Portage County, WI Landscaping Rules: Tree Removal & Heritage Trees (2026)

Portage County Code § 7.7.6(2) designates every strip of land running from the ordinary high-water mark of a navigable waterway inland for a minimum of 35 feet as a vegetative buffer zone, and it prohibits removing vegetation inside that zone except through one of the listed paths. The narrowest path, § 7.7.6(2)(a), lets an owner perform routine maintenance of buffer-zone vegetation, but only after review under § 7.7.6(2)(d). The widest as-of-right path, § 7.7.6(2)(b), lets any shoreland property cut an access-and-viewing corridor through the buffer sized to its shoreline frontage: up to 35 feet wide for every 100 feet of frontage, 70 feet wide once a lot has at least 200 feet of frontage, 105 feet wide at 300 feet of frontage, and so on, while a lot with less than 100 feet of frontage gets a corridor equal to 35 percent of its frontage instead.

A landowner with ten or more acres of forested land can remove trees and shrubs in the buffer under § 7.7.6(2)(c) if the work follows the 'generally accepted forestry management practices' defined in Wis. Admin. Code § NR 1.25(2)(b) and described in the DNR's Wisconsin Forest Management Guidelines. Any other vegetation-management activity inside the buffer, outside the allowed access corridor, needs authorization from the Planning and Zoning Department and a zoning permit under § 7.7.6(2)(d) before it starts. The rule exists, per § 7.7.6(1), to protect water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, and scenic beauty by controlling erosion and the flow of sediment and nutrients into the water.