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Trees growing on private property have become an essential part of urban green policies. In many places, restrictions are imposed on tree removal on private property. However, monitoring compliance of these regulations appears difficult due to a lack of reference data and public administration capacity. We assessed the impact of the temporary suspension of mandatory permits on tree removal, which was in force in 2017 in Poland, on the change in urban tree cover (UTC) in the case of the municipality of Racibórz. The bi-temporal airborne laser scanning (ALS) point clouds (2011 and 2017) and administrative records on tree removal permits were used for analyzing the changes of UTC in the period of 2011–2017. The results show increased tree removal at a time when the mandatory permit was suspended. Moreover, it appeared that most trees on private properties were removed without obtaining permission when it was obligatory. The method based on LiDAR we proposed allows for monitoring green areas, including private properties.

Policies and strategies for tree management and protection on a national, regional, and local level have not sufficiently considered differences between rural and urban areas. We used expert knowledge to compare rural and urban areas in a case study evaluating the relative importance of ecosystem services (ES) in policy development. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and focus group discussions were used to rank 17 ES, representing four classes of services: provisioning, regulating, habitat, and cultural. The results indicated that effective protection strategies, beyond simply increasing general tree cover, should consider specific benefits trees provide to local communities. We discuss the role of objective prioritization of ES delivered by trees in urban and rural areas and their consequences for decision-making processes.

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