climateXchange

The deadline for public submissions for this investigation has been extended to 12 March.

The community forums in the past couple of weeks have been an eye-opener. Apparently, Canberra's urban forest is made up of over one million trees, of which 630,000 are managed by the ACT Government, the largest urban forest in Australia managed by one government agency. Most of the trees were planted either before 1930 (deciduous and evergreen), or between 1955 and 1975 (mainly eucalypts and hardy natives). Many are now reaching the end of their life simultaneously, and this is coinciding with the stress they are experiencing through drought.

Just to give an example of one suburb, Deakin, the ACT Government representative said that about 11% of its trees are in poor shape, 1% are in very poor shape and 1% are dead. The situation in Narrabundah seems to be worse, with a far greater proportion of “very mature” trees.

Apparently, 18,500 dead and dangerous trees were removed over the last six years, and only limited replacement occurred. It costs about $3000-4000 to remove a tree and about $300 to plant a tree, so if we are heading into a major urban forest renewal program, I figure there'll probably be a need for a significant funding boost, as well as extensive ongoing public consultation.

But I think we should be trying to save as many viable trees in the meantime. I found a leaflet tucked away on the TAMS website that encourages Canberrans to give their street tree a feed with non-potable water, but I think a lot of people are under the impression that we shouldn't be watering anything on our nature strip. It would be a good idea to have a public communication program about this.

Professor Peter Kanowski put forward interesting perspectives on Canberra's urban forest management and renewal when he delivered the Lindsay Pryor Memorial Lecture at ANU on 14 July 2010. 

He highlighted that Canberra's 630,000 trees on public land provide an estimated $15 million of value in ecosystem services each year (carbon sequestration, energy saving, stormwater management etc) and unpriced biodiversity and aesthetics.

He proposed some possible goals/principles for the future management and renewal of the urban forest, including:

1. Maintain and enhance the landscape character, whilst acknowledging that change is necessary in response to experience, climate change, and urban densification etc

2. Build on community understanding and support - there are examples of how this can be done such as Australia's Landcare program and Tree Keepers programs overseas.

3. Build a greater level of certainty through formal planning eg public landscape masterplans for each precinct/street.

4. Negotiate management and renewal plans, informed by risk and cost estimates.

5. Implement plans in partnership with the community

6. Generate and commit adequate and ongoing funding over the trees' lifecycle (ie this would entail a budget 7-10 times more than the current annual budget).

On the last point about the budget, he gave a few options for raising this very significant addition to the budget:

• A new green infrastructure levy on rates for Canberra residents
• Increase the allocation from existing energy/water income streams to green infrastructure 
• A “Greenfleet” like levy on vehicle registrations
• Seek a Centenary of Canberra endowment from the Commonwealth Government to maintain and enhance the national capital's character.