Atlanta's Tree Protection Ordinance (TPO) has been rewritten by the Department of City Planning, and the most recent draft, released at the end of January, is rapidly heading toward an April 2025 City Council vote. While some changes in this draft are positive and potentially could save more trees than our current TPO, other changes have seriously weakened the Tree Ordinance. In early February 2025, the City held a webinar about several proposed ordinances (the new TPO starts at minute 10:30), including the companion Administrative Variance Ordinance, but they did not clarify how some of the changes may actually harm the tree canopy. 

To ensure the community was fully informed, Trees Atlanta hosted its own webinar on February 25. In their meeting, Trees Atlanta urged attendees to write the City and request several changes to the latest TPO draft, changes that are supported by all members of the tree advocacy caucus of the 2024 Tree Ordinance Rewrite Working Group.  Among the key fixes recommended by this group are:

1. Don’t Deplete the Tree Trust Fund to Fund Additional Staff and Tree Maintenance: The Tree Trust fund consists of recompense fees to replant trees that have been removed and to purchase forested land in Atlanta for permanent conservation. However, the new TPO allows this fund to now be used to fund 20 arborists' salaries and all public tree maintenance. Not only will these additional allocations drain the fund, but it creates a major conflict of interest to require city arborists to approve tree removals in order to generate recompense fees to fund their salaries. See Slide 26 for more information.
   
   
2. Fix Developer Discounts for Affordable Housing: Recompense discounts for including affordable housing should better align with the actual percentage of affordable units. In the new TPO, the discounts are far too generous, allowing developments to remove trees with a complete waiver of all recompense fees when only a portion of the project is considered "affordable". We recommend that the recompense fee discount reflect the share of the development that is designated as affordable housing. See Slide 28 for more information.
   
   
3. Replant Destroyed Public Trees: The new TPO lets the Parks Department offset tree replanting with "equivalent spending" on other forestry projects instead of actually replanting trees. This trades tree replacement for maintenance, which is unacceptable.  While we realize the difficulties in replacing remove publictrees inch-per-inch, as required in the current TPO, removed public trees should be replaced at least with one tree for each one removed, the and remaining recompense for unplanted inches be paid into the Tree Trust Fund. See Slide 27 for more information.
   
   
4. Restore the 10% Limit on Stream and Wetland Buffer Tree Removal: This 10% limit has been in place since 2000 but was removed in the latest TPO draft. A stream buffer variance alone is not protective enough without a 10% removal limit, particularly in floodplains. This is a huge issue for neighborhoods affected by flooding, especially those near Peachtree Creek.  See Slide 30 for more information.
   
   
5. Make All Permits Appealable: The proposed TPO exempts landscaping permits on public property from appeals, creating a loophole that allows the City to cut trees without following the ordinance.  See Slide 30 for more information.
   

Read more: Fix Proposed New Tree Protection Ordinance!

As you'll see below, we haven't had any tree loss data reported by the City of Atlanta since the end of 2023. Why? Because City Planning had been developing a new interactive dashboard they intended to launch in early 2024 and, in anticipation of that, they discontinued the traditional quarterly reports starting with the first quarter of 2024.

However, that dashboard was never released due to IT issues, and now, over a year later, we have no recent data on tree loss in Atlanta. Please contact the City Planning Commissioner today—Jahnee Prince, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , 404-330-6454—and request that City Planning reinstate the quarterly reports immediately, as required by both the current and proposed Tree Protection Ordinance. Thank you!

We are now LOSING OVER TWICE AS MANY HEALTHY TREES each year compared to four years ago, according to the City of Atlanta tree data. Tree loss significantly increased in all removal categories over the past four years, with a huge upsurge in healthy tree removals, both permitted and illegally removed, starting in 2021:

• Healthy tree removal has increased by 121% since 2020. 
• Illegal tree removal has nearly doubled in the past four years, but it's more than doubled when the unknown number of trees cleared on 33 acres in 2023 are included.
• The removal of dead, dying, and hazardous (DDH) trees has not grown as much, but is still 7% more than 2020 (which is 21% more than the previous year, FY2019).

(Click on image below to enlarge.)

Chart note: Before 2020, tree loss data was provided only by fiscal year (FY), from July 1 to June 30. 

Read more: Atlanta Tree Loss More Than Doubled!

Phase 2 of the Tree Ordinance rewrite is currently underway with no commitment to achieving the 50% canopy goal Atlanta City Council established in April 2023.  Instead, the official "directive" given by the City to the Tree Ordinance Rewrite committee is to:

•  Promote the preservation and management of trees in Atlanta,

•  Identify and specify opportunities for efficiently and equitably increasing canopy appropriately located throughout the city,

•  While minimizing impacts to developers, home and property owners, the public sector and other stakeholders.

Read more: Why City Council Isn't Serious About 50% Canopy Goal