Vancouver Island trees are feeling the pain from consecutive years of very little rain and hot weather.
Threats to B.C. trees include wildfires, poor city planning and urban development, the Mountain Pine Beetle, and on Vancouver Island consecutive summer droughts are having an impact, particularly on our cedar trees.
Brian Fisher, is a retired Certified Arborist and a Registered Professional Biologist as well as Tree Canada’s Community Advisor for Vancouver Island and said we are at risk of losing our cedars to forest drought.
“Cedars have a very thick canopy and it’s not an unusual thing for them to, what we call, flag, that is, have red branches fall off in the Fall. But what’s happening is that many of these cedars on Vancouver Island are now older, they need more water and they are not getting it, so they are going into distress and in many cases, they are eventually dying.”
Fisher said the best thing we can to do help stem the tide of disappearing trees is to plant some and this time of year is the best time to do that.
This week is National Forest Week and tomorrow (Wed) is National Tree Day.
