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Chicago Region Trees Initiative

CRTI Tree Preservation Ordinance Templates

Help protect your community’s trees with sound policy.

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Trees are essential infrastructure in our communities. Like other governmental resources, such as streets, parks, sewers, water, and utilities—ordinances are necessary to protect trees.

There are several types of ordinances that can regulate the preservation, protection, and planting of trees. An effective tree ordinance is one that is based on an urban forest management plan. However, many governmental entities do not have a plan in place.

The Morton Arboretum’s Chicago Region Trees Initiative provides a three-tiered ordinance structure that allows a governmental entity a starting point and additional recommendations to develop a more advanced ordinance as time and resources permit.

The ordinances featured below concern situations where some form of development has already taken place. These ordinances would not regulate undeveloped sites, large scale site improvements, or even potential teardowns.

Ordinance Templates

  • The bronze ordinance is the basic tree preservation ordinance and assumes the governmental entity does not have an urban forest management plan and does not regulate trees on private property. This ordinance sets the stage for community engagement to develop an urban forest management plan and progression to the silver-tiered ordinance.

  • The silver ordinance recognizes the governmental entity’s urban forest management plan that is based on the USDA Forest Service and Davey Resource Group Sustainable Urban Forestry Guide as its foundation. By basing the ordinance on a plan a governmental entity can update the plan as needed without the challenges of revising an ordinance. The urban forest management plan should be reviewed annually.

  • The gold ordinance includes the same criteria of the silver ordinance but also provides for regulation of the urban forest on private property. Typically, the majority of the urban forest within a governmental entity is on private property. It is critical that proper care, preservation, and planting of trees on private property be incentivized or regulated. The governmental entity has many examples of collective management. For instance, the stormwater ordinance regulates the flow of water across land uses and ownerships, or building permits and inspections are required for building changes or construction. The gold level tree ordinance preserves and protects the community as a whole.

Why Preserve Trees?

The urban forest is a collective resource that we all rely on for physical and mental health, improved property values, air and water quality, stormwater reduction, wildlife habitat, and other services.

Our urban forest is critical infrastructure, just as roads, sewers, and other infrastructure. Knowledge and resources are needed, but, most important, a plan of action is needed.

Each community, county, park district, forest preserve, and private property owner has invested significant financial and physical resources in development of the urban forest. The region’s trees provide more than $416 million in crucial ecosystem benefits annually to residents of the seven-county Chicago region, such as pollution removal, carbon storage and sequestration, and energy savings.

If each community analyzed their portion of the forest through an inventory they would easily calculate a rough monetary value of their portion of this forest too. For instance, if a community has 10,000 publicly owned trees and the average diameter of these trees is 15 inches, a rough collective compensatory value of this forest is $180,000 annually. If these trees are cared for and they grow to an average diameter of 20 inches the collective value is increased to $262,000 annually. Trees are the only infrastructure that increases in value with age.

Each governmental entity or individual spends money installing trees yet far fewer dollars are spent to maintain trees. Larger trees provide greater benefits. These trees are a collective asset that deserve and require protection to reach their potential. This urban forest resource needs to be preserved, protected, and managed skillfully for it to perform to its potential and for us to receive optimal benefits.