Seeing the forest through the trees

28 January 2022

Mount Barker district has an extensive range of trees in the public realm. These range from mature species along streets and in reserves to natives and exotics planted in new development areas.

A number of formal tree audits by qualified arborists have been undertaken over the years with data on over 20,000 trees having been collected.

“It is so important that we have a good register of our trees” Mayor Ann Ferguson said,

“Knowing what we have, what condition they are in and their significance helps us to properly manage and maintain them on behalf of our community.

It also helps us to keep track of shade and canopy cover in urban areas to help lower temperatures, improve air quality and alleviate the effects of a changing climate on townships.”

Council continued their audits in 2021 with 1872 trees in the 13 recreation grounds across the district being assessed. Data collected includes tree species, health, defects, any risks to public safety and level of significance of the tree.

All existing tree data and the newly captured data will be transferred to a new web based tree management system called Forestree.

Forestree is locally developed in South Australia and is in use by more than a dozen councils including City of Marion, City of Burnside and City of Tea Tree Gully.

“Use of Forestree for our tree management delivers significant benefits to the community including improved tree planting and establishment, better risk management and more efficient maintenance planning” Urban Forest Officer, Chris Lawry said.

“Our staff will also be able to access and update tree data while in the field using a mobile app which means that we can easily track when maintenance work is required or completed and can update data on the fly to have real-time information on the status of trees in the district.”

Council plans to audit more trees in 2022 with a focus on those that may pose a risk to public safety.