Most conservation covenants achieve the goal of protecting ecological values by allowing little or no disturbance of the land identified in the covenant. Not so for the Denman Island Natural Burial Cemetery!
A conservation covenant (called an easement in the USA) is a legal agreement between a land owner and a second party, often a conservation organization, that defines steps the owner must take to protect, in perpetuity, the ecological values of an identified land parcel. The land for the Cemetery was donated by the Denman Conservancy Association (DCA) on the condition that a conservation covenant be registered on the land title when ownership of the land changed hands.
Normally, a conservation covenant initiates preservation measures from the time it is registered on title. In this case, however, the covenant allows specified parts of the land to be used for interments and kept free of trees until that time, as long as interments follow the principles of green burial and all other land uses adhere to the terms of the covenant.
The covenant also specifies that, after each burial area is used, the area must be left undisturbed and the natural vegetation allowed to return. As a result, the Cemetery will, in time, become a forest typical of the Coastal Douglas-fir Moist Maritime Biogeoclimatic Region, one of the most diverse and endangered ecosystems in British Columbia.