Advocates hope budget boost means Winnipeg is turning over a new leaf to address its 'tree deficit'

Winnipeggers could see more pruning and planting of trees as the city plans to bolster its spending on urban forestry by close to 50 per cent over the next four years. 

The city's preliminary 2024 budget includes $17.7 million for its trees in 2024, an increase of close to $1.9 million compared to last year. 

Over the next four years, that spending is set to increase by 45 per cent, with some of that money earmarked over the next two years to reduce the time between pruning cycles. 

Larger funding increases could come in 2026 and 2027 to help the city plant trees more quickly. 

Christian Cassidy, executive director of non-profit advocacy group Trees Winnipeg, said it's a step in the right direction but worries it won't be enough to make up for the thousands trees the city has lost. 

He says the city has been losing more trees every year than it has replanted, leading to what he calls a "tree deficit. "

"You're not rebuilding that tree capacity that you've lost over the last 20 years," he said.

The proposed funding increases come after city council adopted a new urban forest strategy in December that calls for the city to hire more than 40 new staff and spend millions more every year in order to plant and prune more trees.

The city's current pruning cycle is 16.4 years, while industry best practice is seven years on average, a city spokesperson said Friday. 

The strategy calls for pruning once every 12 years for trees in parks, and once every seven years for trees alongside streets.

That pruning is crucial to the health of the city's tree canopy as it makes trees less susceptible to disease and getting damaged by the weather, said Richard Westwood, a professor in the department of environmental studies at the University of Winnipeg.

"By keeping them well pruned, we generally have the opportunity to keep them healthier," he said. 

Not pruning enough can also lead to safety hazards if branches are breaking and falling down on their own, he said. 

"Keeping the trees as structurally intact as possible increases their wind firmness and also decreases potential safety situations where we may be losing large branches in a storm and that damaging automobiles or even worse," he said.