The City of Vincent has become the latest local government to join the fight in protecting trees on private properties.
The central suburbs council unanimously voted in support of a motion, put forward by mayor Alison Xamon, for staff to “prioritise” the progression of planning controls to protect trees and tree canopies on private land.
Town staff will also advocate to the WA Planning Commission and Planning Minister John Carey for the “greater protection” of trees on private land.
Under current State planning framework, trees on private properties can be removed without development approval.
“This is contributing significantly to the decline of canopy cover,” a staff report reads.
Ms Xamon spoke at Tuesday night’s council meeting and said the City of Vincent had a tree canopy “crisis”.
“What we do know is that we have got a bit of a crisis when it comes to the issue of tree canopy here in Vincent, we’ve already got one of the lowest levels of tree canopy in Australia,” she said.
“The loss of significant trees is really having an impact, it’s impacting on what’s happening in people’s personal lives, but also generally the concern for the community.
“This means that now more than ever, we have to take whatever measures we can to try to ensure that we are maintaining as much tree canopy as we can.
“So what the purpose of this, is for us to basically give permission to administration to spend time and energy in exploring whatever legal and planning mechanisms … so that we can see if we can employ any measures to be able to ensure that we are maximising tree canopy.”
But Cr Ron Alexander raised concerns that developers may be disadvantaged by future regulations.
“I suggest everyone wants to protect trees and have trees, some people buy a piece of land to develop … and are they going to be disadvantaged by new laws coming in and regulations,” he said.
“The devil is in the details, so I’m not opposed to looking at what options are out there, I’m concerned about what necessarily comes back.”
The cities of Nedlands and South Perth have both failed to get State Government support in their attempts to increase metropolitan tree canopy coverage via their local planning schemes after being rejected by the Planning Minister.
But Planning Minister John Carey said the State Government “supported the intent” of proposals which enhanced the city’s urban tree canopy.
“I want to be clear — our Government supports the intent of proposals to enhance and grow urban tree canopy and we will engage with WALGA and other key stakeholders during the development of a State-led Urban Greening Strategy for Perth and Peel,” he said.
“Our Government has introduced a number of different policy mechanisms to support urban tree canopy including the DesignWA suite of state planning policies that include provisions that require and incentivise retention of existing trees, new tree planting, deep soil zones, soft landscaping and communal and private open space in low to higher density developments.”