What Is a Significant Landscape Tree in Brisbane?

Most tree work in Brisbane turns on one question, and it is not the one people ask first. It is not whether you own the tree, or how close it is to the house. It is whether the tree is a significant landscape tree — because if it is, almost every exemption you were counting on stops applying.

What trees are protected in Brisbane?

Three separate things protect vegetation on private land in Brisbane, and they work independently of each other:

• Significant landscape trees — ten named species, protected automatically once the trunk reaches a set diameter. No mapping, no notification, no order on the title. The species and the size are the whole test.
• Protected vegetation — land mapped by Council as significant urban vegetation, significant native vegetation, or covered by a vegetation protection order. This is on the mapping, not on the tree.
• Council vegetation — anything on a footpath, nature strip, park or other Council land. Protected absolutely, with no exemptions available to a resident.

The first of those catches people out most, because there is nothing to look up. A jacaranda in a suburban front yard is an ordinary tree at 79 cm and a protected one at 81 cm, and nothing anywhere tells you that except a tape measure.

Is there a register of significant trees in Brisbane?

No. Brisbane keeps no register of significant trees, and that is the part people get wrong. There is no list to look your address up on and nothing arrives in the post. Protection is automatic the moment a named species reaches its size, which is why a tape measure settles it and a search does not.

The ten species, from Schedule 2 of the Natural Assets Local Law 2003:

Those are trunk diameters, not circumferences — a fig at 100 cm diameter is over three metres around.

How to measure the trunk correctly

Measure at 1.4 metres above natural ground level. Two words there do a lot of work.

Natural means the ground level before any works. If soil has been built up around the trunk, or a retaining wall has changed the level, you measure from where the ground originally was — not from where it is now. Building up around a trunk does not move the measuring point, and it is not a way to make a tree smaller on paper.

The practical method is to run a tape around the trunk at that height and divide the circumference by 3.14. On a leaning tree, measure perpendicular to the trunk rather than horizontally.

If you land within a few centimetres of a threshold, treat the tree as being over it. Butt swell, root flare and sloping ground all move the figure, and an assessing officer measuring it later may not get the number you got.

Are leopard trees protected in Brisbane?

Not automatically. The leopard tree (Libidibia ferrea, formerly Caesalpinia ferrea) is not one of the ten Schedule 2 species, so it does not become a significant landscape tree at any size.

That is not the same as being free to remove, and leopard trees are a particularly bad example to assume on, for one reason: an enormous number of Brisbane’s leopard trees are street trees on Council land. They were planted widely as a street species and are now notorious for lifting footpaths and dropping limbs. If the tree is on the footpath or the nature strip it is Council vegetation, and no resident exemption applies to it at all — you need Council’s permission regardless of what is wrong with it.

If a leopard tree is genuinely inside your boundary, the remaining questions are whether the land is mapped as protected vegetation, whether a vegetation protection order applies, and whether the tree provides habitat. Same three tests as any other unlisted species.

The same reasoning applies to every species not on the list — camphor laurel, liquidambar, silky oak, umbrella tree. Not being a significant landscape tree answers one question out of four.

Why it matters more than anything else on your application

A significant landscape tree does not simply need a permit. It loses the exemptions that make ordinary tree work possible:

• The 3 metre dwelling exemption — normally the one most suburban removals rely on — does not apply.
• The 20% pruning allowance does not apply. Any pruning at all needs a permit.
• The garden vegetation exemption for anything under 30 cm does not apply.

So the sequence people expect gets inverted. Ordinarily you check whether an exemption covers you and stop there. With a significant landscape tree there is nothing to check: a permit is required for any work at all, including pruning that would be trivial on the tree next door.

What if the tree is dead?

Being dead is not a general exemption in Brisbane, and this is the single most common and most expensive misunderstanding about the local law.

Section 44(j) exempts a dead tree only where the trunk is under 20 cm in diameter and it is not providing habitat for native fauna. Both conditions, not either. A dead 60 cm gum full of hollows is prime habitat, is protected, and removing it is an offence — and a dead tree of a Schedule 2 species over its threshold is a significant landscape tree with no exemption available at all.

Photograph it thoroughly and get the position confirmed in writing before anything comes down.

What it costs to get it wrong

Interfering with a protected tree without a permit carries a maximum penalty of $86,350 for an individual and $146,795 for a company under section 7(3) of the Natural Assets Local Law — 500 and 850 penalty units at the current $172.70 a unit. Where the tree’s replacement value is $4,000 or less the maximum is $8,635.

Brisbane charges nothing to apply for a permit. An unlawful removal is the most expensive way to save no money at all.

Working out where you stand

Three things resolve it, in order: identify the species, measure the trunk at 1.4 m above natural ground, and check how Council maps the property.

The permit checker walks exactly that sequence and asks the species question before the size one, because the threshold depends on which tree it is. If your tree turns out to be a significant landscape tree, the supporting report has to be prepared by an AQF Level 5 arborist — Council specifies the qualification, not just “an arborist”.