Do you need council approval to remove a tree in the Redlands?

It's one of the first questions we ask on every quote: does this tree need council approval to come down? In the Redlands the answer is often yes, and starting without it can cost a lot more than the tree job itself. Penalties for clearing protected vegetation run into serious money, and 'the tree guy said it was fine' is not a defence.

Why the Redlands is stricter than most

Redland City sits on koala coast. Council's planning scheme protects vegetation through overlays that cover much of the mainland and the islands, with extra weight on koala habitat trees (eucalypts especially), waterway and wetland buffers, and remnant bushland. In practice that means a gum in Thornlands or Capalaba can be protected in an ordinary suburban backyard, not just in bushland reserves.

What generally needs approval, and what generally doesn't

Rules change, so treat this as a guide rather than gospel:

• Likely to need approval: healthy native trees over the size thresholds in overlay areas, anything mapped as koala habitat, and vegetation near waterways
• Often exempt: declared pest and weed species (umbrella trees, camphor laurels and cocos palms are common examples), trees within a set distance of a lawful dwelling in some zones, and dead or genuinely dangerous trees
• Emergency work: a tree that's failed or about to fail can usually be made safe immediately, with photos taken and the paperwork following

The catch is that exemptions have conditions attached, distances, sizes and mapping layers, and you need to know which category your tree is in before the saw starts, not after.

How to check your own property

You can look yourself: council's online mapping shows the environmental overlays over your lot, and the planning scheme lists what's protected within them. It's genuinely doable on a rainy afternoon. It's also easy to misread one layer and be wrong in an expensive direction, which is why we'd rather you just asked us.

What the process looks like when approval is needed

For a protected tree, an application goes to council with photos, the reason for removal or pruning, and sometimes an arborist's report backing it. Straightforward cases (dangerous trees, trees damaging structures) are commonly approved. Purely aesthetic removals of healthy protected natives are the ones that get knocked back, and that's worth knowing before you set your heart on a view.

The good news

You don't have to figure any of this out yourself. Checking what applies to your property is part of every free quote we do. We'll tell you straight whether your tree needs an application, whether it's exempt, and what the process looks like, and we won't touch a protected tree without the approval in hand, because the fine lands on both of us.

If you're not sure about a tree in your yard, send us a photo and your suburb. Five minutes of checking now beats a fine and a stop-work later.