Why Vancouver may struggle to plant more trees

What happened: With the days beginning to heat up, having access to trees in the city is more important than ever. Last week, council adopted a new Urban Forest Strategy to help increase the city’s tree canopy coverage. But is the strategy actually doable? 

What’s in it: The plan calls on the addition of 165,000 trees over the next 25 years, to increase the area covered by branches and leaves to 30 per cent coverage by 2050. Canopy coverage has increased by four per cent in nine years, from 21 per cent of coverage in 2013 to 25 per cent in 2022, meaning there is another five per cent to hit their target. They also noted that the city has planted 50,000 seedlings in Stanley Park since 2024. 

There are many reasons the council wants to expand tree coverage, but a big one is climate change and heat adaptability. The city is getting hotter, and trees allow more heat to be absorbed, helping reduce ambient air temperatures by 1-5 degrees.

Inequities: Back in 2021, the heat dome temperatures were concentrated in certain neighbourhoods according to council’s report and map above. These areas tend to overlap with locations that have reduced tree coverage.

Strathcona (9%) and the downtown core (12%) have the least amount of coverage, while Dunbar-Southlands (35%) and Shaughnessy (41%) have the most. Most of East Vancouver has coverage of only around 10-20 per cent, while the richer parts of Vancouver tend to have between 20-30+ per cent. 

The biggest loss of canopy cover has been in the downtown core, and in East Vancouver. Very little has been lost in the richer, single-family home areas of Vancouver.

• It’s not as simple as digging a hole and planting a tree. Tree need a good container base so each tree can grow as large as possible and survive things like drought, according to CityNews. 

Looking ahead: The report identifies challenges around population growth and maintaining trees in communities as development increases. The city has a goal of 83,00 new homes by 2033, meaning even more pressure will be placed on urban canopies. 

• Professor Stephen Sheppard of BC’s forest faculty told council there needs to be a balance between development and maintaining existing coverage, and adding more trees to these projects, according to CBC, as well as better incentivizing private property owners to plant more trees. 

What it means: While the city has made strong progress in recent years, the city's associate director of urban forestry says the last five per cent is going to be a challenge, according to CBC, because all the inexpensive tree planting has mostly been done. Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung also said the city needs to be realistic about hitting that goal.

One question: One neighbourhood seeing much development is the area within the Broadway Plan. Will the area maintain tree coverage as the buildings increase?