A City of Delta’s contest is now underway giving residents a chance to win a tree that will be delivered to their home.
The Planting Our Roots initiative involves residents having until Sept 25 to complete a form for a chance to win one of 250 trees, which will be delivered directly to their doorstep in mid-October.
An update report to council last fall on Delta’s Urban Forest Strategy noted that the urban tree canopy coverage was last assessed in 2021 using the 2020 aerial imagery. Tree canopy coverage in 2020 was 30.5 per cent in North Delta, 19.2 per cent in Ladner and 24.3 per cent in Tsawwassen.
Delta has a long-term goal of 40 per cent tree canopy coverage.
Recognizing that measurable change in tree canopy coverage at the city scale occurs very slowly, best practices included in the Urban Forest Strategy are to undertake an assessment every five-to-six years, the report notes, adding that staff will be initiating another assessment using 2026 aerial imagery.
Meanwhile, Metro Vancouver’s Regional Planning Committee recently endorsed a staff report to recommend to the regional board of directors some revisions to Metro 2050, the region’s long-term growth plan. One of those revisions is to support the protection and restoration of trees and other ecosystems on lands with non-urban regional land use designations and lands outside the Urban Containment Boundary (UCB).
With the adoption of Metro 2050, a regional target was introduced to increase the total regional tree canopy cover within the UCB to 40 percent by the year 2050, but the target did not include lands outside it.
A Metro report earlier this year looked at the tree canopy cover in Delta and throughout the region from 2014 to 2020, finding that in 2020, impervious surfaces covered 54 percent of lands within Metro’s UCB.
That represents an increase of four percent since 2014, with most jurisdictions seeing an increase in imperviousness.
The report notes that in 2020, the tree canopy covered 31 percent of lands within the UCB, representing a decrease of one percent since 2014, with the majority of jurisdictions experiencing loss, primarily associated with greenfield development and densifying urban areas.
According to surface data, the most recent regional-scale data available, the City of Delta had a 20 per cent canopy cover within the UCB in 2014, but by 2019 that dropped to 19 per cent.
If the region’s remaining greenfield lands within the UCB are developed and single-detached housing stock is redeveloped as expected over the next 20-to-30 years, tree canopy cover is projected to continue to decrease, the report notes.
That projection did not consider implementation of the newly adopted provincial housing legislation, the report also notes, adding it is anticipated that the legislative changes will make it even more challenging for the region to achieve the urban tree canopy target.
