Melbourne’s green spaces are being lost in rush to build more housing
By Adam Carey
July 28, 2019 — 11.55pm
Melbourne has lost almost 2000 hectares of tree cover in the past five years as suburban backyards are cleared for new housing.
The amount of urban forest that was removed between 2014 and 2018 is roughly equal in size to Reservoir, Melbourne’s largest suburb by area.
The eastern suburbs, long celebrated for their leafiness, experienced the greatest loss of greenery in that time, accounting for more than two-thirds of Melbourne’s total tree canopy loss, researchers at RMIT University found.
By contrast, the western suburbs have enjoyed a small recent recovery in green growth, although this has been from a much lower base and has mostly occurred on public land.
Residential land provides the largest area of vegetation cover in Melbourne, followed by parkland and public spaces such as streets.
The researchers found Melbourne’s total tree and shrub cover shrunk from 50,964 hectares in 2014 to 46,393 hectares in 2018, an overall decrease in greenery of about two percentage points.
Their report concluded that urban redevelopment and homeowners’ decisions to clear or reduce the amount of greenery in their yards were playing a significant part in reducing Melbourne’s urban tree cover.
Lead author Associate Professor Joe Hurley, of RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research, said the findings were troubling for a number of reasons.
“Trees and vegetation in cities provide a lot of benefits to human health and wellbeing, as well as ecological and biodiversity benefits,” Professor Hurley said.
Trees were also critical to cooling the climate in built-up spaces, he said.
“The big one is heat amelioration, particularly for drier cities like Melbourne and Perth, where we get very hot conditions and it’s only increasing under climate change.”
The report found the amount of tree and shrub cover on residential land in greater Melbourne had declined 1.6 percentage points since 2014, had fallen by 4.6 percentage points in parkland and had increased 0.3 percentage points along street networks.
It said the significant loss of tree cover in Melbourne’s parks required further investigation, but could be caused by some species’ failure to adapt to a hotter and drier climate.
Tree loss was greatest in parts of Melbourne that are renowned for their greenery.
For example, Yarra Ranges Shire on Melbourne’s eastern fringe has experienced tree-cover loss of almost 5 per centage points since 2014, eastern suburban Maroondah has shed more than 3 percentage points of its canopy cover and Mornington Peninsula has lost 3 percentage points.
Outer suburban municipalities of Melton, Whittlesea and Wyndham had bucked the trend and boosted their canopy cover by between 1 and 2 percentage points in that time, mostly in public spaces.
Inner-city councils have similarly experienced modest growth in tree cover.
Professor Hurley said this could reflect a focus by councils in those areas on tree planting.
Some residents have also engaged in volunteer tree and shrub planting on public land to green their neighbourhoods.
Tamar Hopkins is part of the Upfield Urban Forest, a loose collection of volunteers engaged in a “guerrilla” tree planting project along the Upfield railway corridor in Melbourne’s north-west.
Ms Hopkins said she was motivated to start the project after years of “being blown away by the heat island effect” while cycling along the Upfield shared path.
In the past three years the group has planted natives including spotted gums, manna gums, blackwoods, casuarinas, flowering plants and native grasses along the rail corridor.
The effort has required delicate negotiations with VicTrack, the government agency that owns the land.
“It’s about recognising that this is a large piece of land that really could support quite a large tree canopy,” Ms Hopkins said.
Readers should click on the above link to see graphs of what’s happening.
PS: We’ve uploaded the full urban-vegetation-cover-change RMIT report.
Glen Eira Debates 
July 29, 2019 at 11:43 AM
Sleep all day wake at night?🦉
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July 29, 2019 at 11:52 AM
Drive past any development site and it looks like the Sahara in Glen Eira. Not a blade of grass left and definitely no trees. Developers can do whatever they like whilst this council continues to do nothing about stopping the practice. It’s been talked about for years and nothing happens. Doubt if they even fine too many for removing significant trees. Even the ones they plant on streets are lucky to survive for any significant time.
July 29, 2019 at 12:50 PM
The proposed urban forest strategy will be a big challenge for the City of Glen Eira. Apart from having most of our councillors squarely in the climate change deniers camp and successfully organising themselves to stall, halt and block any progress to get even a piss-weak tree register up and running for over a decade now. I feel any talk of an urban forests will be a foreign language to these dinosaurs.
With our gross deficiency in public open space which consists mostly treeless sporting fields, coupled with our rapidly shrinking private open space and tree decline taking place there, it will be interesting to see what fiddle the bureaucrats will use to pull the wool over the residence eyes in pursuit of pleasing their developer mates. I wait with interest to see this coming hoax.
July 29, 2019 at 1:06 PM
The graphs provided by this report are very interesting. Some councils with plenty of urban development like Yarra, Moreland, Moonee Valley,Port Phillip, Darebin, Melbourne, Maribyrnong, Hobson’s Bay have INCREASED their tree coverage from 2014 to 2018. Not Glen Eira of course! We’re going backwards. As for the Urban Strategy, residents should start asking again how long the $13m Booran Reserve ‘urban forest’ will remain closed to residents, yet it is still we presume counted as part of our open space!
July 29, 2019 at 3:44 PM
Calling this area an Urban forest is pushing it, small isolated strip of trees would be more apt. My fear is if they let residents access this area council open space designers would insist on a 2 metre wide strip of yellow concrete right up the middle, as they do everywhere else. Concrete has a higher priority in GE than trees, fresh air, shade and biodiversity and mental health.
Still, I agree with you It should be open to the public as it is a significant area of this park.
Personally I think there was a back-door deal done between the bordering residents and council at the design stage that lead to this area being locked.
August 16, 2019 at 1:30 PM
The Council Law section 15 (Protecting Assets) currently under review should provide little leeway for an owner or Building Activity who damages a tree, to replace a fully grown tree (of value x) with a seedling (of value x/100).
Protecting Trees and the Urban Forest was first in the Glen Eira Strategic Plan 17 years ago in 2002.
Damaging or removing a tree or practising moonscaping practices on building sites quickens the decreasing coverage of the Urban Tree Canopy. Replacing fully grown trees within a building site and on nature strips, with saplings does not respect the Council and Community Asset or Future Value of semi-grown or fully grown trees.
Of Note: The supporting document to the Melbourne Urban Forest Strategy (endorsed by Glen Eira Council) “Living Melbourne – Our metropolitan Urban Forest” develops the evidence base for greening a city. This evidence base is the framework for the Metropolitan Urban Forest Strategy for Melbourne. Milan and Paris are also using this evidence-based science of a foundation of their policies. Authored by The Nature Conservancy and 100 Resilient Cities Network – supporting Melbourne’s Metropolitan Urban Forest strategies Vision, Goals and Actions, contains target tables, and a target for The Glen Eira City by 2030, a target of 24% of Tree Canopy by total City area (of Trees > 3 metres in height) and 44% Tree and shrubs.
b. By 2040 Glen Eira City is set a target of 27% (of total area)Tree Canopy (of trees > 3 metres in height) and 49% Total Tree Canopy and shrubs.
Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning with CSIRO and RMIT released in July 2019 mapping and within this report “Urban Vegetation Cover Change in Melbourne” – as part of the “Cooling and Greening Melbourne” work for Plan Melbourne 2017 – 2050. Authored by Centre of Urban Research, RMIT University Melbourne, School of Human Sciences, University of Western Australia, School of Science RMIT University Melbourne School of Agricultural and Environment, University of Western Australia and CSIRO Data 61 reports and evidence highlighting Glen Eira City accelerating the loss of its Urban Tree Canopy. This report shows Glen Eira City’s Tree canopy covers 12.5% by total area – well below a historical acceptance level 20% Starting with 12.5% as the current Urban Tree Canopy to meet the Melbourne Metropolitan Urban Forest targets for 2030 is an uphill battle – the Glen Eira City Tree Canopy will need to increase 92% by 2030 based on science-based evidenced measurement.
4. By Major Land Use Classification, the Glen Eira City has gone backwards in all categories, over the 4 years 2014 to 2018. Backwards in tree canopy for Residential, backwards in tree canopy for Streets, backwards in tree canopy for Parkland and also backwards in tree coverage for the balance of all other areas.
5. Victorian Government Measurement of Urban Canopy
Mapping Results for Glen Eira are surprising
1. Summary of the mapping analysis show Glen Eira Council data:
a. In 2014 tree canopy cover = 13.30%
b. In 2018 tree canopy cover = 12.5%
c. Percentage point change in the tree canopy cover (2014-2018) = -0.8 percentage points – a 5% loss of tree canopy in 4 years
2. Local Government Comparison of Tree Cover Change by Major Land Use Urbanised Areas
a. (ABS urban centres and localities) – shows Glen Eira Council’s Residential, Streets, Parkland and other Land Uses all individually show a negative change in Urban Tree Canopy in the four years.
ii. Glen Eira Council is on average 8.63 degrees Celsius hotter than the non- Urban baseline land surface temperature
a. Hotter than Glen Eira’s neighbouring Councils, Bayside, City of Port Philip, Monash and Stonningham.