Owners of private forestland are faced with a number of important decisions when it comes to management of their forests. Do you manage for commercial timber production, firewood and building materials, for personal use, or leave the forest to its natural processes?
One decision that is probably not given enough thought, is what to do with your land when you are no longer the owner. You can't own your land forever; you can't take it with you. What options do you have? This is probably the most important decision you will ever make regarding your land.
Merve Wilkinson, Wildwood's long-time steward and ecoforestry pioneer, had to go through this process. What was going to happen to Wildwood when he could no longer look after it? Fortunately, Merve and the rest of us can rest at relative ease knowing that Wildwood's future is safer with every donation supporting its purchase by The Land Conservancy of BC, in partnership with the Ecoforestry Institute. However, with just under a year to go, $550,000 is still needed to permanently secure Wildwood's future.
This is one illustration of how difficult and costly it may be to protect privately held forestland. Saltspring Island and Cortes Island, along with many other BC communities, have their own examples of what can happen to privately owned forestland when it falls into the hands of an owner who is more interested in short-term profit than long-term sustainability.
Thankfully, there are a variety of long-term stewardship options available to the owners of private land. These include land acquisitions (via donation or sale), stewardship agreements, leasing arrangements and conservation covenants. This article will focus on conservation covenants, and how they can be used to ensure that ecologically responsible forest management is practised long after you no longer own your forested land. Some BC examples of conservation covenants being applied on private forestland will also be presented.
Although BC has far less privately owned forestland than our American neighbours, we can look at their situation to see what the future might bring. This is particularly important given the current climate and willingness of the government to sell off Crown land at an alarming rate. In the Spring 2002 edition of Ecoforestry, Constance Best and Laurie Wayburn described the need for increased conservation on privately held forestland in the US. In their article, Best and Wayburn state that the final figures from the 1997 National Resource Inventory show that 10 million acres of private forestland were lost to development between 1982 and 1997, and that the rate of loss is increasing. They note that a "growing suite of tools is available to expand the success of conservation efforts . . . . Some, such as conservation easements, are well established and simply need to be expanded in their use."[1] The same may be said of conservation covenants here in British Columbia.[2]