City of Victoria

Urban Forest Implementation Plan and Tree Bylaw Review

Diamond Head worked with the City of Victoria to develop an implementation plan for the 2013 Urban Forest Master Plan and assess the current status of implementation. The work included: drafting performance indicators and a subset of actions for each recommendation; facilitating a workshop with the Urban Forest Services team and other relevant staff to refine indicators and actions; assessing current performance of Victoria’s urban forestry program relative to those indicators and selection of the actions still to be completed; and, assigning resourcing, cost estimates and timeframes to each action to be completed in collaboration with staff.

Further, the City had asked Diamond Head to support them in the delivery of the urban forest priorities identified for 2020 including: developing a citizen stewardship plan to support the City in the United Nations Trees in Cities challenge; strengthening tree protection through the completion of an update to the Tree Preservation Bylaw and its implementation, and the development of interdepartmental tree protocols for working around trees; targets for canopy cover and impervious cover targets and ecosystems services estimates city-wide and by planting area (area boundaries to be determined); and neighbourhood planting plans to guide the City’s annual tree planting program over the next decade.