Public Engagement Summary

Why we engaged

Kingston’s urban and rural forests are shared, treasured and valued by the community for many reasons. As part of the development of the Forest Management Strategy, public engagement was vital to understand what the community’s priorities are and to include them in shaping and creating the plan.

How we engaged

Public engagement on the Forest Management Strategy took place over six weeks from March 27 to May 11 2025. A variety of engagement options were available including, focused community workshops, an in-person drop in event, an urban forest walk through City Park and several online opportunities through Get Involved Kingston including a survey, mapping activity and short story tool.

Get Involved Kingston

Over the engagement period approximately 2200 visits were recorded to the project’s webpage on Get Involved Kingston. In addition to feedback tools, project information and educational materials were also shared.

Three tools were used on Get Involved Kingston to obtain feedback:

  1. A survey that asked questions covering participants’ relationship with Kingston’s urban and rural forest, future planning, tree regulation, and demographic information.
  2. A mapping activity that asked participants to place pins identifying locations of important trees of features and areas to focus future tree planting. The map and feedback can be viewed online.
  3. A story tool, offered participants the opportunity to leave their own long form comments in response to the prompt, “What does your vision for Kingston's forest look like in 20 years? What does a successful Forest Management Strategy include, and what is the impact it will have on Kingston by 2045?” The stories can be viewed online on Get Involved Kingston.

Direct engagement

Direct engagement with interested and affected parties, Indigenous people, community members and groups, industry and others took place at various points throughout the engagement process.

  1. Three facilitated workshops were hosted online with interested and impacted parties including Indigenous community members, representatives from local community and neighbourhood groups, as well as industry, agency, developers and forestry services. The goal was to introduce the project and hear challenges and opportunities as part of the ongoing public engagement. A complete summary of the themes discussed can be viewed on Get Involved Kingston.

  1. An in-person public information session was hosted at the Kingston East Community Centre on April 17. Visitors could learn more about the project, speak with team members and provide feedback.

  1. An urban forest walk held on May 12, participants joined staff from the City’s Forestry Department for a tour through City Park. It was a chance to chat about the unique urban forest there and for participants to provide feedback and ask questions about the Forest Management Plan and the City’s current forestry practices.

  1. Emails and comments submitted through Get Involved and the City’s Contact options were also received and form part of the feedback received.

What we heard

Below is a summary of generalized feedback received through all public engagement sources grouped by the major focus areas of the forest management strategy.

Participant relationship to Kingston’s urban and rural forest

We heard that participants were generally familiar with what an urban forest plan was although they were less familiar with the City of Kingston’s current Urban Forest Management Plan (2011).

Participants reported interacting with the City’s urban and rural forest frequently, with the majority indicating at least once a month.

Engagement with the urban and rural forest through stewardship was also high. Participants reported they maintain trees on their property (pruning, watering, etc.), plant more trees on their property and or take part in expanding their knowledge of tree care and types. The value of the rural and urban forest for participants prioritized ecological impacts, the environment, climate change mitigation and personal and community well being.

Planning for the future

Part of planning for the future includes evaluating the present. In the current state, participants would like to see more effort from the City around education on the importance of the urban and rural forest. A lack of tree protection practices and regulation as well as the speed of current planting efforts were identified as issues.

Generally, participants were neutral on matters related to current maintenance programs and were neutral to satisfied by the level of access to programs like the Neighbourhood Tree Planting Program.

There was a strong desire to see canopy and woodland expansion in all areas of Kingston.

Tree regulation

Public feedback indicated a desire to see more regulation for trees, particularly mature trees, including a willingness to fund or support it through taxation. There was strong agreement with the idea that new development should accommodate existing privately owned trees, that municipal infrastructure projects should retain existing trees regardless of cost and that the City should never remove a tree from public lands unless it’s a risk to safety.

There was narrow support for a restriction on private property owners removing trees that are not safety risks.

Next steps

The project team is using the information collected through this process, along with technical data to draft the plan. The plan is expected to go before City Council later this fall for review and adoption. Once adopted the strategy could then support other City planning processes including the new Natural Heritage Study, Official Plan and updated Tree Bylaw.