Updated August 2026
Tree species and the Comox Valley permit rules
Eight tree species carry special permit weight in the Comox Valley. City of Courtenay Tree Protection Bylaw No. 2850 names six species as protected outright: Garry oak, Pacific dogwood, western white pine, western yew, trembling aspen and arbutus. Town of Comox Tree Protection Bylaw No. 2063 sets a lower permit threshold, 20 cm across the trunk instead of 30 cm, for two others: Douglas fir and western redcedar.
Updated August 2026
Not every tree on a Comox Valley lot carries the same paperwork. Two bylaws single out eight species by name, and which one applies to your tree decides whether a permit is one measurement away or several. We check the species before we quote the job, because the species is what the bylaw checks first.
A protected or priority species does not mean a tree can never come down. Dead, hazardous and storm-damaged trees are recognized exemptions under every bylaw that applies in the valley, and confirming which exemption fits is part of the quote, not an extra step.
Which six species are protected by name in Courtenay?
Any of these six, over 0.5 m tall, needs a permit from the City of Courtenay regardless of trunk size. Garry oak has thick, deeply-furrowed grey bark and rounded, deeply-lobed leaves — it leafs out and flowers at the same time each spring, and the ecosystems it grows in are among the most endangered in Canada. Pacific dogwood, BC's official floral emblem, shows four to eight large white bracts around a small true flower cluster each May. Western white pine carries its blue-green needles in bundles of five, the one pine on the Island where you can confirm the species by counting. Western yew has thin, reddish, papery bark that peels in shreds, flat needles, and a bright red berry-like aril in fall — the flesh isn't toxic, but the seed inside it is, which catches people off guard. Trembling aspen has smooth greenish-grey bark and round leaves on a flattened stalk, which is why the leaves flutter in almost no wind at all. Arbutus sheds its thin red-orange bark in curls year-round, not seasonally, and is slow to recover from any digging or grade change near the trunk. We measure and identify before we quote, so you know which bylaw applies before a permit application is even started.
Why do Douglas fir and western redcedar get a lower bar in Comox?
Everywhere else in the valley, most trees need a permit at 30 cm across the trunk. Under Comox's bylaw, Douglas fir and western redcedar trip that requirement at 20 cm instead, because both are common enough locally that a flat threshold would have left most of them unregulated. Douglas fir has flat single needles with two pale stripes underneath, and a hanging cone with a distinctive papery three-pointed bract poking out from under each scale. Western redcedar has stringy, fibrous reddish bark that tears in vertical strips, flat sprays of scale-like foliage instead of needles, and often a forked, uneven top on older trees — it's BC's official provincial tree, and some Island specimens are well over a thousand years old. Both species also grow tall enough, and hold enough dead wood in an old crown, that they show up often on the storm-damage calls we get after a southeasterly blows through.