Do you need a permit?
No permit required for most private trees
In Minneapolis the trees in your yard are yours. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board runs forestry for the whole city and states that property owners are responsible for trees on their property; no city or Park Board permit is required to take down a healthy tree on private land. What MPRB does have is the power to condemn a diseased or infested tree on your property and order you to pay for its removal, and it uses that power hard because of emerald ash borer.
What's protected in Minneapolis
- Boulevard trees, the roughly 200,000 public trees between the curb and the sidewalk. MPRB owns them, removes them at its own expense, and residents do not touch them.
- Park trees and any tree on Park Board land.
- Vegetation in the MR Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area Overlay District: shore impact zones, bluff impact zones, land within 50 feet of a wetland or natural drainage route, native plant communities, and significant existing vegetative stands. Intensive clearing there needs a vegetation permit.
Fees, penalties, and the ordinance
- Ordinance
- Minneapolis Code of Ordinances Chapter 347 (Tree Servicing) and Chapter 399 (Control of Invasive Species Tree Pests); Park and Recreation Board Code of Ordinances Chapter 10, Trees and Vegetation, including PB 10-23; zoning code section 535.1690 (vegetation management, MR overlay district). MPRB also cites Minn. Stat. ch. 18G.13 and ch. 429.101.
Worth knowing
- Anyone doing tree work for hire in Minneapolis needs a tree servicing license. You are exempt on your own property: the code excludes "residents or owners of a subject property" who are "engaged solely in the removal or hauling away of trees or parts thereof." Your contractor is not exempt, so ask to see the license.
- A licensed tree service must employ or contract someone holding current ISA arborist certification or an urban forestry or arboriculture degree.
- MPRB tree inspectors mark condemned trees with a coloured ring: green for emerald ash borer, orange for Dutch elm disease. You get a door hanger first, then a letter in the mail.
- The clock is short. You have 60 days to remove an EAB-infested ash and 23 days to remove a diseased elm. Miss it and MPRB hires the contractor, adds an $80 administration fee, and the cost can be assessed against your property.
- Income-qualified owners of a condemned tree can apply for City help with removal and replanting through the Condemned Tree Assistance Program. Call 311 or 612-673-3000.
- Even inside the Mississippi River corridor overlay, section 535.1690(b) allows selective removal of individual trees and shrubs without a vegetation permit, along with removal of anything dead, diseased, infested, dying, hazardous or invasive. It is intensive clearing that is prohibited without a permit.
What we could not confirm
We would rather tell you what we don't know than guess. Call the office below to confirm these before you cut.
- — Whether a tree in MPRB's Heritage Tree Program carries any removal restriction once designated. The program exists; we could not confirm what designation obligates.
- — The full text of Park Board Code Chapter 10, Trees and Vegetation. Municode serves the Park Board code as a single block and we could not isolate every section, so we relied on MPRB's own description of PB 10-23.
- — What a condemned-tree removal actually costs. MPRB rebids and the price depends on the tree.
- — Penalties for removing a boulevard tree without authorization.