Nassau County, FL Tree Protection: Protected Tree Species (2026)

02 of the Land Development Code, does not name a short list of protected species. Instead, the Board of County Commissioners built the definition around trunk size and health: a protected tree is any existing, healthy tree with a caliper of five inches or more in diameter at breast height, as verified by a Board-approved ISA-certified arborist. The only species carve-out runs the other way, a tree cannot be protected if it appears on the most recent Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council Invasive Plant list, Category I or II, so nuisance exotics get no protection no matter their size.

The article's stated purpose is to maintain the diversity of tree species indigenous to Amelia Island and keep the existing mature growth native trees that make up the island's maritime forest, one of the rarest coastal biological communities on the East Coast. Because the standard turns on diameter rather than species, an oak, a pine, a hickory, or dozens of other native hardwoods over the five-inch threshold all trigger the same tree removal permit and replacement requirements found elsewhere in this article, while an invasive species of any size does not. Only two live oak species, Quercus virginiana and Quercus geminata, get the heavier specimen-tree protections once they reach forty inches in diameter.