Friday August 16, 2024 | LANGFORD, BC
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
The City of Langford’s Urban Forest Management Plan (UFMP) will involve tailored actions by the City in seeking to implement a community-led vision for its urban forest over the next 25 years.
Forest is not just trees in the wild and in parks. It’s also trees and other foliage on private property (57% of Langford’s land base) as well as along city streets and in other urban spaces.
- Trees are an important community asset. Langford’s urban forest consists of all trees, forested areas, plants, soils and ecosystem components as within the city boundary.
- The city says that its urban forest is essential to Langford’s character, biodiversity, climate resilience, health and well-being.
- Forests contribute cooling and stormwater abatement as a form of green infrastructure.
- Trees can provide food production, social strengthening and higher property value.
Challenges to the urban forest include drought, pests and climate change as well as urban pollution and intrusions by built-environment development.
Each year Langford’s trees provide an estimated $5.5 million worth of avoided runoff, sequestered carbon and removal of air pollution.
The UFMP is about having a healthy and beautiful urban forest. Trees and plants contribute clean air and water, shade, and beauty. The goal is to have a plan that can be applied over the course of 25 years to 2050; in that period of time the city’s population is expected to double and reach 100,000.
Public input is open to August 26 online https://letschatlangford.ca/ufmp/ where the survey takes about 15 min- utes to complete. But that’s ideally after you’ve read the 41-page UFMP background document, so don’t leave it to the last minute!
To participate in the survey you need to be logged in as a registered user at Let’s Chat Langford.
