Conservation group looks to buy large chunk of Lake Errock shoreline

If a conservation group has its way, the eastern shore of Lake Errock will remain densely forested and undeveloped into perpetuity.

The Nature Trust of BC recently announced that it was raising money to buy 36 acres of land near Lake Errock. Although the trust didn’t initially specify where the land was located, in an email to The Current, the trust confirmed that the specific properties are on the eastern shore of Lake Errock, opposite from the community’s homes.

Buy to preserve

The two properties occupy much of the eastern shore of the small lake. Although two small buildings sit on the properties, the majority is densely forested, according to Assessment BC records.

The lands are not zoned to permit subdivisions or other large-scale developments, and there is no current road access to the lots. But existing rules would allow prospective owners to build larger homes, add accessory buildings, remove trees, farm the land or start a small-scale cannabis operation.

The Nature Trust hopes that by purchasing the land, it would preserve the property in perpetuity and protect it from any eventual developments.

The Nature Trust, a 54-year-old non-profit that owns 500 different conservation areas across the province, says it needs to raise more than a half-million dollars over the next two months to buy the properties. The organization said purchasing the land would help preserve a chunk of forest and habitat that is used by at-risk and endangered species.

The Nature Trust’s potential purchase is just the latest in an increasingly public drive by conservation organizations hoping to scoop up and protect land in the valley before it is developed.

Environmental non-profits and land trusts like the Nature Trust, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Ducks Unlimited, the Fraser Valley Conservancy own hundreds of acres of wilderness across the Fraser Valley.

Last summer, the Nature Conservancy of Canada announced it was spending $8 million to buy an entire island in the Fraser Valley. In 2021, the Nature Trust announced it was buying 18 acres on Nicomen Slough, where it already held and managed dozens of acres.

The purchase of land by conservancies is one of the most frequent ways land is protected from long-term development in the rapidly growing Fraser Valley.

Decades ago, the provincial government was the biggest force in protecting land over the long-term. They did so by designating Crown land for provincial parks and legally protected conservation areas. The last 40 years have seen relatively few parks created in the province and in the Fraser Valley. Recent years have also seen a re-evaluation of the relationship between BC’s park system and First Nations, with the provincial government increasingly looking to return land to Indigenous communities. And although municipalities and regional districts can restrict the use of land by zoning it for certain uses, for political and legal reasons, they can’t just turn a piece of private residential land into a permanent conservation area without expecting to compensate the owner.

Individuals, non-profits, and even local cities hoping to preserve pieces of nature have increasingly turned to the simplest—but most costly—way to do so: buying land outright.

In general, you have to own the land you wish to protect to actually protect it. Municipalities can themselves acquire and expand their park holdings through direct purchases, or during deals that allow developers to subdivide properties. After significant public pressure, the City of Chilliwack created a park and trail network on land it owned on Little Mountain. The City of Abbotsford has also pledged to to acquire land on Sumas Mountain once development happens in those areas. But in both cases, protecting some land has come alongside the intensification of uses on other nearby properties.

Private residents with a conservation bent have occasionally donated land to governments and non-profits in order to protect it in perpetuity. In the Fraser Valley, Hillkeep Park is perhaps the most notable example of a resident giving land to be turned into a park. Patricia Woodward donated the land in 2009. Six other Chilliwack parks were created from such donations.

But cities haven’t always actually wanted the land.

“When I first started, municipalities would acquire greenspace for parks, and conservation wasn’t an acceptable end,” the Fraser Valley Conservancy’s Joanne Neilson told The Current in 2022. “Some of our first properties to be acquired was because the municipality didn’t want them because they couldn’t turn them into a recreation-based park because they had sensitive habitats.”

Neilson said at the time that cities are more welcoming than they once were. But conservation non-profits remain at the forefront of long-term land protection—especially when the donor is focused specifically on protecting natural areas rather than creating a park for the public’s use.

Today, conservation groups control more than 500 hectares of land across the valley.

The Nature Trust appears to hold the largest amount of land. A spokesperson told The Current that the trust now owns 11 conservation areas with 407 hectares of land between Langley and Hope.

An online map shows many of the Nature Trust’s holdings—and some properties held by other conservation organizations. The trust holds several prominent properties, including land on either side of the Chilliwack River immediately east of the Vedder Bridge, a large triangle-shape piece of land north of Highway 1 near the Yale Road exit and Vedder Canal, a large chunk of land at the mouth of the Chehalis River, and riverfront property near Hope.

Ducks Unlimited controls several large properties in the Mission area, including the Silverdale Creek Wetlands, the Genstar Wetlands area just south of Silvermere Lake, and a huge chunk of property along the Nicomen Slough.

The BC Parks Foundation controls 21 hectares of land along the Fraser River just east of Agassiz and south of Seabird Island.

And the Fraser Valley Conservancy told The Current it owns 11 hectares of land on five conservation properties—three in Abbotsford, one in Mission, and one in the Chilliwack River Valley. Those properties include wetlands just north of Maclure Road in Abbotsford, and a mountainous property on Sumas Mountain just south of Ledgeview Golf Club. Although its land holdings are relatively small, the Fraser Valley Conservancy also has a range of programs and co-ordinates volunteer efforts to help residents’ cultivate and preserve nature on their own properties.