Selective Land Clearing for Highlands Blocks & Building Sites

Before a machine turns up: which rulebook applies to your block

A ten-acre run at Sutton Forest, a battleaxe build site in Burradoo, a paddock edge falling away toward the Wingecarribee River near Berrima and a bush block up at Colo Vale are four completely different legal propositions, even though they all look like "clearing" from the driveway. Getting that wrong in Wingecarribee Shire is expensive, and it is the single most common reason a clearing job stops halfway.

There are three layers to check, and they are not alternatives — a block can sit under more than one.

1. Non-rural zoned land — Wingecarribee Shire Council. Council administers tree and vegetation work through a Vegetation Clearing Permit, made under State Environmental Planning Policy (Vegetation in Non-Rural Areas) 2017. Council's permit form is limited to ten trees per application. Council defines a tree, broadly, as a perennial plant with at least one self-supporting stem that is over 6 metres tall, or has a trunk circumference of at least 500mm measured 1 metre above the ground, or a crown spread of at least 4 metres — and a permit is required for work that goes beyond addressing nuisance, or that removes or prunes more than about 10 per cent of a tree. Fees published for 2025–26 are in the order of $125 for a single tree with a smaller fee for each additional tree (ABLIS).

2. Rural land — Local Land Services. Clearing native vegetation on rural land is not a Council matter. It sits under Part 5A of the Local Land Services Act 2013, with the Native Vegetation Regulatory map categorising land as exempt or regulated (NSW Environment and Heritage). Look your property up before you plan anything.

3. Overlays that catch both. Heritage conservation areas and heritage-listed properties, land mapped on the Wingecarribee LEP Biodiversity map, habitat for threatened species, endangered ecological communities, and trees on Council's Significant Tree Register all attract additional approval requirements — including, in some cases, for trees that are already dead.

Rules and fees change. Confirm your block with Wingecarribee Shire Council on 02 4868 0888 rather than relying on a summary written by a tree service, including this one.

What "selective" actually means

Most of the clearing worth doing in this shire is not a bulldozer job. It is a decision job.

On a Highlands block the trees a machine operator removes fastest are frequently the ones you would have paid most to keep: the mature ribbon gum with a hollow that has been in use for decades, the row of hawthorn along an old boundary that is the only wind protection on the western side, the self-sown oak seedlings that came from the neighbouring garden and are already twenty years ahead of anything you could plant.

Selective clearing means walking the block first, marking what stays, and then working around it. That takes longer. It is also the difference between a building site that looks like a construction photo and one that looks like it belonged there.

What usually stays

• Mature specimen exotics — oak, elm, liquidambar, claret ash, beech, deodar and the better conifers. These are the character of a Highlands property and their replacement cost, in time rather than dollars, is effectively unpayable.
• Anything with a hollow. Hollow-bearing trees take a century or more to form and are habitat the moment they exist.
• The windward edge. Stripping the western or south-western boundary is the mistake that takes three seasons to become obvious. If it has to come out, it should be replaced — see windbreak and shelterbelt maintenance.
• Creek and drainage lines. Root systems along a watercourse are holding the bank. Removing them is a soil problem, a water quality problem, and often a regulatory problem.

What usually goes

• Woody weeds — privet, blackberry, hawthorn thickets and cotoneaster, which colonise disturbed Highlands ground with real enthusiasm. Priority weeds carry a general biosecurity duty under the NSW Biosecurity Act 2015, and Council publishes current weed management guidance for the shire.
• Over-mature radiata pine past its useful life, particularly where it now sits above a building envelope.
• Regrowth and suckering through paddocks that has never been managed.
• Trees inside an approved building footprint, driveway alignment or effluent disposal area, where the consent permits it.

Ground, slope and season

Basalt-derived soils around Robertson, Burrawang and Kangaloon are deep, fertile and hold water for a long time. They will not carry heavy plant after rain, and once bare they move. Sandstone-derived country around Mittagong, Hill Top, Bundanoon and Penrose is thinner, faster-draining and stonier, which is easier on the machinery and harder on anything you plant afterwards.

Frost is a scheduling factor too. Cold-air drainage down the valleys means low-lying sections of a block can sit under frost for weeks while the ridge fifty metres above is clear — worth knowing before you clear the very hollow you were planning to build in.

The practical answer on most sites is staged work: clear in sections, keep ground cover between stages, and time the disturbed period to avoid the wettest part of the year.

What happens to the material

Chipping on site is usually cheapest and often most useful — stockpiled mulch is exactly what a newly disturbed Highlands block needs to hold soil and moisture. Where the volume is too great or the material is weedy, it is carted out. Both are covered under mulching and green waste removal. Stumps within a building footprint or a future lawn need to come out below grade, which is stump grinding, and individual large trees inside the clearing area are handled as tree removal rather than pushed over.

Ask any crew for their public liability certificate of currency before machinery comes onto your land. We ask the crews we work with to carry cover; you should sight the paperwork yourself.

Clearing work runs across the shire — the acreage around Sutton Forest, Exeter and Kangaloon, the village fringes of Berrima, New Berrima and Colo Vale, and the build sites in and around Bowral, Mittagong and Moss Vale. See towns we serve for the full list, or return to the home page.

Call (02) 4214 4160 to have a block walked and marked up properly — with a straight answer on which approvals your site actually needs.