Unley's Tree Canopy

Building cover

Canopy cover

A presentation earlier this week was a little more reassuring than we had been lead to believe. The graph above accurately demonstrates the tree cove since 1979 in Unley. Some of you will remember that in the late seventies and early eighties Council planted nearly all of the current street trees. To some extent anything was good enough, if it was on the truck then it was planted. To this end some streets got Queensland Box others Jacaranda and some even less acceptable looking street trees. But the city greened and flourished and hence the canopy rose steadily on public land until about 10 years ago when those trees started to reach maturity. In the meantime attempts to protect canopy on private land have been overwhelmed by legislation that supports removal and hence we see a steady decline of trees on private land. The canopy has been measured as decreasing from 28% to 24% while these figures show a decrease (in the last few years) from 28% to 27% . Nevertheless the canopy cover at its best was well over 30%.  So how do we encourage residents to plant more trees when block sizes are decreasing and house sizes are increasing?

• Offer incentives
• Ensure all removed trees are replaced by 2 trees on the same property (CAPS decide this but not monitored)
• Plant more trees on public land to compensate
• Increase trees on footpaths or in the street itself.