An article in today’s Metro about the loss of mature street trees in the city. For the first time, Heritage Vancouver is listing Vancouver’s historic street trees on their annual “Top Ten Endangered Sites” list. You can read the rationale on the Heritage Vancouver webpage.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Metro: Vancouver losing its tree canopies: Group
Jeff Hodson, Metro Vancouver
The majestic tree canopies that shade Vancouver’s streets are being frittered away, warns a local heritage group.
For the first time, the city’s historic street trees have been included in Heritage Vancouver’s annual list of endangered heritage sites.
“If you look at the great cities around the world,” said Donald Luxton, president of Heritage Vancouver, “one of the things that helps define them are boulevards and canopies — and we’re losing ours.”
The issue, Luxton said, is that when trees get old and need to be replaced, they’re cut down and replaced with smaller, ornamental trees — “stunted dwarfs” that lack the size and character of the original. He points to Victory Square, where several of the city’s oldest and largest bigleaf maples were cut down and were not replaced.
The Park Board, he said, needs a one-to-one replacement strategy so that when trees are taken down they are replaced by one of the same species.
Vancouver's Great Trees 