The City of Duncan on Vancouver Island is looking to increase its urban-forest canopy, and it's going to pay residents to do it.
City council unanimously approved a number of programs to encourage Duncan鈥檚 private-property owners to plant trees on their land at its meeting on April 14.
City planner Larissa Barry-Thibodeau said that as the majority of the land in the city is privately held, providing incentives to plant and maintain trees on private properties offers one of the most cost-effective, proactive ways for the city to increase its urban-forest canopy.
She said the first initiative is a tree rebate program where the municipality will provide a rebate of up to $100, if approved, for people to plant a tree on their properties.
She said it would be a general-category program to which anyone can apply.
鈥淭here would be no limitations or specifications on types of trees,鈥� Barry-Thibodeau said. 鈥淭he idea is just to increase the overall number of trees in the city.鈥�
Barry-Thibodeau said the second branch of the program would be a more strategic initiative in which a property owner, or resident with the property owner鈥檚 permission, could apply to receive up to 100 per cent of the cost of planting up to three trees.
If approved, the city would provide rebates of up to $1,000 per property.
鈥淭he proposals would be assessed on a number of parameters, including that the tree be a large canopy one from the city鈥檚 tree list that is also a large caliper size, and that it be adjacent to a city sidewalk or boulevard,鈥� Barry-Thibodeau said.
鈥淪pecifically, we鈥檇 be looking for proposals where there are bigger concrete-to-green-space ratios, particularly around neighbourhood, commercial and downtown locations. We鈥檙e not sure what either uptake would be like, but we generally assume that we鈥檒l see in the open category a higher uptake right off the bat, and the second category would be assessed on a case-by-case basis.鈥�
Barry-Thibodeau said the city also intends to establish a tree-sale program intended for property owners who wish to plant a tree on their property but don鈥檛 have the means to pay full price for it.
She said the city would purchase the trees in advance and offer them to property owners at a cost of $20 each.
A day would be set up for the property owner to pick up the tree from the city and plant it on their property.
鈥淭here is some risk that people could purchase their tree and plant it [outside the city], but we鈥檙e hoping to mitigate that by recommending that people send us an email on where they planted their tree, or post it on social media that they鈥檙e participating in the program,鈥� Barry-Thibodeau said.
鈥淭he programs will be funded from [$25,000] from the local government climate action program and the programs would have a budget that is finite, so it wouldn鈥檛 be an ongoing program unless council would want to reallocate part of the [city's] budget, if it's successful, for the following years.鈥�
Coun. Tom Duncan said the city has only so much public property and if the city wants to improve its canopy coverage he would like to see the municipality use some of the funds that it receives from developers and offer trees to the public for their private properties, if the new initiative proves successful.
