Protecting private land

Conventionally, people in British Columbia look to government to protect environmentally important areas by creating a park or ecological reserve. Parks and reserves are still vitally important. However, most of these areas are located in the 95% of British Columbia that is owned by the Crown, the publicly owned lands. This is largely because government is increasingly unable to afford to purchase privately owned land.

Unfortunately, much of the most ecologically valuable land in British Columbia is in estuaries and valley bottoms that are mostly privately owned. In addition, government control does not necessarily ensure conservation of the land in the long term. As well, certain conservation objectives can be achieved most cheaply and practically by limiting use of the land without eliminating all use of the land.

As a result, private landowners and conservation groups are turning to voluntary stewardship and to an array of legal tools tailored to safeguard specific land permanently.

Photo: Scott Covenant, Salt Spring Island, BC

A new legal tool

In July 1994, British Columbia enacted Bill 28, the Land Title Amendment Act, 1994. This legislation allows landowners to grant a conservation covenant to any person designated by the Minister of Environment, Lands & Parks. Technically, this includes individuals as well as non-governmental organizations. However, in this guide, we will focus exclusively on conservation covenants that are held by conservation organizations.

A conservation covenant is a voluntary, written agreement between a landowner and a conservation organization in which the owner of the land promises to protect the land in specified ways. The conservation organization holds the covenant and can enforce it, if necessary, against the owner. The covenant is filed in the BC Land Title Office. The conservation covenant is intended to last forever, and binds future owners of the land, not just the current landowner. The covenant can cover all or just a portion of the landowner’s property.

History of conservation covenants

Conservation covenants — known in the US as conservation easements — were first used to protect parkways around Boston in the 1880s. Since the 1930s, the US federal government and some state governments have used easements for habitat preservation and scenic preservation purposes. In 1981, a model statute called the Uniform Conservation Easement Act was adopted. By 1984, at least 37 states had enacted legislation to enable use of private or governmental conservation instruments, in many cases following the model act. By 1987, the US Fish and Wildlife Service had acquired over 21,000 conservation easements, protecting some 1.2 million acres of wetland habitat.

In Canada, a number of provinces have enacted conservation covenant legislation in one form or another. The Ontario Heritage Act and the Manitoba Heritage Resources Act are two examples.

Many uses

Conservation covenants held by conservation organizations are useful in a wide variety of situations:

• protecting ecologically valuable features of the land,

• providing a buffer zone adjoining a park or other protected area,

• requiring agricultural land to be used for farming without damaging important waterfowl habitat,

• limiting private forest land to ecologically sustainable forestry,

• requiring specific management or development practices that protect a variety of values relating to the land, including natural, historical, heritage, cultural, scientific, architectural, environmental, wildlife or plant life values,

• providing a buffer zone to protect riparian habitat from logging on private land, and

• protecting a rails-to-trails or other linear conservation project.