Do you need a gopher tortoise survey before clearing a lot?

Last Updated: October 31, 2026 · Written by Flatwood Land Clearing Palm Bay

You need one whenever burrows may be near the work. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requires a relocation permit before anyone disturbs a gopher tortoise burrow, and disturbance includes any work within 25 feet of one. A survey of the lot and its edges is how you find out whether the clearing can stay 25 feet away or needs a permit first.

Flatwood Land Clearing Palm Bay clears lots and acreage in Palm Bay and south Brevard, and checking for burrows is part of the first site visit on every lot, along with marking keepers, wet ground and access. This guide explains what happens when one is found.

Why tortoises show up on building lots

Gopher tortoises dig in dry, sandy ground, and they favor open, sunny spots with low plants to graze. A lot with thinning pines, sandy openings and a path cut through the palmetto suits them. So do the drier ridges in south Brevard, the Pomello and Paola sands that also carry scrub-jay habitat. Most of Palm Bay is poorly drained flatwoods with water about a foot down from June to November, which pushes tortoises toward whatever higher, drier ground a lot has, and that is often exactly where the house pad will go.

A burrow is easy to spot once you know the shape: a half-moon opening wider than it is tall, usually with a fan of bare sand in front. Burrows can be hidden under palmetto fronds, which is one reason a lot is walked rather than judged from the street.

What the 25-foot rule means in practice

The rule is simple to state and has big effects on a small lot. A Palm Bay platted lot averages about 0.27 acre, roughly 100 by 118 feet. A circle 25 feet out from a burrow covers almost 2,000 square feet, and that circle often lands where the driveway, pad or septic area has to go.

The choices then are:

• Work around it. If the house, driveway and drainfield can all be placed and cleared while staying 25 feet from every burrow, and the burrow is fenced off and left alone, no permit may be needed.
• Relocate under permit. If any work has to come within 25 feet, an FWC-authorized agent surveys the lot, applies for the relocation permit and moves the tortoises before clearing.

FWC recommends exclusion fencing, a silt-fence-style barrier that keeps tortoises out of the work area, whether or not a permit is needed. The cornerstone guide on clearing a lot to build a house shows where this falls in the permit order.

Burrows on the next lot

The 25 feet runs from the burrow, not from your property line. A burrow 10 feet inside your neighbor’s lot leaves only 15 feet of your side of the line off limits, but those 15 feet may be the edge you need for the driveway or the side setback. FWC’s guidance for exactly this case is that no permit is needed if the work avoids every burrow by 25 feet, and that an owner can still be responsible for collapsing a burrow off their own property. That is why the site visit checks the lot lines as well as the middle of the lot.

What a survey is, and who does it

A survey before clearing has two levels. At the first, the site visit looks for burrows on the lot and along its edges and notes any that fall near the planned work. That is enough to answer the question “can the work stay 25 feet away?”

If the answer is no, the formal survey and the permit belong to an FWC-authorized agent. The agent surveys the burrows that the work will affect, applies for the relocation permit and carries out the relocation under it. FWC staff do not relocate tortoises for development projects or private properties, so there is no option of calling the state to come and move one.

On cost: FWC’s permit page does not list a fee for the permit, and agents’ charges have no public figure. It is a line on the budget that appears only when burrows are found near the work. The lot clearing cost guide lists it with the other parts of a price.

What the tortoise check changes on the schedule

A tortoise check is not a long delay when it is done early, and it is a serious one when it is discovered with a machine on the lot. Building it into the order avoids the second case:

1. The building permit application goes in, then the city’s clearing permit with that number on a Palm Bay house lot.
2. The site visit walks the lot for burrows, scrub-jay habitat flags and wet ground.
3. If burrows sit within 25 feet of planned work, the agent’s survey and permit come next, with relocation before any clearing.
4. Clearing starts, with exclusion fencing where it is needed.

The relocation step can move the start date, so it belongs at the beginning of the schedule. How long land clearing takes puts it alongside the other permit steps.

What does not need a permit, and what does

FWC’s guidance treats routine agricultural, silvicultural and habitat work, such as mowing, tilling and prescribed burning, as activities that generally do not need a relocation permit. Clearing a lot for a house is not one of them. It is development, and the 25-foot rule applies to it.

The local permit does not change that. Palm Bay’s clearing permit covers trees and land clearing, not wildlife, and the city’s tree code says that when a violation may have affected protected species, the city notifies the agencies and further penalties can follow. Brevard County’s small-scale land clearing permit for unincorporated land states that it does not pertain to protected species laws. The Brevard permit guide covers both.

Palm Bay’s citywide federal permit, covered in the scrub-jay guide, is a separate matter. It is a federal permit for scrub-jays and indigo snakes, while the tortoise permit is a state permit from FWC, and one does not stand in for the other.

If work has already started near a burrow

If you notice machines working near burrows on a lot, FWC asks people to check its permit locator to see whether the site has a relocation permit, and to report concerns to its Wildlife Alert line at 888-404-3922. For your own lot, the answer is to stop work near the burrow and get an authorized agent involved before going further. Lot clearing and selective clearing both start from the burrow check for that reason.