Charlotte City Council met Monday to discuss threats to Charlotte’s tree canopy, and heard a presentation from TreesCharlotte about what the future might hold for Charlotte’s trees.
Charlotte has seen major growth in its population, and with that comes more development and bigger houses on once-wooded lots. This year will mark the city’s first tree canopy analysis since 2019. Chief Urban Forester Tim Porter said he wants to make some changes, including more frequent analyses of the canopy.
“What we're looking to do is to better track,” said Porter. “So every time we do an analysis, we start at a high-level, citywide assessment and then our consultant or internally, our IT folks will do a secondary analysis that digs into the neighborhood level neighborhood scale. But we want to do that more than every three to five years.”
Charlotte has had a longstanding goal of building up Charlotte’s tree canopy coverage to 50% by 2050. The city’s most recent analysis of its tree canopy found that Charlotte is losing an average of three football fields a day worth of trees.
However, City Council member Ed Driggs said that the 2050 goal probably isn’t practical.
“I challenge the '50 by 50' because I really don't like it. I think we need to be a little more honest and forthright.
“I mean, it's a great aspiration. It would be wonderful. It's just, we're below that now and I don't see the tree canopy increasing in percentage terms. So, we just need to be very intentional."
City of Charlotte Planning Director Alyson Craig said it’s clear what some of the biggest threats to the tree canopy are.
“We learned that most of the tree canopy loss had occurred in our residential areas not associated with development projects,” Craig said. “And so that was something that led us to talking about heritage trees even on individual lots. And so that those, the policy and the information of the data can really help drive what our decision making will look like.”
The city will update its Urban Forestry Master Plan in the coming months.
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