Council approves Urban Forest Plan

Council today approved a future focused plan outlining how we can grow our city’s urban forest.

The Ōtautahi-Christchurch Urban Forest Plan 2023 provides the direction and priority for our city’s trees for now and the future. It outlines how we will grow our tree canopy and sustain a thriving urban forest of healthy, diverse and resilient trees.

Mayor Phil Mauger said there had been strong community support for the plan during public consultation. 

“We received 290 submissions during public consultation, with 274 supportive of the plan. Some of the key themes submitters raised were around improving protection of our trees, ensuring we had a mix of exotic and native trees, having more ambitious tree canopy cover targets and leveraging community led-action, education and incentives. As a result, we’ve made some changes to the final version of the plan to capture this feedback.

“It’s great to adopt the final version of the Ōtautahi Christchurch Urban Forest Plan 2023 today. We all know that trees play a vital role in our response to climate change, as well as contributing to the wellbeing and liveability of our neighbourhoods so it’s important to have a plan outlining how we can invest and the actions required to increase our urban tree cover over the next 50 years. This helps us get the right tree in the right place.”

The plan focuses on increasing Christchurch’s tree canopy cover, which latest survey results show had reduced from 15% to 13% between 2015-2019. It outlines several actions to help grow our urban forest, which will be included in the council’s annual and long-term planning processes.

Read the Ōtautahi-Christchurch Urban Forest Plan 2023.