Easy Treesy: Quick Poll about Urban Forest Strategy

Take the Quick Poll

A little help and a couple minutes of your time can help make a difference here. The City of Hamilton has a quick poll (and more opportunity to comment on the draft Urban Forest Strategy) on their Engage Hamilton website. 

As of this moment, only 44 people have taken the quick poll - 98% in favour of a private tree by-law to protect our urban tree canopy - which is great! - but let's see if we can get more people to engage so the poll numbers are statistically significant!

The Uban Forest Strategy - A deeper dive

The city currently has 21% tree canopy with a target of increasing to 30% - which we think is too low. As this graphic from the urban forest strategy draft report shows (below), that 30% target would only bring us in line with current coverage in other cities listed:

All these cities will be looking to increase their canopy, so if we stop at 30% we will still be near the bottom as they rise higher. 

We need to be able to have a better more accurate picture of the actual state of trees since the current city calculation includes trees in natural areas that make up parts of neighbourhoods (the escarpment, Cootes Paradise, Red Hill Valley, etc) toward the total. Without these natural areas, where would we be in terms of the urban canopy?

There will be a virtual public meeting hosted by the city to explain the strategy and take questions on Tuesday Feb 9, 2021 from 6:30pm – 8pm, you can register at the Engage Hamilton webpage for the Urban Forest Strategy.

HOW TO USE ENGAGE HAMILTON WEBSITE

Step One - Go to Engage Hamilton https://engage.hamilton.ca/

Step Two - Register for a free account (follow instructions on website) or if you already have an account, log-in.

Step Three - find the project you want to engage with. Each project has a description of the project, link to city staff working on the project, a list of key dates and project timeline. Also in the webpage you will find key documents, important links, FAQs, and related Videos. The project page will also include links to social media etc. to make it easy to share with your community. Also, you can choose to subscribe to the project page to receive updates.

There are tabs to 1. Quick Survey question 2. Submit a question and 3. A link to a full survey

When you complete the survey and submit it, you will get a copy of your responses in your email, and a prompt to check out other projects.