Mason County, WA Landscaping Rules: Tree Removal & Heritage Trees (2026)

Mason County's Fish and Wildlife Habitat Conservation Area rules, MCC 8.52.170, otherwise require a habitat management plan before anyone disturbs a critical area buffer, but subsection (4)(B) carves out a faster path for hazardous trees. A landowner who believes a tree poses an imminent threat to public health, safety, or private or public property must first give the county administrator a written statement describing the tree's location, the danger it poses, and the mitigation planned. If the threat is not obviously imminent to the administrator, the county can require a report from a professional forester or a certified arborist, using the danger tree definition in MCC 8.52.030, which covers trees with a debilitating disease, a structural defect, a root base more than fifty percent exposed, recent wind-throw exposure, or an endangered bluff or slope, where a residence sits within a tree length of the trunk.

Except in a true emergency under MCC 8.52.240, the tree cannot come down until the administrator issues written approval, though the county must act within ten business days or the removal is automatically deemed allowed. Approval comes with mitigation conditions: the landowner must plant six new native trees at least three years old within the critical area or its buffer, and generally must leave the felled trunk in place as wildlife habitat, either as a twenty-foot standing snag or cut into large segments on the ground, unless disease or pest risk justifies removing it.

Felling three or more trees on one property within a ten-year period triggers additional mitigation beyond the six-tree minimum. This danger-tree path is separate from ordinary land clearing, which still needs a full habitat management plan.