Within the Kootenays, the richest habitat exists in valley bottoms, which is also where humans often choose to live. This means many critical habitats are found on private land. Although private land covers a small portion of the region’s total land base (8%), keeping it ecologically intact plays a big part in conservation success.

From a large landscape perspective, undeveloped land in valley bottoms acts as the foundation for mid and high elevation habitats; the protection of which allows contiguous wildlife travel corridors to exist between different higher elevation habitats. In many cases the conservation of key parcels of low elevation private land ensures landscape level habitat connectivity, thereby conserving the ecological integrity of much larger areas. Because these low elevation areas have a disproportionately low level of representation in Provincial and National Parks and a high degree of ecological significance, land trusts have prioritized them for securement.

Rationale for private land conservation in the Kootenays is threefold:

• To conserve biodiversity;
• To compensate for historical losses of important ecological features such as low elevation forests, grasslands and riparian areas; and
• To conserve a selection of important ecological features that might otherwise be lost due to the impacts of human development, climate change and preventable natural disturbances, either in the near‐term or well into the future.

Securement of private land protects conservation values on the property for generations to come. Beyond conservation values, these lands can also protect other values such as First Nations cultural/heritage sites and certain types of recreation use.