California county profile
San Diego County has the most tribal reservations of any county in the country, and it is the only California county with a Resource Protection Ordinance that makes wetland, steep slope, and sensitive habitat protections a direct constraint on land use — not just a factor in environmental review.
San Diego's ordinance directly prohibits or restricts development in wetlands, floodways, steep slopes, and sensitive habitat — meaning a project that touches these resources must make explicit legal findings to proceed, before environmental review even begins.
The ordinance imposes direct limits on how much of a steep slope area can be disturbed, at a gradient threshold that applies across all unincorporated parcels — lots with significant grade changes have less developable area than a survey map alone would suggest.
There's no traditional tree permit based on trunk size, but any project in the habitat plan area must complete a biological assessment as part of compliance review — habitat can't be cleared simply because the county lacks a standalone tree ordinance.
With the highest concentration of tribal reservations of any county in the country, cultural resource review is material to virtually every discretionary project in unincorporated San Diego, and the number of tribes that may request consultation is among the highest in the state.
The county's traffic screening provisions were partly invalidated by a court in the past year, meaning some previously available shortcuts may no longer hold — projects that relied on certain screening categories should verify current status before finalizing environmental documents.
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Screen an addressSource: Headlands Environmental — environmental site screening for California. Rules summarized from publicly available county codes and planning documents; project review counts indexed from the State Clearinghouse. For authoritative requirements, consult San Diego County directly.