The ice storm on March 30, 2025, had a significant impact on the urban tree canopy in Barrie and surrounding areas. More than 5,000 street trees and park trees were lost due to damage caused by significant accumulation of ice, resulting in trees and branches falling onto roads, parks and into private property from City-owned lands. As this represents over 10% of the City's street and park tree inventory, the lost trees had a significant detrimental impact on long-term tree canopy goals.
Rapid replanting and care of these trees is required to ensure that future generations can achieve a long-term healthy urban tree canopy. long-term impacts to the urban canopy.
The project includes:
- assessing where and what type of planting will have the greatest short- and long-term benefit for Barrie's urban canopy, and long-term impacts to the urban canopy
- removing stumps
- replanting trees
- watering and management
A normal year of tree removal and replacement is 600 to 800 trees; 5,000 trees represent more than six times the number of trees that die in a single year and are replaced in the normal tree planting program within the City's Operating Budget. The additional trees will require additional staffing support to manage the annual replanting program, work with affected residents, develop replanting plans for natural area planting in forests heavily impacted by the ice storm, and conduct location-by-location consultation. Additional staffing will result in the replacement of lost trees as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The planting of trees to replace damaged trees is estimated to begin in spring 2026 and take at least one year to complete. Tree species will be selected for replanting based on best long-term value and resilience to a number of factors. Staff have an analysis of the percent of trees impacted by the ice storm by ward and species, and consider species' success at locations, soil conditions, and resilience to several factors (including drought, salt tolerance, pest susceptibility, compact soil/tight soil conditions, and effect of wind and ice loading on branch structures).