Oneida County conservation committee pushes clear-cutting ban

A consequential policy fight — quiet now but perhaps not for long — is taking shape in Oneida County over what can, and cannot, be cut along the shoreline.

The county’s Conservation & UW-Extension Education Committee is urging changes to the county’s shoreland ordinance that would prohibit clearcutting within access and viewing corridors in the shoreland zone and restrict the removal of larger trees.

The planning and development committee, however, desires to leave the language as it is, with no clearcutting prohibition. That language will be taken up at a public hearing on Feb. 24.

Behind the disagreement lies a deeper legal question: Would the changes proposed by the conservation committee be a permissible modification, or would they make the county’s ordinance more restrictive than the state’s shoreland rule, NR115, which state law prohibits?

The contest over statutory interpretation might end up as important as the contest over local political points of view.

The issue follows a Dec. 31, 2025, letter to the zoning committee from Conservation & UW-Extension Education Committee chairwoman Collette Sorgel, in which Sorgel outlined the conservation committee’s recommendations. 

In the letter, the committee proposed revising the county code to allow only “select removal of trees and shrubs” within the vegetative buffer zone to create access and viewing corridors, while prohibiting the removal of trees with a diameter breast height (DBH) greater than 4 inches. The proposal would also prohibit “[c]lear cutting, filling, grading, and other land disturbing activities.”

The committee further recommended removing the word “landscaping” from various sections of the ordinance, arguing that the current definition, which includes “altering the contours of the ground,” is subjective and broad, allowing for extensive land disturbance to occur within the access and viewing corridor and even directly at the water’s edge.

Sorgel observed in her letter that the zoning committee had taken no action on a previous clearcutting recommendation after outside county counsel Larry Konopacki suggested it would not pass DNR scrutiny.

But Sorgel wrote that other counties did limit clearcutting. Vilas County, for example, permitted “select cutting” only, she wrote; Bayfield County prohibited “clear cutting, filling, grading, and other land disturbing activities”; while Sawyer County restricted the removal of trees larger than six inches in diameter in its vegetative buffer zone.

“These counties feel that the loss of tree cover, especially the loss of large mature trees, can have negative effects on water quality, aesthetics, and shoreland habitat,” Sorgel wrote.

The committee pitched its proposal as a way to “‘protect water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, natural scenic beauty, and to promote preservation and restoration of native vegetation’ as written in NR115, and still allow landowners to remove trees in the access and viewing corridor.”

On Jan. 21, the zoning committee discussed the letter, conferred with planning and zoning director Karl Jennrich, and reached consensus to leave the language as is for the public hearing.

At the Feb. 9 meeting of the Land and Water Conservation Committee, as the River News has reported, county conservationist Michele Sadauskas said she wanted to find out if a middle ground could be reached and that she would speak at the upcoming public hearing and, if given the chance, at the next zoning meeting.

Eric Rempala of Oneida County Clean Water Action told the committee it was “disappointing that the P and D failed to even entertain any discussion on the recommended language,” and said his organization and the Oneida County Lakes and Rivers Association were drafting alternative language, also in hopes of finding middle ground.

That sets up an upcoming zoning meeting and the public hearing for the political contest, but the legal analysis will also have to be considered.

Front and center in that analysis is state law and NR115, the statewide shoreland zoning rule. NR115 requires counties to establish a 35-foot vegetative buffer extending inland from the ordinary high water mark and generally prohibits the removal of vegetation within that buffer. However, state law allows the removal of trees and shrubs for access and viewing corridors, so long as the maximum width does not exceed the greater of 10 feet or 35 percent of the parcel, except that such corridors cannot exceed 200 feet.

The rule contains no diameter limit for the removal of trees within corridors. Neither does it distinguish between “select cutting” and “clearcutting.” 

There is an important caveat. While state statutes do not allow counties to be more restrictive than NR115 on matters the rule regulates, counties can be more restrictive than the state on matters the rule does not regulate.

So, just what is regulated?

Those who think a ban on clearcutting in the viewing corridor is allowable have argued that NR115 regulates corridor width, not harvesting technique.

That is to say, because the rule does not address clearcutting or selective cutting — that is, it doesn’t regulate removal method — counties would be free to do so, based on the need to protect water quality and habitat. From that perspective, prohibiting clearcutting and restricting the removal of larger trees addresses a separate concern — land disturbance and erosion — rather than the size of the corridor itself, which, they argue, is the regulatory point of the rule provision.

The mission clause of NR115 itself — “to protect water quality, fish and wildlife habitat and natural scenic beauty, and to promote preservation and restoration of native vegetation” — could bolster that interpretation. The argument would be that method-based limits align with the rule’s stated objectives. 

Clearcutting opponents can also point to other counties that have adopted similar restrictions without apparent state challenge.

Finally, opponents of clearcutting could assert that the current ordinance’s “landscaping” language is overly permissive, potentially allowing contour alteration or grading within the corridor that exceeds what NR115 envisions.

Those who see the proposed revisions as more restrictive than state law are looking down a much different corridor of interpretation.

In their view, NR115 regulates vegetation removal within the 35-foot buffer and specifies when that removal is permitted. That is, by allowing removal of trees and shrubs within a corridor up to 35 percent of frontage, the state has defined the scope of permissible activity. 

Viewed that way, a four-inch DBH cap would narrow that permission.

In Northwoods shoreline buffers, most mature trees exceed four inches in diameter. Prohibiting their removal within an otherwise permitted corridor could substantially limit what landowners may do compared to what NR115 allows and, in fact, defeat the very purpose of a viewing corridor, according to this viewpoint.

Similarly, banning clearcutting within a corridor could be viewed as banning a method of vegetation removal that NR115 does not prohibit. Under this view, the county would not be regulating a separate subject; it would be limiting the very activity the state rule permits, vegetation removal within a defined width, without any express limits on quantity or method.

As for other counties with similar provisions, the lack of a legal challenge does not equal compliance or DNR acceptance. Ordinances can remain untested for years before imploding when a challenge finally surfaces.

How courts might view it

What the courts would say is anybody’s guess. If a court bases its ruling on practical effect, as is often the case, it might see a clearcutting prohibition as more restrictive precisely because the landowners can do less under the county ordinance than under NR115.

That’s the most reasonable practical interpretation: It lets the counties be more restrictive than the state.

In addition, NR115 explicitly regulates removal within the buffer and carefully lists the exceptions. Where a regulation carves out specific exceptions to a general prohibition, courts often treat those exceptions as exclusive.

In this case, the code states that “the county may allow removal of trees and shrubs in the vegetative buffer zone to create access and viewing corridors.” The only condition in that exception is that the combined width of all access and viewing corridors on a riparian lot or parcel may not exceed the lesser of 35 percent of the shoreline frontage or 200 feet.

While explicit permission to remove trees and shrubs in the buffer moves the DNR into regulation of tree removal in the corridors, it notably does not prohibit clearcutting. It does not cap the “removal of trees and shrubs in the vegetative buffer zone.”

Additionally, NR115 expressly addresses harvesting technique — requiring “generally accepted forestry management practices”  as defined in the rules — in a separate forestry-management provision applicable to larger forested parcels. The argument there is that when rule makers intended to regulate technique, they did so explicitly.

The four-inch DBH cap is also vulnerable because it directly limits the removal of trees that NR115 otherwise allows within the corridor width.

On the other hand, supporters of a clear-cutting provision could try to sell it as a form of erosion control or land-disturbance regulation, even though, in the code, such management activities are controlled by permit, not blanket regulation. Still, a county could argue that regulating technique — clearcutting vs. selective cutting — is a land-disturbance issue adjacent to, but not identical with, vegetation removal.

On balance, given the Legislature’s reforms that targeted regulatory — and possibly constitutional — overreach at the local level, courts might lean toward a strict reading of preemption that would put method-based bans at risk.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.