Arborists reflect on saving Winnipeg's urban forest on anniversary of 2019 snowstorm
Massive Thanksgiving weekend storm damaged thousands of city trees, hastening urgency to restore canopy
Ask someone in the business of trees in Winnipeg what they remember of the Thanksgiving weekend of 2019 and the answers come like it was yesterday.
"[That] Saturday morning, I remember getting in the car first thing and [I] started driving around. And I phoned my supervisor and I said, 'We're in a lot of trouble,'" Martha Barwinsky recalls instantly.
The City of Winnipeg forester had been watching the weather for days leading up to that weekend.
With snow and ice clinging to the trees and a fierce wind blowing, Barwinsky knew the storm unfolding would soon require every arborist she could lay her hands on.
"It was literally all hands on deck," Barwinsky said, remembering the flurry of calls that went out from the city's forestry division.
WATCH | Protecting the trees:
Nine private contracting companies, every available city forestry crew and dozens of arborists from the cities of Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon and Toronto would eventually be thrown into the stricken urban forest.
That's when Carla Antonation got the call she already knew was coming.
She and her husband, Jesse, own Trilogy Tree Services. Antonation was coming back from a client's property when the enormity of the storm struck.
"I couldn't believe how fast it had progressed and how many trees were starting to bend," Antonation said.
"[I remember] thinking, 'Oh, this is bad.'"
While the city needed help with trees on public property, Trilogy's phone was also blowing up with calls from its own clients.
And the company's crews out on the street were deluged by requests from people running out of their homes asking for assistance.
Many people had become afraid of the trees falling, Antonation said, but there was so much work the company's crews couldn't help everyone.
"[It was] definitely hard for our crews to have to say, 'No, I'm sorry. I can't do that for you right now,'" she said.
In the aftermath, more than 30,000 city-owned trees and countless more on private property were damaged or downed, leaving the City of Winnipeg with a $10-million cleanup bill and a cost of 10 times that for Manitoba Hydro to repair fallen power lines.
Tree canopy at risk
Both city and commercial arborists agree the storm caused ongoing stress to Winnipeg's trees — but other factors are killing the city's forest, too.
Dutch elm disease continues to devastate. A drought is sucking more life out of the trees. And the fluctuating weather cycles brought by climate change is another factor.
Meanwhile, the city is removing thousands of diseased trees and replanting only a fraction of them.
"Last year, in 2020, our replacement ratio was 20 per cent. So we only replace 20 per cent of the trees that we remove," Barwinsky said.
The city tagged close to 8,000 trees for removal.
Another concern on private property is the replacement trees aren't always the right species.
"One of the problems we see is a large tree will come down, but it's going to be replaced with just a small ornamental [one]," Antonation said.
If a big shade tree is taken down, Antonation said, it should be replaced with another large tree.
That's partly because those taller species help keep the heat lower in urban locations already filled with concrete and buildings, as temperatures rise because of climate change.
Reversing the trend
But efforts are underway to save Winnipeg's tree canopy.
Early next year, the city will release a draft of its urban forestry strategy and recommend a huge step: a tree protection bylaw that could give the city some authority over all Winnipeg's trees, including those on private property.
"There are a lot more concerns now with the protection of trees on private properties due to development, construction and a wide variety of activities — and we know that the majority of our urban forest is on private property," Barwinsky said.
The bylaw could allow the city to require replacements for trees that are taken down on private property.
And last year, the city launched the One Million Tree Challenge campaign, which has had some early success attracting corporate backing and getting out basic information about what species to plant and where to get them.
So far, the campaign has seen 16,000 trees planted across the city. That's a number project co-ordinator Kamila Konieczny admits is dwarfed by the million-tree goal, but she urges residents to take a broader view.
"This is really a long-term initiative and we are really hoping to elevate it every year and increase our projections and our numbers every year," Konieczny said.
But the cumulative stress on Winnipeg's urban forest is too great for the city to take on alone.
"With everything going on, from climate change to insects and disease and development, it's really our turn to step up," Konieczny said.
"If we don't do something soon, there may be a time when we don't have this have beautiful urban canopy."