Introduction to the Strategy
Winnipeg’s Urban Forest Strategy provides a long-term vision for our city’s tree canopy and guidance to develop policy and take strategic actions to help protect, preserve, and grow the canopy well into the future.
Trees provide many important benefits, including cooling our streets in the summer, reducing rainwater runoff and air pollution, improving mental and physical health, and beautifying our city. But Winnipeg’s urban forest faces significant challenges from insects and disease, climate change, urban development, and resource strains.
While American elm and ash represent 26 percent and 33 percent of the public trees, respectively, both are under siege due to Dutch Elm Disease and the Emerald Ash Borer. The City’s capacity to maintain the urban forest is also challenged as resources struggle to keep pace with demand for disease management, urban development, tree removals, maintenance, and replanting.
Explore this story map to learn about how the draft Winnipeg Urban Forest Strategy will help to achieve our vision for an abundant, healthy, diverse, and resilient urban forest that contributes to the health and wellbeing of all people and communities.
Don’t forget to take the survey to help prioritize policies that will ultimately guide us implementing Winnipeg’s Urban Forest Strategy. You can take the survey and find more opportunities to provide input here: engage.winnipeg.ca/urbanforest
What is the urban forest?
Winnipeg’s urban forest includes all trees and associated vegetation, soil, natural processes, and cultural elements on public and private land. Learn why cities need urban forests, the current state of Winnipeg’s urban forest resource and program, and key challenges and opportunities in the State of the Urban Forest Report [click to download the PDF].
Three main interconnected components form the urban forest:
- City-owned street and park trees
- City-owned natural area forests
- Trees on private land
Urban forest vulnerability
While Winnipeg’s urban forest provides many important benefits to our community, it is also vulnerable to a range of stressors including Dutch elm disease and emerald ash borer, urbanization and climate change. These stressors also challenge the City’s capacity to properly maintain the urban forest.
To ensure that Winnipeg’s trees and forests are abundant, healthy and resilient, we must reduce vulnerability in the tree population. Urban trees are often unhealthy and short-lived for reasons including lack of soil, limited water, soil salinity, excessive heat, and above-ground conflicts with utilities, buildings and so on. By reducing the sources of stress that are within our control and increasing diversity in the urban forest, our trees and forests will be more resilient to the increases in extreme weather and pest and disease attacks anticipated under climate change.
Urban forest stressors, if not managed, could threaten the delivery of important benefits that our community relies on. The following pages provide information about some of the current vulnerabilities in Winnipeg’s urban forest.
Dutch elm disease and the decline of American elms
As of 2020, the citywide inventory of American elm captured 215,000 trees found on public and private land. The population has been declining gradually since Dutch elm disease was detected in the 1970s. Since 2016, the inventoried elm population has dropped from 237,000 elms to 215,00 elms. In addition to managing current pests and diseases to minimize their impact, increasing the diversity of Winnipeg’s urban forest will help make it more resilient to current and future pests and diseases.
*click on the chart to enlarge
Explore the map to see where public and private American elm population are distributed by neighbourhood boundary. Click on a neighbourhood to find out how many American elm are found there.
Declining tree health in a changing climate
Trees help cities adapt to climate change but are also impacted by those changes. Extreme events such as heat waves and heavy snowstorms are expected to increase in frequency and summers are expected to be warmer and drier over the coming decades. Milder winters and warmer summers will benefit pests like emerald ash borer. Those changing conditions could subject trees to increased drought stress and may make them more susceptible to Dutch elm disease and emerald ash borer. Increasing tree diversity, slowing tree loss, and reducing the susceptibility of our ash and elm tree populations to existing pest threats will be essential to reduce the vulnerability of Winnipeg’s urban forest.
Click on the neighbourhoods to find out how many elm and ash trees are found in a specific neighbourhood.
Click on the 'circle button' located at the bottom left of the map to view the legend.
Loss of tree benefits could impact human health
Climate change is expected to create challenges for both people and the urban forest. Cities everywhere are facing serious threats related to public health, infrastructure costs, economic viability, and social equity associated with climate change. Climate resilience can be augmented through focused attention on the City’s tree canopy and activities that help mitigate air pollution and the urban heat island effect while also enhancing human health and well-being outcomes. On hot days, tree canopy can significantly reduce temperature in urban areas.
Mapping urban heat
Some areas of Winnipeg experience hotter summer days than others – higher temperatures increase the risk of heat-related illness and mortality, particularly for vulnerable people. The coolest areas of Winnipeg tend to have high treed canopy and permeable areas. Areas with little tree canopy and abundant impermeable road and building surfaces tend to experience hotter temperatures.
Equity
Trees and their associated benefits are not distributed equitably across Winnipeg – we found lower tree diversity, a higher average temperature, lower canopy cover, fewer trees per hectare, and fewer trees per person in high poverty areas. High poverty areas identified in the Defining Higher Needs Neighbourhoods (2020) and shown as 'higher needs areas' and 'focus areas' on the map. Improving and increasing the quality of tree plantings in these areas will be a priority for management.
Look at the Urban Heat layer on the left side of the map to see the hottest and coolest locations in each neighbourhood based on the average temperature of the surrounding ten hectares. Move the slider on the map from left to right to find out how urban heat is related to the distribution of canopy cover across the city. Higher needs areas (lower income) were found to have a higher average temperature overall.
Click on the 'circle button' located at the bottom left of the map to view the legend.
Exploring canopy cover
Setting a canopy cover target
In 2018, canopy cover was estimated at 17 percent across the city of Winnipeg and was particularly abundant along river corridors. A service target has been set to increase canopy cover from 17 percent to 24 percent by 2065. It is anticipated the target will be achievable if emerald ash borer does not establish and elm loss due to Dutch elm disease is capped at two percent loss per year. Four future canopy cover scenarios were explored in setting the 24% canopy cover target, as shown in the graph below:
Best Case:
a) Canopy projected to increase to 24 percent (without emerald ash borer) if planting is increased, every tree removed is replaced and mortality rates remain similar to today.
b) Canopy projected to remain at 17 percent (with emerald ash borer) if planting is increased but all ash are lost to emerald ash borer.
Status quo:
a) Canopy projected to decline to 13 percent (without emerald ash borer) if similar mortality and planting rates are maintained compared to today, and elm mortality is high (four percent).
b) Canopy projected to decline to nine percent (with emerald ash borer) if similar planting rates are maintained compared to today, but elm mortality is high (four percent), and all ash are lost to emerald ash borer.
Click and drag the spyglass on the map to see what canopy cover looks like in high and low canopy cover areas across the city.
*click on the chart to enlarge
The Strategic Framework
Setting goals
The draft Winnipeg Urban Forest Strategy identifies five actions we believe will help manage, protect, and enhance our urban forest. We’re calling these actions our goals. They are to:
- Plan
- Plant
- Manage
- Protect
- Partner
Details about these goals, as well as their associated policies and actions, are found in the draft Winnipeg Urban Forest Strategy. The following sections highlight the key policies for each.
Plan
Goal: Plan accountably to achieve an equitable distribution of connected tree and forest assets that will improve the health of people and communities.
Associated policies:
Policy 1. Establish and achieve levels of service to meet demonstrated community need. Policy 2. Create a City tree policy to guide tree planting, preservation, protection, removal, and maintenance decisions to align with industry standards, best practices, and other City policies. Policy 3. Include natural assets and their value in the corporate asset management system. Policy 4. Collaborate across City departments to deliver co-benefits through integrated policy and project approaches. Policy 5. Manage the urban forest adaptively.
Plant
Goal: Plant strategically to grow a robust and sustainable urban forest that will maximize benefits for human health and ecological function.
Associated policies:
Policy 6. Increase new and replacement tree planting in streets and parks to achieve canopy cover targets and promote carbon sinks. Policy 7. Prioritize urban tree planting where it is most needed. Policy 8. Increase the diversity of urban species in the City’s public tree population and proactively replace ageing or dying elm and ash. Policy 9. Maximize the health and life expectancy of newly planted public trees on City streets and in parks. Policy 10. Maximize the quantity and quality of trees planted with development. Policy 11. Provide incentives to encourage private land tree planting. Policy 12. Expand and enhance naturalized forest and riverbank areas.
Manage
Goal: Manage adaptively to improve tree health and public safety, respond to challenges and opportunities, and achieve planned levels of service.
Associated policies:
Policy 13. Maintain and regularly update an inventory of urban forest assets.
Policy 14. Follow a best practices program for tree care and tree risk management for City-owned trees.
Policy 15. Rapidly remove dead, diseased, and dangerous trees.
Policy 16. Minimize the use and impact of common practices that harm City-owned trees.
Policy 17. Strengthen communication and information sharing between departments and other agencies external to the City.
Policy 18. Monitor natural area forest cover and prioritize invasive species removal where overstory canopy losses are expected.
Protect
Goal: Protect prudently to sustain Winnipeg’s urban forest canopy where it will maximize the benefits for human health and ecological function.
Associated policies:
Policy 19. Increase protections for trees and soil on private land.
Policy 20. Increase protections for City-owned trees.
Policy 21. Create a connected and protected green infrastructure network of public trees, parks, and natural area forests.
Partner
Goal: Partner constructively to foster reconciliation and stewardship that will build capacity to achieve goals and respond to challenges.
Associated policies:
Policy 22. Establish mutually respectful partnerships with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit governments, organizations, and individuals.
Policy 23. Empower residents to participate in urban forest management.
Policy 24. Raise the profile of urban forestry citywide.
Policy 25. Work with partners to implement the Urban Forest Strategy.
Targets
The draft Winnipeg Urban Forest Strategy sets eight targets that would help us measure progress on key indicators of success: density of canopy cover citywide, utilization of identified planting sites, diversity of species/genus, rate of public tree loss, rate of specific species loss, and length of pruning cycle. These targets would drive progress toward achieving Winnipeg’s vision for an urban forest that is abundant, healthy, diverse, and resilient:
- Canopy cover citywide: Increase canopy cover to 24 percent citywide by 2065.
- Tree planting citywide: No more than five percent of potential planting sites vacant by 2065.
- Public tree replacement: 1:1 tree replacement annually.
- Public tree diversity: No more than 10 percent species and 20 percent genus in public inventory by 2065.
- Public tree losses: No more than 1.5 percent public trees lost annually.
- Citywide elm loss: No more than two percent of citywide American elms lost annually.
- Public tree pruning cycles: Prune street trees on a seven-year cycle and park trees on a 12-year cycle.
- Customer satisfaction with levels of service: Customer satisfaction with all levels of service is 50 percent or greater.
Provide your feedback
Don’t forget to provide your feedback by:
- Taking our survey to help prioritize policies for implementing the draft Winnipeg Urban Forest Strategy. The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
- Submitting your comments about the draft Strategy in our comment tool.
- Attending open houses to learn more about the Strategy and ask questions.
Engagement opportunities will be open until June 22, 2022.
You can access all engagement opportunities at engage.winnipeg.ca/urbanforest
