We are living through an unprecedented heat wave which should be no surprise to anyone on the WestCoast. We have not seen any rain in going on 6 weeks now. The trees in our City are important for so many reasons such as mitigating climate change, providing shade to keep us cool, the abundant urban wildlife and the list goes on. In my neighbourhood, each summer when we have a stretch of summer weather without rain, I make a point of watering some of the area’s boulevard trees. Two things happen when I do this, one people say thank you. Two, others get inspired to do the same. I personally would have liked to have seen some communication from the City of Vancouver to encourage Vancouver residents to water boulevard trees they were physically able to or within reach of their home by hose or watering can, but that hasn’t happened. With climate change and its affects being top of mind for so many with forest fires raging in our province, I think preserving the abundant tree canopy in the City where we can is important for human life and urban wildlife.
So with that, I encourage you to adopt a tree(s) on your street and water where you can. If you wish to read more on this, CBC has done a recent feature “Vancouver trees dry out as heat wave continues to take its toll.” And if you wish to read further on the disparity of tree cover between the East Side and the West Side, we invite you to check out this piece by Christopher Cheung in the Tyee Vancouver Shade Inequality. We’ve copied in a great image from Christopher’s piece from Urban Forest Strategy, 2018 update, City of Vancouver which highlights the importance of trees in our urban landscape.
Earth Day is a global event that happens this Monday, April 22nd. It is believed that more than 1 billion people in 192 countries now take part in what is the largest civic-focused day of action in the world. Personally, we think earth needs a little TLC. If you pay any attention to the news, climate change is happening and living in a coastal community, we will clearly be impacted. So why not doing something to help our environment for Earth Day? It can be small, it can be big, whatever your time allows. We challenge our readers to take 30 minutes out of their day to do something they haven’t done before that makes a small difference. Think if 100 people that read this post and switched just ONE reusable bag for a plastic bag, that would be 5,200 less plastic bags in our environment in one year’s time! That is nothing to sneeze at. We’ve compiled a list of simple suggestions that may not seem like a big deal, but making one switch on Earth Day and continuing with it, most certainly DOES make a difference. Here are a few simple things you can do this Earth Day:
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