OUT ON A LIMB: THE STORY OF A BOOK
- 11 hours ago
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In August 2024, my friend Emma Durand Wood, one of the co-founders of Trees Please
Winnipeg, approached me about writing a book on the urban forest. It would be part of The
City Project, a series of compact, accessible books exploring everything from city finances,
active transportation and urban trees to the decolonization of public spaces.
My first reaction was a feeling of high anxiety, despite the fact that I’d already written more
than a dozen op-eds for the Winnipeg Free Press on why our city needed to invest more in
the maintenance, protection and expansion of our urban canopy and greenspaces.
How, I wondered, could I possibly jam not only the history of Winnipeg’s canopy, but
everything I knew about the power and benefits of urban trees into just 120 pages? How
could I convince my readers that urban forests and greenspaces are one of the most
effective, equitable and natural solutions available to enhance urban climate resiliency
and protect biodiversity?
After a few weeks of dithering, I finally decided to give it a try, and in the end, Out On A
Limb became one of the happiest writing experiences of my career. This was partly
because it gave me an opportunity to write about the astonishing benefits of mature urban
trees, including their amazingly positive impact on human health. But it was also because
it offered a chance to celebrate the many nonprofit and volunteer organizations in
Winnipeg and elsewhere – like LEAF in Toronto – that are busy planting and defending their
urban trees and natural forests.
One of the main challenges of the book was to use Winnipeg as the central case study
while also broadening the lens to compare what was happening here with other cities in
North America and around the world. To my surprise, I quickly discovered that the
problems facing Winnipeg are shared by many cities across North America.
The research revealed an overall decline in urban forests across the continent, partly due
to new pests and diseases, but primarily due to a lack of funding. Most urban forestry
departments simply didn’t have sufficient cash to properly maintain their urban canopies
or replace the public trees that were being lost.
That was particularly true in Winnipeg, which, by 2021, was in the midst of an urban forest
crisis. In just three years, from 2018 to 2021, we had lost some 46,000 public trees and had
a staggering 80% tree replacement backlog. In other words only 20% of the trees being cut
down were actually being replaced.
Our challenge was to make those losses, spread out across an entire city, visible to the
mayor and city councillors who seemed in denial about the crisis. Thankfully, we were able
to remedy that with the help of Trees Please Winnipeg member Chris Green, an
epidemiologist who offered to crunch the numbers.
Using the city’s open data source, combined with other reliable statistics, he was able to
show exactly how many trees had been lost between 2015 and 2021 in every electoral ward
in the city. The results were astonishing. Some wards had lost more than 4,000 trees in just
five years, and only one, a new suburb, had actually gained tree cover.
With a 20-year urban forestry strategy nearing completion, and a civic election scheduled
for 2022, Trees Please decided to use that data to convince mayoral and council
candidates to sign on to what we called “The Trees Please Pledge.”
That pledge committed candidates to planting two trees for every tree lost, pruning our
trees on a seven-year cycle (instead of every 30 years!) and establishing better practices to
protect trees during construction.
Most candidates were visibly shocked by the data we presented and, in the end, our new
mayor and all but one of the newly elected councillors signed the pledge. More
importantly, they followed through on their promises in their first four year budget, by
increasing urban forestry funds by a whopping 45%.
It was an important win, but unfortunately, lack of funding isn’t the only problem facing
urban trees.
Construction and development have had and continue to have a devastating impact on
urban forests, most of which sit on privately owned land. Indeed, studies have shown that
in most North American cities, the public tree canopy accounts for only a fraction of the
urban forest. The bulk of trees and natural forests rest in private hands.
As a result, Winnipeg has lost tens of thousands of trees to make way for development –
losses that the city isn’t even counting.
In an effort to remedy that, a number of Canadian cities, like Toronto, have enacted private
tree bylaws. But in this, as in so many other aspects of green planning, Winnipeg lags
behind. As a result, Trees Please still has a lot of work to do.
A big part of that work is educating governments and the public about the benefits of urban
canopies and encouraging them to learn from cities that have already prioritized green
planning and designated trees as essential urban infrastructure.
I can only hope that Out On A Limb contributes to that educational process and facilitates
some interesting and important conversations about the pivotal role trees can play in
making our cities safer, healthier and more climate resilient.
This essay was originally published by Leaf Toronto. You can find it here:
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