Amador County, CA Landscaping Rules: Tree Removal & Heritage Trees (2026)

Amador County does not maintain a standalone tree-protection or tree-removal-permit ordinance for routine removal of trees from private parcels. A homeowner generally may remove trees on their own land, and the county's defensible-space chapter (County Code Chapter 7.30) actually directs removal of dead, dying, and hazardous trees and ladder fuels around structures. Tree and oak-woodland protection in the unincorporated county instead operates at the land-use and discretionary-permit level: when a development project may significantly affect oak woodlands, the county must evaluate impacts under the California Environmental Quality Act and the Amador County General Plan's conservation policies, and must require mitigation under California Public Resources Code 21083.4. That statute lets a county satisfy mitigation through conservation easements, planting and maintaining replacement trees (which cannot meet more than half the requirement and ends seven years after planting), contributing to the Oak Woodlands Conservation Fund, or other approved measures. Because the protection is tied to discretionary project approval, removing scattered trees outside a development does not normally trigger a county permit, but commercial timber operations are separately regulated by CAL FIRE and the state Forest Practice Act.