Compared to its peers, Charlotte boasts an impressive urban forest with canopy coverage at just above 45%.
Tree canopies help to keep cities cool, reduce stormwater runoff and improve the air quality and overall health of its citizens. They also increase property values and keep neighborhoods safer, said Allison Rhodes, executive director of TreesCharlotte.
But as Charlotte has grown, new construction has diminished the city’s cherished tree canopy, especially old and healthy trees, on undeveloped land. As a way to mitigate the effects of these removals, and to further its goals of 50% tree coverage by 2050, the city of Charlotte included new tree rules in its Unified Development Ordinance a few years ago.
Among the new rules, developers and homeowners in Charlotte are now required to have a permit before disturbing a tree that fits the city’s definition of a heritage tree and fulfill mitigation requirements — including fees and replanting.
Heritage trees are defined as trees native to North Carolina with a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 30 inches or more.
Since the UDO took effect in June 2023, the city has received 2,390 heritage tree removal permits, according to city data analyzed by The Ledger. These heritage tree regulations are applied in two scenarios: developmental and non-developmental.
Non-developmental scenarios are individual tree removal requests submitted by property owners, while in developmental scenarios, requests to remove heritage trees are included in a broader permit submission.
Among total permits, as of Aug. 19, 1,085 have been non-developmental and 1,305 developmental.
“The heritage tree regulation is a limited preservation requirement and prioritizes mitigation. Heritage trees can be removed in most cases,” Jack VanderToll, media relations manager for the city, wrote to The Ledger in an email. Rejected requests to remove heritage trees in developmental scenarios are not tracked on an individual basis, he added.
Mitigation requirements include payment of $500 per tree in non-developmental scenarios and $1,500 per tree for developmental requests. These fees may be reduced or waived with additional mitigation planting or the preservation of a specimen tree.
The city has collected approximately $4.5M in heritage tree mitigation fees since the implementation of the UDO. The money collected from these fees goes into a fund mandated for protection, management and long-term land acquisition within Charlotte, according to the city’s website.
In fines, which apply to those who disturb heritage trees without a permit, the city has collected $53,760 from 25 violations since January 2025. The city did not track individual fine payments before 2025.
In development scenarios, approximately 1,545 mitigation trees are required to be, or will be, planted. In non-development scenarios, 838 of the 1,085 permits required a mitigation planting of at least one tree; a total of 323 of those trees have been planted.
“It falls into two buckets; you can have the want to remove a heritage tree and then the need to remove a heritage tree,” said Craig Errington, an arborist with Charlotte-based Heartwood Tree Care, about non-developmental removal of heritage trees.
If a tree is determined to be a healthy heritage tree, and the homeowner still wants to remove it, then the homeowner or a tree company applies for a permit, with a turnaround time that can take four to five days, Errington said.
But if the removal of a heritage tree is more of a necessity than a want — meaning the tree is unhealthy or poses an immediate danger — then an exemption permit is in order. Those exemption permits, if deemed necessary, are typically approved by the city within a day of when they’re submitted.
“An exemption would qualify as the tree is dead, and it’s 30 inches or greater, it’s structurally compromised, it fails what’s called a level 3 tree risk assessment,” Errington said.
In order to submit an exemption, which requires no mitigation fee, the arborist submitting the permit needs to be a certified arborist and tree risk assessment qualified.
Developers, environmental advocates want changes
Rob Nanfelt, executive director of the Real Estate & Building Industry Coalition, which represents developers, said tree regulations have been somewhat of a challenge for developers since the passage of the UDO, and not just heritage trees.
“The costs to comply are really high, and the permitting and review process that was initiated because of the UDO adds additional time, which drives costs as well,” he said.
In particular, he said, in-lieu-of payments for the UDO’s green space ordinance, which requires a developer to preserve a certain amount of tree canopy on a project, can be extraordinarily expensive and compound with heritage tree mitigation costs. Those payments can cost up to 90% of a property’s assessed tax value per acre, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the developer, Nanfelt said.
Commercial sites in particular can be really small, making it nearly impossible to replant new heritage trees on a project and giving developers little choice but to pay those fees.
Nanfelt said trees and stormwater regulations have been some of the biggest pain points for developers after the UDO’s passage.
Another conundrum for developers, Nanfelt said, is that they’re often asked to install additional infrastructure in order to gain approval for a project. In some cases, the installation of that infrastructure requires the removal of city trees, which comes with its own financial obligation.
“That’s sort of a double whammy,” Nanfelt said.
He said that REBIC plans to propose some compromises for developers, such as bettering the permitting systems, lessening the overall financial burden on developers, additional tree banking opportunities and bolstering a homeowner’s ability to remove heritage trees during upcoming Tree Canopy Action Plan meetings, which are set up by the city to determine how Charlotte’s tree canopy should be handled.
“This isn’t really an industry related issue, but I think we need to look at individual homeowners as well and find out where we’re losing trees on individual lots when we don’t necessarily want to,” Nanfelt said, adding there’s also a “property rights issue there.”
But at least one local nonprofit says that the heritage tree regulations don’t go far enough to further the city’s tree canopy goals.
“We support the intent behind the heritage-tree regulations, but we do not believe the rules are nearly strong enough to preserve the mature trees most threatened by redevelopment,” Shannon Binns, founder of Sustain Charlotte, wrote in an emailed response to questions by The Ledger. “In practice, the ordinance functions more like a pay-and-plant removal system than a genuine heritage-tree protection system.”
The regulations’ weaknesses show particularly, Binns added, when homes built on quarter-acre lots between the 1940s and ‘60s — often surrounded by mature canopy — are redeveloped and replaced by homes with larger footprints.
“The financial incentive is generally to maximize buildable area, while a flat $1,500 heritage-tree mitigation fee is unlikely to materially affect the economics of constructing a large new home,” Binns said.
Binns cited Washington, D.C.; Portland, Ore.; and Austin, Texas, as cities that have comparatively stronger protections for heritage trees as models for Charlotte to follow. In particular, he would like to see a tiered payment system for trees of varied sizes, as larger trees represent substantially more existing canopy and ecological value.
He also suggested that the removal of a healthy heritage tree should require a genuine alternatives analysis, with payment available only after the exhaustion of preservation options. The largest trees, he said, should receive even stronger protection, including a public notice or review.
“A reasonable compromise would preserve no-cost or expedited removal for genuinely hazardous trees, distinguish individual homeowners from professional development projects and allow reasonable zoning or site-design flexibility when that flexibility would save important trees,” Binns said. He added the city could also provide earlier consultation, clearer decision criteria, firm review timelines and expedited processing for projects that preserve heritage trees.