“trees aren’t just ‘pretty things to look at” a nice short film by Uytae Lee about our urban forest https://shorturl.at/choDH

Halifax – Ki’jupuk is known as the ‘City of Trees’ but FHC worries for how long. Hundreds of Halifax Common trees (Bell Rd, Robie St, University Ave) and throughout the city are being cut. Governments, both municipal and provincial, plan these tree cuts as if trees can just be replaced.

Jamie Simpson’s Law of the Urban Forest presentation at the Oct 2024 AGM tells us what other cities do to preserve and manage urban trees. Jamie’s experience is as a lawyer, forester, and writer (three books), most recently writing forest stewardship plans for the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia – all with a passion for exploring our natural world (and sometimes eating it). He’s the ideal person to help bring many threads together. Please view the slides to see what we can do to make comments to HRM Staff and Council about our keeping our Common trees?

FHC believes the best way to keep the beauty, environmental and health benefits of our urban trees is to protect and care for the ones that we have, by law. It takes at least 269 saplings to do the environmental work of an existing tree that is 1m in diameter. That’s about the size of a small adult. In 2023, HRM planted ~2600 new trees in 2023. That would replace the work of 10 1m trees. Each new tree HRM plants costs almost $1000. Each one faces many obstacles to thriving- pollution, extreme heat and cold, drought, disease, insects, and accidents.