorporating a variety of available information such as the age profile, species diversity, canopy cover, known “hot spots” and landscape style and condition. A clearly defined monitoring and assessment framework is an appropriate way to identify priorities to achieve canopy cover improvements across Canberra’s urban forest.
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