Urban Forest Management Strategy Services

The Vendor is required to provide urban forest management strategy ("UFMS") to address trees on public and private lands.
- UFMS will focus on a 25-year planning horizon and shall identify measurable actions, strategies and initiatives to maintain or enhance canopy cover and opportunities for tree planting initiatives.
- Inventory analysis (GIS)
• Identify the urban canopy cover contained in public land, boulevards, parks, and natural areas vs. Private lands;
• Conduct an equity analysis at a neighborhood level of the urban forest canopy.
• Conduct a future growth development scenario canopy cover forecast that includes evaluation of projected impacts to urban canopy on public and private land use changes expected to occur under projected growth scenarios; and
• Identify priority opportunity areas for planting and guidelines for prioritizing planting in the future.
- District and utility providers' practices review
• A multi-departmental internal staff engagement workshop(s);
• Additional district practices related to urban forestry;
• Review of the community wildfire resiliency plan;
• Review of public works' operational maintenance practices; review of street frontage installation requirements;
• Review street tree replacement processes;
• Review tree management replacement processes when trees are cut on municipal projects; and
• Review urban forest planning and management with relation to underground and overhead utilities (utility providers' practices, and how district staff ensure there won't be conflicts at time of tree installation).
- Early engagement
• Early engagement with indigenous peoples, rights holders, specifically Squamish nation.
• Engagement with council through a planned workshop.
• Engagement with internal district staff (GIS, public works, planning, engineering, building, and environmental services)
• Engagement with the public and general interest groups.
• Engagement with UFMS advisory committee, which will include interest holders such as stewardship groups, landscape contractors, community representatives, development representation, non-profit place making and climate-related groups, etc. note, the UFMS committee is to be formed by district staff with implementation in mind, so that there are members with experience implementing tree planting initiatives.
• The committee may have a broader timeline than that of the development of the UFMS, to assist with strategy implementation.
• Submission of documentation outlining the proposed engagement approach for each interest holder group.
- GIS canopy cover inventory
• Creation of tree canopy mapping tools integrated into the district's GIS software to determine canopy targets, priority planting locations and species to address community tree equity, habitat connectivity, and forest fire resiliency.