Property owners who want to permanently preserve naturally significant portions of their land will soon be rewarded.
On Monday night, Bowen Island council agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding that will bring it into the fold of the Natural Area Protection Exemption Program. This allows eligible property owners to receive an exemption of up to 65 per cent of their property taxes in exchange for signing an Islands Trust conservation covenant.
It’s not a walk in the park to be accepted into NAPTEP. First, the portion of land — it doesn’t have to be the entire property — under consideration has to be worth protecting. It must be inspected to ensure that it meets the conditions of eligibility, which can include having:
• a relatively undisturbed sensitive ecosystem, including woodlands, watercourses, wetlands, herbaceous meadows or rocky outcrops, coastal bluffs and mature forest ecosystems
• a habitat for rare native plant species or communities
• a habitat critical to native animal species’ breeding, rearing, feeding or staging or
• special geological features.
Going through this process can cost a property owner between $3,000 and $5,000 and, once the covenant is in place, the landowner is restricted from doing certain things on that portion of the property.
However, the land remains privately owned and you can sell it whenever you want.
In an interview after the joint BIM and Islands Trust meeting on Tuesday, Mayor Murray Skeels said the impact on other Bowen Island property owners will be negligible. The tax dollars that the municipality loses will have little impact on everyone else’s property taxes.
“It’s exciting to know that Bowen will be involved,” said Islands Trust trustee Tony Law, the chair of the Islands Trust Fund board, which manages the program. “There’s been some good uptake on other islands and it will benefit Bowen once people get involved and understand it.”
For details go to IslandsTrustFund.bc.ca.
