Tree Strategy 2016 – 20

This strategy aims to provide the urban forest that Mitcham’s community wants. Trees dominate our urban parks and streetscapes; they make our city the attractive, healthy and desirable place it is. Mitcham’s community appreciates that quality tree cover makes our streets and suburbs more liveable with cooler summer temperatures, cleaner air and calmer traffic. By acknowledging and documenting the importance of trees and by applying community asset management principles to them for the first time, this strategy ensures that the urban forest and the benefits it provides will be sustained and well managed into the future.
Tree cover in towns and cities across Australia is reducing due to development, soil degradation, climate change and other factors. These issues and our ageing tree population mean that Mitcham will continue to lose trees and at an increasing rate into the future. Losing tree canopy cover will impact massively on the benefits the urban forest delivers to our community. Tree decline must be stopped. Increasing tree establishment to 1800 trees per year will stop this decline.
Expanding tree planting to 1800 trees per year in a staged and progressive way is recommended to minimise issues relating to resourcing and project implementation. Annual increases to tree planting are proposed as follows, with the aim of planting 1800 trees during the winter of 2024 and 2025 prior to the Strategy’s review: