Sauk County, WI Invasive Plant Rules: Prohibited Species (2026)

Sauk County's ban on invasive plantings is not a freestanding noxious-weed ordinance; it is written into the secondary standards that apply whenever a zoning use requires a vegetative buffer or vegetative screen under Chapter 7. Sec. 7.042 requires any use carrying that condition, such as a storage yard, kennel, wholesale distribution facility, or nonmetallic mining site, to submit a buffer plan with its land use permit application, and no permit issues until the Zoning Administrator approves it. The buffer must run at least 30 feet deep parallel to the vehicle or building area it screens, plant at least one tree every 20 feet (or every 30 feet along a road-facing property line), use at least 75 percent evergreens drawn from at least two species, and Sec.

7.042(1)(d) flatly bars any non-native species with the potential to be invasive from that planting list. Sec. 7.043 imposes the identical invasive-species ban, in subsection (1)(f), on the denser vegetative screening standard: two parallel rows of trees ten feet apart, with at least one tree every 12 feet within a row. Buffers and screens within 1,000 feet of a lake, pond or flowage, or 300 feet of a navigable river or stream, must also satisfy the shoreland protection standards in Sauk County Code Chapter 8.

Maintenance obligations run with the land: Sec. 7.042(3) requires the vegetation to be kept in viable growing condition and the ground cover mowed to preserve the buffer's shape, so a landowner cannot let an approved buffer die out or replace it with a prohibited species later.