Tree conservation bylaws may prevent farmers from expanding their fields or clearing fence rows
By Kate Ayers
Staff Writer
Farms.com
Ontario producers who are interested in removing trees from their properties should consult their municipality bylaw officers or third-party professionals before starting this process.
The Municipal Act, 2001 allows all upper-tier municipalities to regulate or prohibit the cutting or injuring of trees in woodlands that are one hectare (2.5 acres) or greater, a report by the Forest Conservation Bylaw Committee and the Lower-Tier Advisory Group said. Meanwhile, lower-tier municipalities can regulate or prohibit the cutting of individual trees in areas up to one hectare in size.
An upper-tier municipality is either a county, such as Wellington or Dufferin, or a regional municipality, such as Waterloo, a Neptis Foundation article said. A lower-tier municipality, such as Caledon or Essa, forms part of an upper-tier municipality.
The Municipal Act defines a woodland as a parcel of land that is one hectare or more in area with at least:
- 1,000 trees, of any size, per hectare
- 750 trees measuring over five centimetres (2.0 inches) in diameter, per hectare
- 500 trees measuring over 12 centimetres (4.7 inches) in diameter, per hectare
- 250 trees measuring over 20 centimetres (7.8 inches) in diameter, per hectare
And tree conservation bylaws can differ from one municipality to the next.
“There will be differences between municipalities as to whether or not they have tree conservation bylaws,” Katie DeBlock Boersma, an associate lawyer with Monteith Ritsma Phillips Professional Corporation in Stratford and Listowel, told Farms.com.
In municipalities with conservation legislation, “the bylaws will look very much the same but there may be some changes as to how municipalities implement them as far as the processes of filing complaints, dealing with prosecutions, (bylaw) infractions, etc.”
Before landowners remove trees from their properties, DeBlock Boersma recommended residents contact their local municipality offices.
“If a farmer has an area of land where there are enough trees of a species (and size) the bylaw applies to, then the farmer cannot clear that land without the permission of the municipality,” she said.
In the event the municipality does not grant the landowner permission and he or she proceeds cutting anyway, he or she “risks prosecution in Provincial Offences Court.”
These conditions even apply when farmers want to cut down trees to expand their fields or clean up fence rows.
“There have been a few cases where, besides field expansion, farmers have wanted to clean up ditch banks, for example,” DeBlock Boersma said. In these cases, the producers said that the area was intended for farmland, but it had overgrown and needed to be cut back.
“Some farmers have been prosecuted because the municipality (deems that section of trees) as part of a woodland or woodlot that meets the field,” DeBlock Boersma said.
Unfortunately, most municipalities do not have bylaw exemption plans in place, she added.
In these cases, landowners who want a second opinion can hire a consultant in the logging or tree industry to review whether the bylaw should apply.
“The other option for farmers is the Normal Farm Practices Protection Board,” DeBlock Boersma said.
“It is a tribunal in Ontario where, if farmers feel a municipal bylaw prevents them from conducting normal farm practices, they can apply to the tribunal to ask them to find that a bylaw does not apply in that case.”
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