A win for the Emerald City’s trees: Seattle will soon require registration for tree removal

Today, the Seat­tle City Coun­cil vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly to adopt an ordi­nance that takes an ini­tial step towards pro­vid­ing stronger pro­tec­tions for trees in the Emer­ald City. Coun­cil Bill 120207 requires that arborists and providers of tree care ser­vices reg­is­ter with the city pri­or to revving up their chain­saws and remov­ing trees.

“To get on the new pub­lic reg­istry, tree ser­vice providers must be not only licensed and insured con­trac­tors but also have cre­den­tials and exper­tise ground­ed in the Inter­na­tion­al Soci­ety of Arbori­cul­ture,” the Seat­tle City Coun­cil explained in a news release pub­lished fol­low­ing its vote to approve the ordi­nance.

“Until they are approved for the pub­lic reg­istry by the Seat­tle Depart­ment of Con­struc­tion and Inspec­tions (SDCI), con­trac­tors will be pro­hib­it­ed from remov­ing or heav­i­ly prun­ing trees. This increased trans­paren­cy will enable gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the gen­er­al pub­lic to hold com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als account­able who vio­late the City’s cur­rent and future tree pro­tec­tion ordinances.”

The Coun­cil’s action was praised by Seat­tle’s Urban Forestry Com­mis­sion as well as TreeP­AC, which NPI part­nered with last year to research vot­er sup­port for tree pro­tec­tion ideas in the Emer­ald City. Coun­cil Bill 120207 imple­ments one of the ideas that we researched: Requir­ing tree care providers (arborists) to meet min­i­mum cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and train­ing and reg­is­ter with the city.

A total of 75% (three fourths of respon­dents) sur­veyed in July of 2021 by Change Research for NPI said they sup­port­ed this idea, with 41% strong­ly sup­port­ive and 34% some­what sup­port­ive. Only 14% were opposed, and 11% were not sure.

Our research was explic­it­ly cit­ed by the Coun­cil in its after­noon news release, with the City cor­rect­ly not­ing that the poll was “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly significant.”

NPI thanks the Coun­cil for get­ting this done.

Seat­tle’s tree pro­tec­tion ordi­nance still needs a com­pre­hen­sive update, but this leg­is­la­tion is a very pos­i­tive devel­op­ment for the city.

Impor­tant­ly, as Coun­cilmem­bers Alex Ped­er­sen and Dan Strauss observed, the imple­men­ta­tion of Coun­cil Bill 120207 will make the tree care indus­try in Seat­tle more account­able and its col­lec­tive con­duct more trans­par­ent to residents.

As we often say here at NPI, there’s noth­ing like good, cred­i­ble data. Once Coun­cil Bill 120207 goes into effect, the city will have more use­ful data avail­able with which to mon­i­tor the health and sta­tus of Seat­tle’s urban tree canopy.

NPI’s research last year twice found over­whelm­ing sup­port among Seat­tleites for a range of tree pro­tec­tion ideas. Work­ing with TreeP­AC, we test­ed an ini­tial set of ideas in July of 2021 and a sec­ond set in Octo­ber of 2021.

“Vot­ers are ready and eager for action. The next May­or of Seat­tle and Seat­tle City Coun­cil must make tree pro­tec­tion a top pri­or­i­ty for the com­ing leg­isla­tive year,” I wrote last Sep­tem­ber after sum­ma­riz­ing the ini­tial findings.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to TreeP­AC, Seat­tle Audobon, the Bea­con Hill Coun­cil, and every­one else who worked hard to secure pas­sage of Bill 120207. It’s great to see this action by the Coun­cil — we hope it’s the pre­cur­sor to even more progress.