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Austin Tree Ordinance & Tree Removal Permits

The Austin tree ordinance protects trees by trunk diameter and species, and whether it applies to your property is a separate question — an Austin mailing address does not settle it. Look your city up in our tree ordinance finder for the rules that govern your lot, and if a removal permit is required, we file the application on your behalf.

Everything below is the rest of that answer: how these ordinances are built, what mitigation actually means, and where the paperwork stops being something you can reasonably do yourself.

Why an Austin address does not settle it

Keith’s version of why this page exists, from an interview about telling customers no:

The inverse really gets headed off by the city — we have tree protection ordinances around here.

The city is the gatekeeper, which means we do not have to be. What we can do is get you through it without guessing.

And the guessing starts earlier than most people expect. Austin’s full-purpose city limits, its limited-purpose annexations and its three extraterritorial jurisdiction tiers interleave street by street, and none of them tracks the postal address on your mail. Limited-purpose annexation areas are treated as inside the city for tree protection. Out in the extraterritorial jurisdiction, the City of Austin’s tree preservation ordinance does not govern removing a tree on your own property, and no City of Austin tree removal permit is required for it.

Two properties a few streets apart, both with Austin addresses, can land on opposite sides of that line. And the surrounding cities are not a single answer either: West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, Bee Cave, Lakeway, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Georgetown, Buda and Kyle each run their own ordinance, with their own threshold and their own protected list.

That is what the tree ordinance finder is for. It carries the cities inside our mapped service area, plus the City of Austin tiers. Every entry names the department to call, what kind of ordinance that city has — including none — and the date we last checked it against the city’s own code. The permit threshold, the protected species, the mitigation rule and the code citation are there for the cities that have them.

What a Central Texas tree ordinance actually regulates

Start with the possibility that yours does not have one. Several of the smaller communities in this service area have no tree ordinance on record at all, and a couple of them regulate nothing but oak pruning. Where a city does protect trees, its ordinance is built from some combination of four parts, and every one of the four differs by city:

  • A size threshold. Where a city sets one it is a trunk measurement, but not the same measurement everywhere: some cities use diameter taken at four and a half feet above the ground, others use caliper, which is not measured at that height. Whether the ordinance reaches your tree depends on your jurisdiction’s own threshold and on how that jurisdiction measures it, and the finder carries both. Not every city uses a size — in a couple of them any removal needs a permit regardless of how small the tree is.
  • A species list. Some cities protect anything above the threshold. Others protect only listed natives.
  • A second, stricter tier, where a city has one — heritage, signature, ancestral, public-hearing tree, depending on who wrote the code. Bigger trees — a listed set of species in some cities, any species that is not exempt in others — a higher bar for removal, and in some cities heavier mitigation.
  • Mitigation. What you owe when a protected tree comes down.

Some of them reach further than removal. In certain jurisdictions pruning is permitted work too if you hire someone to do it, and a couple of the lake communities restrict oak pruning for part of the year outright.

We do not print any of those numbers on this page, on purpose. Ordinances in this region are amended frequently — several of the cities in our dataset changed theirs in 2024 or 2025. A threshold typed into a paragraph is a copy that goes stale silently, and a stale number about a permit is worse than no number at all. The finder reads every figure from the dataset and stamps each entry with the date we last verified it, so there is one source instead of two.

Mitigation is not the same as a fine

This is where the money sits, and where the misunderstanding sits with it. Keith wrote this years ago and the ordinances behind our finder still bear it out:

Mitigation does not necessarily mean “pay a fine.” In fact, the city prefers that your mitigation efforts be directed toward improving the forest on your property.

Where a city charges mitigation at all, the structure repeats: replacement planting measured in caliper inches, with a fee paid to the city where replanting on your own property is not feasible. In some cities the stricter tier also multiplies what you owe.

Which is why a mitigation requirement is worth scoping alongside the removal rather than after it. If the permit is going to require replacement trees, the species, the sizes and where they go are decisions you would rather make once, with the stump work and the planting on the same plan.

What we do about the permit

We file the tree removal permit application on your behalf. Against a page full of ordinance complexity, that is the part worth knowing: we file it, so you do not have to learn a permit portal to take down a dead tree.

Where the city wants supporting documentation before it will decide — an advanced condition assessment, a canopy impact assessment, a mitigation plan, or an audit of an existing tree survey — that work comes from our consulting arborists, led by an ISA Board Certified Master Arborist (#TX-0985B). That is a paid engagement, scoped and quoted per request.

Two boundaries we would rather state than let you discover:

The report that comes with your estimate is not a report you can file. Every estimate we write comes with a written site inspection and work plan with photos, prepared by the arborist who walked your property. It exists to scope the work — what we are doing, what we are not touching, what the obstacles are. A condition assessment written to be submitted to the City is different work with a different purpose. Both are real documents; only one of them is addressed to a reviewer.

A tree survey is not ours to produce. A survey comes from a state registered surveyor, and we do not originate one. What we do is audit it — correct the tree measurements and the species identification, and add the condition information that is not on the drawing at all. That is what makes a survey usable for a tree decision. Identifying and assessing trees is simply not what a surveyor is for.

When you are building near a tree you are keeping

Permit questions on a construction site are a different animal, and they arrive earlier than people expect — usually while the design is still moving. The City is specific about the root zone around a protected tree, and it is not one constraint but two: how much of the critical root zone may be disturbed at all, and how much of the full root zone has to stay at natural grade. They are separate rules and they are worth reading separately.

Keith on what that leaves you, from a piece he wrote about heritage trees:

Protecting the root zone of a tree doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t build within the protected root zone area. Although, the trees might prefer that you don’t. … I’ve found nearly every site to be different.

Keeping a tree through a build is design work, not paperwork, and the paperwork follows it. His warning on that point is blunt, and it is the reason this is not a do-it-yourself exercise:

City staff is not going to accept arboriculture recommendations from somebody who is clearly not an arborist.

If your project is a build rather than a single tree, construction site services is the page you want — protection fencing, ground protection and permitted removals run on the same schedule, and the sequencing is most of the job. For a worked example, Keith wrote up the stage of ground protection over the root zone of a heritage tree on an LZT Architects project he worked on.

Get an estimate

An arborist comes out, looks at the tree and at everything around it, and tells you where you stand — including whether the ordinance reaches your property at all, which is often the whole question.

You get that in writing: a site inspection and work plan with photos from the arborist who walked your property, and a priced proposal. Both come to you. If a permit is required, tell us and we will file it.

Call (512) 996-9100 or request an estimate online.

We work across Austin and the surrounding Central Texas metro — Westlake, Rollingwood, Bee Cave, Lakeway, Round Rock, Cedar Park, Pflugerville, Georgetown, Dripping Springs, Buda and Kyle.

Related: Tree Ordinance Finder · Tree Removal · Arborist Consulting · Construction Site Services · Tree Planting

Common questions

Do I need a permit to remove a tree in Austin?

It depends on how big the tree is, what species it is, and which jurisdiction your property falls under. Cities in this region set their own trunk-diameter thresholds and their own lists of protected species, the thresholds are not the same from one city to the next, and several of the smaller communities here have no tree ordinance on record at all. Look your city up in our tree ordinance finder, which carries a permit contact for every city in it, the ordinance tier the city has if it has one, and the date we last checked the entry. If a permit is required, we file the application on your behalf.

My address says Austin. Does the City of Austin tree ordinance apply to me?

Not necessarily, and this is the part that catches people. Austin's full-purpose city limits, its limited-purpose annexations and its three extraterritorial jurisdiction tiers interleave street by street, and none of them follows the postal address. Limited-purpose annexation areas are treated as inside the city for tree protection. In the extraterritorial jurisdiction, the City of Austin's tree preservation ordinance does not govern removing a tree on your own property, and no City of Austin tree removal permit is required for it. If you are near one of those edges, the permit contact our tree ordinance finder lists for your jurisdiction can confirm which tier your parcel sits in, and so can we.

What is a heritage tree?

It is a second, stricter tier of protection. Where the ordinance has one, it turns on a bigger tree than the standard protected size — limited to a listed set of species in some cities, any species that is not exempt in others — and it raises the bar for removal. The name changes by city — heritage, signature, ancestral, public-hearing tree — and so do the size, the species and what the stricter tier actually requires. Where your jurisdiction publishes those figures, they are in our tree ordinance finder, with the date we last checked them against the city's own code.

What does mitigation mean? Is it just a fine?

Mitigation is what you owe when a protected tree comes down. Where a city charges it at all, the structure repeats: replacement planting measured in caliper inches, with a fee paid to the city where replanting on your own property is not feasible. Keith's read on it, from his own writing years ago: the city would rather your mitigation went into improving the forest on your property than into the fund. That is why replacement plantings are worth scoping alongside the removal rather than after it.

Can you handle the permit for me?

Yes. We file the tree removal permit application on your behalf. Where a tree is coming out because of a risk to the health or safety of people, property or other trees, the City of Austin also wants its tree risk evaluation form, which has to be completed by an ISA Certified Arborist, and we complete it. Where the city wants supporting documentation before it will decide — an advanced condition assessment, a canopy impact assessment, a mitigation plan, or an audit of an existing tree survey — that work comes from our consulting arborists and is a paid engagement, scoped and quoted per request. What we do not do is represent you at the City — we file, we do not argue variances or appeals.

Does the free estimate include a report I can file with the City?

No, and it is worth being precise about it. Every estimate we write comes with a written site inspection and work plan with photos, prepared by the arborist who walked your property. That document is written to scope the work — what we are doing, what we are not touching, what the obstacles are. A condition assessment written to be submitted to the City is different work with a different purpose, and it is a paid engagement, scoped and quoted per request.

Call (512) 996-9100