Tree rules and permits in Juan de Fuca Electoral Area

The CRD is the local government for Juan de Fuca Electoral Area. It works from offices in Otter Point, Langford and Victoria. On its website, the CRD lists the commonly referenced bylaws for the area. None of them is a tree protection or tree permit bylaw. One listed bylaw, the Juan de Fuca Land Use Bylaw, does have some tree and vegetation rules, set out in the land use bylaw section below.

The CRD calls this a list of commonly referenced bylaws, so it may not include every bylaw in force. Before you start, ask the CRD whether any bylaw limits tree work on your land.

The CRD bylaw list includes Bylaw 3795. Its listed title is Community Parks Regulations (Juan de Fuca and Salt Spring Island Electoral Areas) Bylaw No.1, 2012.

This page does not cover what the bylaw allows or forbids for trees. If your work involves trees in a community park, read the bylaw first.

Some land in Juan de Fuca Electoral Area is inside a Development Permit Area. The CRD says its Official Community Plans show where these areas are. Development permits are tied to these mapped areas.

The CRD page does not mention trees by name. It does say to check with the Juan de Fuca Community Planning office before making any changes to your land. Clearing trees or building near them may count as a change to your land, so ask first.

The CRD lists several purposes for development permits in the area. Two of them are:

• Keeping development safe from hazards
• Protecting the natural environment and its ecosystems

Bylaw No. 2040, the Juan de Fuca Land Use Bylaw, 1992 (Consolidated), regulates land use and subdivision for part of Juan de Fuca Electoral Area. That part was once in the Electoral Area of Sooke. Section 3.06 says the bylaw covers the areas on its East Sooke, Otter Point and Shirley Jordan River zoning maps.

The bylaw is not a tree permit bylaw, and each zone rule applies only in that zone. If your land is in one of these zones or at a highway corner, read the bylaw or ask the CRD before you remove or plant trees. The CRD consolidated copy, dated April 2023, has these tree and vegetation rules:

• Part 1, section 4.16 covers land where a highway 6 m or more wide meets another highway. In the sight triangle, no one may grow or place a tree, shrub, plant, fence or structure wider than 0.6 m. This applies above the height where it would block the view from 0.9 m above one road to 0.9 m above the other.
• The sight triangle is the corner of the lot inside a line joining the two points on the road boundaries that are 6 m from where they meet.
• In the Forestry zone, section 3.08 requires a screen around a portable sawmill operation. It can be a solid fence at least 2.5 m high. Or it can be native coniferous vegetation at least 2 m high and 5 m deep, spaced no less than 2 m apart.
• In the Industrial Sawmill zone, section 28.08 requires a vegetative screen to be kept along the entire length of the parcel boundaries. It must be native coniferous vegetation at least 2 m high and 15 m deep, spaced not more than 2 m apart.
• In the Rural Industrial zone, section 29.10 requires the same kind of screen along the parcel boundaries where the lot abuts a public highway. It also applies where the lot abuts a residential, rural residential, rural or multiple family residential zone. The screen must be at least 15 m deep next to those zones and 7.5 m deep next to a highway.
• Section 21.10 covers campgrounds in the Marine Commercial zone. Section 22.08 covers cabins in the Low Intensity Commercial Recreation (Cabin) zone. Both must be sited in clusters or groups so on-site roads are minimized and natural vegetative cover is retained.
• In the Comprehensive Development 1 zone, section 33.08 requires the golf course to be screened from nearby homes outside the zone by planting at least 6 metres wide. That buffer must include retention and maintenance of native trees and natural understorey vegetation.
• Section 33.08 also says all required landscape screens in that zone must be kept up by irrigation and by replacing dead or seriously distressed plants or trees.

A provincial regulation deals with development near streams. It is the Riparian Areas Protection Regulation, British Columbia Regulation 178/2019 (B.C. Reg. 178/2019). Riparian means the land along the banks of a stream. It replaced the older Riparian Areas Regulation, B.C. Reg. 376/2004, effective November 1, 2019.

Under section 8(1), the riparian assessment area for a stream is a 30 metre strip on each side of the stream, measured from the stream boundary. Section 8(2) measures streams in ravines differently. If the ravine is less than 60 m wide, the strip runs to 30 m beyond the top of the ravine bank. If it is 60 m or wider, the strip runs to 10 m beyond the top of the bank.

The regulation defines development to include the addition, removal or alteration of soil, vegetation or a building or other structure. Its definition of a stream covers a watercourse or body of water, whether or not it usually contains water. It also covers a ditch, spring or wetland connected to one by surface flow.

Under section 3(1), the regulation applies to a development only when all three of these are true. The development is residential, commercial or industrial. It is in the riparian assessment area of a stream that provides fish habitat to protected fish. The local government has power under Part 14 of the Local Government Act to regulate it.

Section 3 also lists exceptions. One is maintaining an existing area of human disturbance, other than a building or structure, if the area is not extended and the type of disturbance is not changed. Section 4 directs local governments to have zoning or land use bylaws for covered development. These bylaws must stop it going ahead without local government approval, or without an assessment report whose measures are followed.

Before you clear vegetation near water, ask the CRD whether your land and project are covered, and read the full wording of the regulation.

These steps are general good practice for tree work in Juan de Fuca Electoral Area. They are not legal advice.

• Ask the Juan de Fuca Community Planning office at the CRD before you make changes to land.
• Check the Official Community Plan for your area. It shows where development permit areas are, and one purpose of these permits is protecting the natural environment.
• Near a stream, check the provincial riparian rules first. The Riparian Areas Protection Regulation counts removing vegetation as development. It applies only to residential, commercial or industrial development in the assessment area of a stream that provides fish habitat to protected fish. That area is a 30 metre strip on each side of a stream, measured differently in ravines.
• Look for nests before you cut or prune. B.C.'s Wildlife Act makes it an offence to destroy a bird's nest while it holds a bird or egg, unless a regulation allows it. The nests of eagles, peregrine falcons, gyrfalcons, ospreys, herons and burrowing owls are covered whether or not they are in use.
• Hire an International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) Certified Arborist for pruning or removal. ISA says tree work should be done only by people trained and equipped to work safely in trees.
• If a tree may be unsafe, ask for a tree risk assessment from an arborist with the ISA Tree Risk Assessment Qualification (TRAQ).
• Do not top trees. ISA calls topping perhaps the most harmful tree pruning practice known. Ask for pruning to follow a published standard, such as the ANSI A300 tree care standards.

We can look at your trees and site, then help you list the questions to take to the CRD, especially if your land is near a stream. If a review calls for it, we write the arborist report and the tree protection plan. Hands-on tree work goes to vetted local partners.