Sydney and Melbourne among major cities failing tree canopy goals

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Melbourne and Sydney have failed the 'bare minimum' standard for nature in cities. The two Australian cities are among eight global cities to be tested most of them have failed to meet the guidelines.

Transcript

00:00The way it works is for every school, workplace and home, we should be able to see three trees

00:08from our windows.

00:10We should have 30% canopy in the neighbourhoods directly around us, and we should be able

00:14to walk 300 metres or less to a park.

00:17All of the cities that we looked at really struggled on this test.

00:21We saw a very interesting pattern, including in inner city, inner Sydney and inner Melbourne.

00:26Most buildings actually do have a view to three trees.

00:29However, you look at the park test, it's a bit more mixed in cities, including our cities,

00:35but the one that we all seem to fail on, and fail quite badly, is this 30% test.

00:41That is, we just often have more like 10, 15, 20% canopy in our neighbourhoods.

00:48We found that very interesting because you can see the trees, but you're not getting

00:51the shade.

00:53The big takeaway there for us is that trees are probably too small in the cities that

00:57we live in.

00:58There are really three areas in which it's currently quite a struggle if you're a tree

01:02in cities, or if you're an urban forester trying to get trees into cities.

01:06Firstly, planting new trees is really quite difficult because cables and cars have significant

01:12legal rights in cities.

01:13Our streets are really quite dedicated to utility infrastructure and traffic.

01:17You want to put a tree into that mix, it can actually be really quite difficult.

01:21So there's a lot of red tape holding back tree planting in our cities.

01:25The second thing is, once you get that tree in the ground, often councils, they are not

01:29cashed up, so they can just about afford to cut a hole in the footpath, put that tree

01:33in the hole, put a little bit of soil over it, and hope that it will do well.

01:38Those planting conditions are not really conducive to getting big, healthy trees.

01:43Finally, once you've got your tree in the ground, once it's starting to grow, especially

01:46in cities, trees have a shocking mortality rate.

01:48We actually pull trees out at high rates, and that's partly because of property development,

01:53which leads to tree removals, but also partly because of residents, who quite successfully

01:57can lobby for tree removals.

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