City of Red Deer is in the process of developing a 20-year plan that will guide the monitoring, maintenance, protection and enhancement of the urban forest more efficiently.

With the plan, the City believes the urban forest will become more resilient, safer, providing significant benefits to residents and visitors with improvements made to the quality of soil and better development system.

The City has teamed up with Urban Forest Innovations Inc. out of Ontario; something Parks Planning & Technical Services Supervisor Dave Matthews says will benefit them greatly.

“The main fellow is an arborist himself who’s come up through the ranks, who’s climbed trees and has looked after them in an urban setting. He’s learned it and practiced it for many years before he began his business.”

“The other thing is, when we hire somebody, we obviously do references and their references were extra ordinary.”

A consultation session inviting the public is scheduled for next week something Matthews says will be crucial to the plan.

“The reason we have such value in trees is because the community itself, which are the residents, see the value in trees. We want to make sure that the decisions we are making, as we move forward with this plan, have their input.”

The consultation session takes place from 6:30 to 8:00 Wednesday night at Civic Yards, Building 300.

The plan will be developed in consultation with members of the public and with other urban forest stakeholders, and is expected to be completed in late 2017.

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