Skowhegan, ME Landscaping Rules: Tree Removal & Heritage Trees (2026)

Skowhegan regulates tree cutting through the Clearing or Removal of Vegetation section of its Shoreland Zoning Ordinance, amended through June 5, 2021. The section is lettered O in the printed ordinance, though the ordinance's own cross-references call it Section 15(P). It applies within 250 feet of a great pond or river, 250 feet of a freshwater wetland and 75 feet of a stream (Section 3). A tree on a lot outside those distances is not governed by it.

Beyond the buffer, Section 15(O)(3) allows selective cutting of not more than forty percent of the volume of trees four inches or more in diameter, measured at four and one half feet above ground level, on any lot in any ten year period. The ordinance counts tree removal done for permitted development in the same forty percent, and it allows volume to be treated as equivalent to basal area. Separately, cleared openings for structures, driveways, lawns and sewage disposal areas cannot exceed twenty-five percent of the lot area within the shoreland zone or ten thousand square feet, whichever is greater, including land previously cleared, except in the General Development District.

Closer to the water, the buffer strip extends one hundred feet inland from a great pond classified GPA and seventy-five feet from any other waterbody, tributary stream or upland edge of a wetland. In it, no cleared opening can exceed two hundred fifty square feet in the forest canopy, apart from a footpath of not more than six feet in width. Selective cutting is allowed only if a well-distributed stand of trees is kept. The ordinance scores each twenty-five foot by fifty foot plot by trunk diameter, with trees of twelve inches or greater worth eight points, and requires a score of twenty-four or more beside great ponds classified GPA and sixteen beside other water bodies, tributary streams and wetlands. Pruning of branches on the bottom one third of a tree is allowed. Where storm damaged, diseased, unsafe or dead trees leave cleared openings, they are replanted with native tree species unless new growth exists.

In a Resource Protection District abutting a great pond, there is no cutting within seventy-five feet inland of the normal high-water line, except to remove safety hazards (Section 15(O)(1)).