The Conservancy, measured
The Islands Trust Conservancy is the land-holding arm of the Trust. This page measures what it actually protects, against what parks and other bodies protect, from the published record.
Start with what is true
The Conservancy protects real land, and several of its places would plainly have been logged or subdivided without it. That is conceded here before anything else, because the argument on this page is not that the work is bad.
The numbers
- Total land protected in the Trust Area, by anyone
- 15,730.51 hectares — 19.58% of the Trust Area.
- The Conservancy's own share of that
- 8.51% — a derived 1,339 hectares. The percentage is the Trust's own published figure; the hectare number is derived from it and rounded, never counted.
- Everyone else's share
- 91.49% — roughly 14,392 hectares, held by parks and other bodies.
- What the Conservancy holds
- 33 nature reserves and 68 covenants appear in its public map — 101 places against 115 claimed, so 14 are not in the public map.
- Rate of growth
- 1,300 hectares in 2020/21 to 1,380 in 2024/25 — about 20 hectares a year.
- The land-acquisition fund
- $100,329 held; $4,063 donated in the year.
- What it costs, against the whole institution
- $1,531,639 of a $10,856,519 budget.
- NAPTEP
- A 65% property-tax exemption for protecting a natural area, unique to the Trust Area — and 27 properties enrolled, 2 added in the year. Both halves are published together deliberately.
Source: Islands Trust Conservancy — Achievements — Islands Trust Conservancy, Achievements (as of March 2019).
Source: Islands Trust Conservancy — Protected Places — Islands Trust Conservancy public feature service (NatureReserves_Covenants), counted directly. The Trust states 34 reserves and 81 covenants — 115 places — so 14 are not in the public map. (as of 2026-08-22).
Source: Islands Trust — Annual Report — Islands Trust annual reports, 2020/21 and 2024/25 (as of 2024/25).
Source: Islands Trust — Finance — Islands Trust audited financial statements, FY2025 (as of FY2025).
Source: Islands Trust — NAPTEP — Islands Trust: “This incentive is unique to the Islands Trust Area” (2024/25 annual report); enrolment from the Trust’s own Fact Check page, January 2024 (“less than 1% uptake”) (as of January 2024).
Places worth naming
Each of these is real, and where the counterfactual is documented it is given. Where it is not documented, it is not asserted.
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S'ul-hween X'pey (Elder Cedar) Nature Reserve — Gabriola Island
65.36 hectares of old-growth Coastal Douglas-fir, home to Northern Red-legged Frog, Band-tailed Pigeon, the SARA-listed Western Screech-Owl and Townsend's Big-eared Bat. The Snuneymuxw First Nation excluded the parcel from its treaty settlement so it could be protected, and gave it its name.
What would otherwise have happened: Its own management plan records that a forestry company “acquired the harvesting rights for surrounding properties in the 1980s, but SXNR itself was not logged”, and that BC Parks recognised the area in 1993 yet “the area was never added to the BC Parks ecological reserve system.” The land around it was logged. The Province considered protecting it and did not.
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Trincomali Nature Sanctuary — Galiano Island
12 hectares holding what may be the most successful cormorant colony in the Strait of Georgia.
What would otherwise have happened: The Conservancy's own record: “the site was prepped for subdivision, which would have resulted in four new residential lots”, and it was bought under “imminent threat” using a section 99 subdivision.
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Brigade Bay Bluffs and Long Bay Wetland — Gambier Island
Five hectares of bluff and a wetland, donated by a wood products company.
What would otherwise have happened: Donated “to meet a subdivision development requirement” — the regulatory process itself converted development pressure into permanent protection.
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Singing Woods Nature Reserve — Bowen Island
Nine hectares protecting the headwaters of Davies and Dorothy Creeks.
What would otherwise have happened: Transferred “as a requirement of development.”
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Medicine Beach Nature Sanctuary — North Pender Island
8.44 hectares including a two-hectare brackish marsh described as extremely rare in the Gulf Islands, plus Henderson's Checker-mallow.
What would otherwise have happened: Community-raised: $533,997, from a family that sold below market. ⚠️ Often told as a rescue from developers — the management plan records no development application pending, so this site does not tell it that way.
What this page will not do
It will not claim the Conservancy protects nothing, that its staff do not do the work, or that abolition would improve conservation by itself. The area of Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is absent rather than estimated, because no primary source we could reach states it — which is why the comparison above is expressed as shares of a total rather than park by park.
The argument, in one line
The conservation work is good and small. The question is whether a separate island-wide layer of government is the right price for 8.51% of the protected land.