Starting this spring, a company hired by the City of Windsor will begin conducting an inventory of trees.
Urban Forest Innovations will conduct the inventory and risk assessment of all trees growing along city streets and in public parks.
The contract is worth $384,000, and the money will come out of the existing capital tree maintenance budget. Right now, the budget is worth $1.3 million.
Windsor has about 100,000 trees growing on city property in various states of health. The inventory will identify which trees are healthy and which ones may need to be trimmed or removed.
The inventory will show where each tree is by street address, what species it is, its GPS location, how big the tree is, and what shape it is. It will also identify new places trees can be planted.
The urban forest canopy currently covers about 21 per cent of the city's total area.
The full inventory is expected to take two growing seasons, but a report is scheduled to come back to city council sometime in this fall or next spring.
A separate project after the inventory will develop a plan to manage the city's trees better. The cost of that project is anticipated to be around $72,000.
