Urban Forest Strategy

This consultation is now closed.

Project Update Summary (December 2022)

During August and September 2022 Council asked for Community feedback on its Draft Urban Tree Strategy. The Draft Urban Forest Strategy helps bring together the work Council has been doing to address the challenges being faced regarding loss of canopy in our Council area. It helps to address the Community desire for greening the City as outlined in Council’s Strategic Plan and Environment Plan. It also forms part of Council’s response to the Climate Emergency through helping to cool our suburbs and increase our resilience to extreme weather events. Above all, it provides direction and targets to help us to best manage our urban forest in an increasingly challenging environment.

47 individuals engaged with Council about the Draft Strategy, with 88% of participants indicating they highly support or somewhat support the Strategy. Following community engagement, the strategy was refined incorporating community suggestions with clarification of some principles, graphics and sections. Council adopted the Urban Forest Strategy at its meeting on 6 December 2022. You can view the Community Engagement Outcomes Report in the Council agenda here from page 153. You can view the final strategy here.

Background

The Draft Strategy identifies current and future challenges and provides a Vision, Targets and Strategies to help inform and support Council’s Urban Forest into the future.

The Strategy’s proposed Vision is: ‘Growing our leafy legacy, moving from grey to green’.

The proposed Target is: to increase our canopy cover (from 2018 levels) by 20% by 2045.

This is consistent with the targets outlined in the State government 30 Year Plan for Adelaide relating to increasing green cover.

Council’s Vision and Target will be achieved through the following five Themes:

Grow | Manage | Protect | Sustain | Engage

Click here find out more about climate change and Council’s plans and actions.