Statement: Alberta’s changed conservation easements program will be a challenge to long-term land and biodiversity protection

July 23, 2025

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• Biodiversity
• Grasslands
• News Release

Click here for the PDF.

 

Alberta Wilderness Association is disappointed with the provincial government’s change to its conservation easement program that will make it harder for private landowners to protect their biodiverse properties for generations to come.

On July 15, the government of Alberta announced a change to the Land Trust Grant Program — which supported securing and maintaining conservation easements in perpetuity, or forever. It has instead launched two new programs to conserve private land in the short term.

These programs include the Private Land Conservation Program, which allows for term easements of up to 50 years, and the Ecosystem Services Grant Program, which provides funding to maintain and improve “natural assets.” The province will no longer fund perpetual conservation easements.

Conservation easements help to conserve natural habitats on private land. They are an agreement between a landowner and a land trust to maintain the ecosystem, and impose protections for the land. Maintaining easements in perpetuity ensures this land is protected for the future.

While AWA is for land conservation, this change is particularly concerning during a time when long-term conservation funding is sorely needed. Alberta’s wild lands continue to decline with new development. Now is a time to be conserving large tracts of intact wilderness for many generations to come, not just one.

For many ecosystems, 50 years is a short time. Much of our important and vulnerable native habitat, such as grasslands, peatlands and old-growth forests, developed over centuries. Once lost, recovering these ecosystems is costly and not always possible.

“Conservation needs to be considered on longer timescales,” said Ruiping Luo, conservation specialist with Alberta Wilderness Association. “Many of our most valuable and biodiverse landscapes are our mature ecosystems. They can’t be created in a few decades, and loss is often irreversible.”

 Further, ecosystems and the services they provide are often strongest when they have well-established ecological communities. These communities often contain higher diversity than recently disturbed habitats, allowing the various species to cover a range of functions. To effectively conserve such ancient and sensitive ecosystems, and the many ecosystem services we rely on, we must work on longer timescales.

AWA applauds the new program set to support ecosystem services, particularly the focus on retention and improvement as it is far more effective to maintain these landscapes than to recover them once disturbed. However, AWA does caution that the value of ecosystem services is often dependent on a human perspective, which can shift with different ideologies and our understanding of the environment. This can introduce instability and inconsistency in long-term protection.

While Alberta’s new easement programs may help in supporting immediate conservation and enticing landowners to participate, there is a lack of long-term planning, which is vital to the protection of high biodiversity ecosystems. These new programs should be offered as additional options and not replace perpetual conservation easements.

 

Other information

• Only Alberta-based land trusts are eligible for funding. This prevents national land trusts (land trusts that work across Canada) from applying.
• Under the new Private Land Conservation Program, multiple and continuous payments would be needed to maintain lands in terms of conservation easements, rather than a single payment for perpetual easements. If the land is converted after the end of the term, that investment can be lost.
• As of 2023, the Alberta Land Trust Grant Program has supported 162 properties and 244,908 acres.
• In forestry, Alberta’s planning standard indicates a planning horizon of 200 years.
• The federal Ecological Gifts program continues as an incentive for landowners interested in conservation easements.
• Ecosystem services are often linked to human economic value. The importance of the ecosystem is frequently underestimated using this metric, which can overlook indirect benefits of a healthy ecosystem.
• The government of Alberta is investing $10 million, an increase over the $5 million that was approved for 2025. This still only a fraction of the estimated over $1 billion paid by Alberta annually (and $29.6 billion paid by Canada in 2024) for fossil fuel subsidies.
• Lands already under conservation easements are not eligible for retention payments under the Ecosystem Services Land Grant. They are eligible for improvement projects.
• These programs are funded through taxpayer dollars.

For more information: Ruiping Luo (403-283-2025, rluo@abwild.ca).