Vancouver to charge residents for a $750 security deposit to chop down trees on their own property

Vancouver City Council will introduce the move to make people replace the trees elsewhere

Residents will need to pay a refundable $750 if the tree they want to cut down is more than eight centimetres in diameter (REX Features)

A Canadian city has said any of its residents wanting to cut down a tree on their property must pay security deposit of up to $750 - which will only be returned if they plant a new one.

Vancouver City Council has proposed an amendment to its planning laws which will mean residents will be forced to pay deposits of $500 for removing a tree less than eight centimetres in diameter and $750 for a tree wider than eight centimetres.

The Parks and Recreation department has proposed the scheme after it estimated the city’s "tree canopy" has declined from 22.5 per cent in 1995 to 18 per cent in 2013 - mostly from the removal of trees on private property.

Current planning law requires residents to plant another tree somewhere else on a "one-for-one replacement" rule but the council found people were not planting it in the wrong location, planting a poor quality treee that would not survive or not planting it at all.

Local councillor Andrea Reimer insisted the council were not benefiting financially from the scheme as the money is paid back or used to plant trees elsewhere.

She told CBC News: "We were finding that people, even though there might be a requirement in their building permit to retain trees, we were finding that either they weren't, or that they were replanting them but the trees weren't living.

"Security deposits is an approach that's been used [elsewhere] and it seems like it would make a lot of sense here as well."