Winnipeg's elm trees could be threatened if a backlog of trees marked for removal due to dutch elm can't be dealt with.

The city's forester Martha Barwinsky says well over 7,200 trees were newly marked this year. As well, about 820 are left over from 2015 and 2016. It's a number not seen since the mid-1990s. The city marks trees that are diseased, in decline, or dying; Barwinsky says at this time there's a much higher proportion that are diseased.

Barwinsky says if the trend continues, there's a great risk to the city's urban elm canopy.

"There's a potential for that, if we don't get a handle on the disease."

She says they're hoping to get on top of it, and they're thankful for an additional $380,000 approved from their capital budget, but they don't have enough resources to tackle all the trees.

A pilot project targetting so-called super-brood trees started this summer; it's a collaboration between the city and the University of Winnipeg, and its goal is to identify and rapidly remove super-brood trees in select parts of the city. Super-brood trees are brood trees with exceptionally high numbers of elm bark beetles.

Barwinsky says it went well this summer, and the U of W is putting together its data now.

"It was a lot of very hard manual, physical work for the students that did sample the trees. They debarked large pieces from these enormous elm trees."

Barwinsky says there are still some sampled trees being removed, and once that's done the students will analyze what they've collected.