Audit snapshot
What we reviewed and why
Like the rest of the world, South Australia continues to experience a rise in average temperatures. Trees help mitigate the effects of rising temperatures and the build-up of heat in cities by providing shade and cooling, and many other benefits to the community.
The SA Government has acknowledged the importance of trees, setting voluntary long-term targets to increase and maintain tree canopy cover over metropolitan council areas. Many Adelaide metropolitan councils have also set their own tree canopy targets.
We reviewed two metropolitan councils to form a view on whether they have effective activities in place to increase or maintain the tree canopy cover in their areas.
What we concluded
Both councils we reviewed had tree management activities to increase and maintain their tree canopies that were partly effective. Some activities were operating effectively but there were gaps in others that need to be addressed to be effective, such as maintaining council tree data and documenting the assessment and treatment of all tree risks.
Tree canopy management is an area that continues to evolve for Local Government. Both councils had a clear long-term commitment to increase their tree canopies and strategies to promote tree growth on private property – one council conducted an audit of its public trees and the other council had modelled tree data to set its tree canopy targets.
Key insights for councils
This report provides our key insights that all councils can consider in maintaining and growing a resilient and healthy tree canopy, including:
• maintaining current and high-quality tree data
• managing tree risks effectively
• monitoring and reporting performance against their objectives and targets
• setting separate tree canopy targets and guidelines for tree species and age diversity
• implementing strategies to encourage positive community attitudes towards trees.
We have also published a summary of council survey responses and LiDAR data about Adelaide’s metropolitan tree canopy cover below. This shows the change in tree canopy cover over Adelaide metropolitan local government areas for 2018–2019 and 2022, and gives some insights into how Adelaide metropolitan councils are managing their tree canopies.
We obtained the LiDAR data from Green Adelaide. We did not review the LiDAR methodology or audit its data. We surveyed 18 councils.
Each council’s area is unique and presents its own set of challenges for increasing and maintaining tree canopy cover. The data presented should not be used to compare one council against another.
