Bloomington, IN Tree Protection: Protected Tree Species (2026)

030(h), applies to any land-disturbing activity on a property with closed-canopy wooded areas. Table 04-8 sets a sliding retention scale tied to how much canopy already exists: a site with 80 to 100 percent baseline canopy cover must retain half of it, a site at 60 to 79 percent must retain 60 percent of its baseline cover, a site at 40 to 59 percent must retain 70 percent, a site at 20 to 39 percent must retain 80 percent, and a site with under 20 percent existing cover must retain 90 percent of what remains.

The ordinance is explicit about how that retained acreage should be chosen: priority goes to high-quality stands of native trees, undisturbed woodlands and corridors of contiguous vegetation over scattered individual specimen trees. No more than ten percent of a site's canopy retention obligation can be met by saving stand-alone trees outside a preferred wooded area, and where an individual specimen tree is preserved, the code directs that preference be given to protecting heritage trees, meaning those of particular value because of their type, size or age.

For parcels under two acres, the Planning and Transportation Director can substitute preservation of individual specimen trees or property-line tree rows for the canopy table entirely. Wherever a contiguous stand of at least one-fifth of an acre of tree cover must be preserved, the developer records a conservancy or tree preservation easement extending ten feet past the tree driplines, and a tree protection zone must be installed and inspected by the Planning and Transportation Department before any land-disturbing work begins.