Mandy Kovacs, Centretown News
City workers remove an infected tree.The National Capital Commission says its plan for removing and replacing trees infected by the emerald ash borer is on track, but local environmental groups are still critical of delays.
NCC spokesman Joseph Zubrowski said in a phone interview that there is “a real plan with real numbers” in place to replace the diseased trees in Ottawa.
The NCC has already been planting new trees since 2011, he says, which is around the time the emerald ash borer came to the Ottawa area. The invasive beetle species is expected to reduce the city’s urban tree canopy by as much as 25 per cent.
According to David Barkley, the City of Ottawa’s manager of forestry services, 15,678 dead or dying trees have been removed from municipal properties since 2009, with 6,700 trees removed last year.
Zubrowski said in an email that the NCC’s main priority is removing the infested and dying trees, especially those that pose an immediate safety risk.
“In terms of delay, we may not always replant right away, but that’s because we’re taking the time to look at the site and see what the results are after the snow’s gone and we’re getting into planting season,” Zubrowski said.
“We’ll see how the site looks and what nature is doing on its own and where we can fill in the gaps.”
Velta Tomsons is the main organizer behind Tree Ottawa, a tree-planting initiative affiliated with Ecology Ottawa.
Because the NCC is the largest landowner in Ottawa, she says “it highly limits not just our organization and our initiative, but anybody who wants to plant trees in Ottawa.”
Tomsons says “the NCC has not really been communicative to us at all in trying to organization ways that we can work together to help them replant their land, because that’s what we really want to do.”
She says there are people wanting to plant trees, organizations willing to give discounts on trees, and granting bodies that will give money for purchasing trees. Land for planting is what’s needed.
“If (the NCC) would talk to us, they would see that we have the capacity to have a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Tree Ottawa is in partnership with the City of Ottawa to plant one million new trees, but the fact that the city only owns a small percentage of public land makes it difficult, according to Tomsons.
A report sent to NCC’s board of directors last September says the NCC has considered partnering with the City of Ottawa as part of its overall strategy, but points out the municipality already has a large workload and long wait times for tree and stump removal.
Zubrowski says most of the trees the NCC will be dealing with are in more densely forested areas, rather than on city streets.