Titusville, FL Tree Protection: Heritage & Protected Trees (2026)

Section 30-31(c) of the Land Development Regulations sorts protected trees into three tiers by trunk diameter at breast height (dbh): significant trees run 14 inches up to just under 20 inches, specimen trees run 20 up to just under 46 inches, and heritage trees are anything 46 inches dbh or larger, provided the species is native or IFAS-designated Florida-friendly (palms are excluded from all three tiers). Removing a heritage tree is harder than removing a significant or specimen tree. Under Section 30-32(e), the Development Review Committee must approve the removal, applying the general removal justifications in Section 30-32(a), such as an unavoidable conflict with a building, driveway or accessory structure, or a hazard certified by an arborist, plus heritage-specific factors: whether the project can be reasonably reconfigured to preserve the tree, whether reducing setbacks, buffers or road width would save it, and whether low-impact techniques such as pervious pavement, grade beams, retaining walls or tree wells could avoid the loss.

If 75 percent or more of a site's existing heritage trees are preserved, Development Review Committee review is waived entirely. Committee decisions can be appealed under Section 34-248(b), and applicants who exhaust administrative remedies retain a Chapter 34, Article X 'Beneficial Use' claim if the rules deny all reasonable use of the property. Mitigation is steep: Section 30-34(a)(1)c sets heritage-tree replacement at 200 percent of the removed trunk's dbh in caliper inches of new planting, roughly double the specimen-tree rate and quadruple the significant-tree rate. The current text derives from Ordinance No. 20-2021, Section 4, adopted September 28, 2021.