Municipal
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What is a Living Forest Community?Where will it work best?
Why is it important for a Municipality to consider this in its Planning?
Triple Bottom Line Benefits
How do we implement this approach?
Preservation vs. Conservation
Media
Who are we?
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What is a Living Forest Community?
We have developed a community development model that accomplishes two goals. Firstly, we have a land conservation objective to establish and maintain sustainable natural resource forests in perpetuity. Secondly, we achieve this objective by creating attractive "light-on-the-land" sustainable communities with clustered residential home sites. We acquire forest land and put a conservation covenant on 80% - 90% of the land to permit only sustainable forestry and related manufacturing activities. Then we transfer the density from the whole property onto the remaining site, and design an attractive community or hamlet, using light-on-the-land infrastructure and green building technologies. The sale of the building sites pays for the initial acquisition of the land, and saves a majority of the forest in perpetuity.
In 2002, the Trust initiated a successful example of the model on Cortes Island, on a 153 acre parcel of land known as District Lot 1127. The key to the success of the Cortes example was the creation of the Community Land Stewardship Zone (CLS Zone), acting as an umbrella mechanism ensuring that permitted uses, density, and minimum lot sizes are identified in the same bylaw as the design guidelines and the conservation covenants. On Cortes, an average density of one house per 10 acre allowed for the clustering of 15 home sites over a wide range of prices. The Eco-Village sites were designed for smaller homes suitable for those working at the adjacent timber mill site, or in manufacturing or local agro-forestry businesses. Waterfront sites were more expensive.The CLS Zone also makes reference to the conservation covenant held by The Land Conservancy of BC. This covenant details the best in forest stewardship practices and saves over 90% of the forests. The Land Conservancy of BC's involvement guarantees that the conserved lands will be managed in the agreed sustainable fashion.
