It’s official – the City of Onkaparinga loves its trees.
The council has for the first time been named a Tree City of the World – joining a prestigious global network of cities leading the way in caring for their urban forests.
The international program is jointly operated by the Food and Agriculture Organization – a specialised agency of the United Nations – and the Arbor Day Foundation, and accredited cities need to meet strict standards around how they manage and value their trees.
These standards include establishing responsibility, setting regulations, understanding existing resources, allocating adequate funds and celebrating achievements.
The City of Onkaparinga’s recent development of a Tree Management Policy to help grow, establish, maintain and protect the hundreds-of-thousands of trees under the council’s care and control helped bolster the City of Onkaparinga's recent application for the program. So too did the establishment of the One Tree Per Child Onkaparinga community program and its tree giveaway events to encourage planting on the 74 per cent of land that’s private and not under council management.
These initiatives were complemented by the council’s canopy mapping across the city, and achieving 63,000 trees planted towards our target of 100,000 trees in street verges, waterways and parks by 2037.
The council needs to uphold strict standards to maintain its accreditation, and any improvements to the region’s urban forest means Onkaparinga’s people, places and wildlife are better off.
There are a range of benefits to being part of the program on top of the international recognition, including being able to tap into the Tree Cities of the World global network – sharing and adapting best practices for managing urban trees and forests.
Arbor Day Foundation Program Manager, Sophie Plitt, said Tree Cities of the World is more than a recognition program.
“It’s a rapidly growing global movement, transforming how communities view and value their urban forest,” she said.
“It goes beyond borders, connecting passionate organisers and tireless tree planters, and uniting them under the shared mission of making our world’s communities healthier places to live.”
Now in its seventh year, there are 210 Tree Cities of the World representing 24 countries and 6 continents. The City of Onkaparinga is one of 11 cities in Australia to have the prestigious accreditation.
Pictured
Coromandel Valley's famous pecan tree in Sandow Crescent Reserve.