By Cheryl Jahn

This city loves its trees

Jul 29, 2022 | 2:10 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – We love our trees in Prince George. We are a city within a vast forest. But in the late 1990s, this city lost thousands of trees to the Mountain Pine Beetle. That’s when the City of Prince George partnered with the Tree Canada Foundation and Petro Can to plant 40,000 trees. Today, the City budgets $65,000 dollars per year to plant trees. Kudos, according to City Councillor Cori Ramsay.

“Yeah, I really am for the tree-planting program. I think it’s a really great way to increase greenspaces and beautification in our city. But also provides much-needed shade. A lot of the research that came out of the heat dome from last year is that communities should be looking at planting trees. There’s a trend across the province where there’s not a lot of trees planted in highly dense areas.”

She says that is also the case for lower income neighbourhoods.

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The City has a program in which a tree is planted as part of the City’s Gifts and Legacies program, something that is not often talked about.

“Similar to a park bench or plaque somewhere in the city, you can also invest in a tree,” says Ramsay. But it was noted during a recent presentation to Council, developers are often the biggest culprits, levelling everything, including the trees, when launching a new development and that’s concerning to Council, including Mayor Lyn Hall.

“I think that’s a big part of the conversation that needs to have as a Council and Development Services just to get more information about these new subdivisions that are being built. How do we say to the developer ‘These are the three or four amenities that we want you to have in place.’ Because once it’s built up, you’re not putting a park in it. It’s too late.”

But it was pointed out that the Tree Protection Bylaw was drafted in 1995 and it only protects trees in very specific zones of the city, not the entire city.

“I think in the Tree Protection Bylaw, if you are cutting down a tree in an AG Greenbelt or a Riparian Protected area, [the fine] is up to $10,000,” says Ramsay. “It’s quite the fine to cut down a tree. But it’s only in those areas. So we want to make sure that all the trees are protected.”

The new direction designed at beautification rather than reforestation also looks at diversifying the types of trees planted, instead of keeping with the traditional monoculture of coniferous trees.