Calgary’s urban canopy is will soon look a lot more lush with the city set to plant nearly a million new trees across the city as part of a funding agreement with the federal government.
The 2 Billion Trees (2BT) program is part of Canada’s commitment to add that many amount of trees across the country over the next decade — including 930,000 new trees in Calgary.
The $61 million in funding will nearly double Calgary’s tree canopy from 8.25 per cent coverage in 2022 to 16 per cent by 2060, according to the city.
The city says the funding will help it reach its urban forestry goals of diversifying species, soil remediation, and restoring canopy cover.
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Paul Atkinson, urban forestry lead with the City of Calgary, says the tree planting will be citywide, for the most part, and take place over the next five seasons.
“We’ll be planting the trees all across Calgary, keeping in mind the equity balance and focusing on areas of land that are available for planting trees,” he says. “We have to be cognizant of urban conservation areas, or prairie lands, we obviously don’t want to to turn that into a forest.”
“We care for new trees for about five years actively after they get installed, and we sort of taper their maintenance inputs over that period.”
Matthew Davis is a certified arborist in Calgary and has been working in the industry for nearly 25 years. He says the city’s plan to expand its urban canopy is a positive sign, but he has concerns about how it will maintain so many trees.
“It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to plant a million trees and have half of them die,” Davis says. “There has to be some robust plan in place to maintain things after the planting and ensuring there is money available to do that part of things as well.”
“When you plant a tree, it takes a lot longer in Calgary than other places…our climate is really tough.”
Atkinson says the city will be ready to take care of the new trees during harsher weather months.
“The group plantings may actually have dedicated watering tanks,” he says. “We have some of those locations already that are powered by solar panels and battery operated pumps.”
Over the past two years, the city has planted over 200,000 trees and seedlings on public land and provided residents with 7,500 trees to plant on their property.
With files from Jayden Wasney and Curtis Geroux