Thank you to all the people and groups taking a stand for our community trees.

The Community Trees Matter Network came together out of a desire to bring more voices together in support for our urban trees and forests and to find out what resources and information we can share.

Thanks to a Greater Victoria Acting Together listening campaign hosted by the Sierra Club late this past summer, a number of us were introduced to share our interest and passion for trees. What we found was that each of us has some knowledge about trees, municipal planning processes and a desire to protect, preserve and see the planting of more trees. To avoid duplication of efforts, we have started the Community Trees Matter Network.

We have grown into a volunteer, citizen-led coalition of people who value urban trees and want to work with regional municipal authorities to ensure more is done to protect, preserve, and plant and maintain trees to ensure they survive and thrive.

In collaboration with the Creatively United for the Planet non-profit society, we host our information within the CreativelyUnited.org website. This community social sharing network allows individuals and organizations wanting to connect, share, and collaborate to post, free-of-charge, information, upcoming events, notices, stories and photos.

Our hope is that through our combined efforts we can help support projects that involve trees. We have found councils and mayors very responsive. In the past few weeks, a number of us have presented to Victoria City Council, Saanich Council and (tonight at 7 pm) Esquimalt Council.

Victories include: Victoria council and mayor agreeing to explore other site options for the Crystal Pool project that don’t involve cutting established trees and destroying adjacent park space, plus forward movement on implementation of the 2013 Urban Forest Management Plan and tree preservation bylaw updates; support for saving mature trees on Grange Road in Saanich; and Haro Woods finally receiving more protection.

We have had interviews on the CBC, CHEK TV, plus many letters published by the Victoria News and the Times-Colonist. Creatively United has been sharing our information to their mailing list of 5,000+ people, providing updates to the website, and sharing on social media. If you are on Facebook, please follow both CreativelyUnited and TreesMatterNetwork.

Please feel free to send us your information and updates to post here. Together, anything is possible! Let’s leverage the power of our combined networks so that we can help each other.

Happy Holidays!

Frances Litman,
on behalf of the Community Trees Matter Network and the Creatively United for the Planet Society volunteer team