Reinventing Conservation Easements (Policy Focus Report)

A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform

Author(s): Pidot, Jeff
Publication Date: September 2005

$15.00; 40 pages; Inventory ID PF013; English; Paperback; ISBN 1-55844-160-3


Reinventing Conservation Easements	2.60 MB

Abstract

Conservation easements represent one of the most rapid trends in land conservation. Beyond tax credits, tax deductions, and other public subsidies that provide financial incentive for landowners to enter into conservation partnerships, this phenomenon is fueled by the perception that conservation easements are a win-win strategy in land protection, benefiting both landowners and the environment.

To obtain a conservation easement, landowners work with private land trusts or government agencies to establish the easement. The landowner voluntarily enters into a written agreement to follow certain conservation guidelines. Conservation easements are meant to provide lasting protection of the landscape, and are welcomed by many as achieving land conservation goals with minimal government intervention or regulation. But just how effective are conservation easements as an environmental protection strategy?

In Reinventing Conservation Easements: A Critical Examination and Ideas for Reform, Jeff Pidot asks: Are the increasing numbers of unsupervised land trusts and conservation easements throughout the nation good for our (and their) future? What kinds of reforms should be considered to create a greater level of confidence in this popular conservation instrument?

This policy focus report addresses issues surrounding conservation easements. Conservations easements are a valuable land protection tool (complementing regulation, land acquisition, and tax policies), but the laws and conventions governing conservation easements require reforms to ensure and sustain their public benefits.

Reinventing Conservation Easements;

Provides information about conservation easements, their policy context, public character, and history

Describes specific issues arising from conservation easements

Evaluates ways to resolve issues surrounding conservation easements, including reforms of federal and state laws

While Reinventing Conservation Easements advances the view that such reforms are needed, it is intended to stimulate critical thinking and provide an array of perspectives rather than to dictate particular solutions. Conservation easements should be evaluated and governed in the context of conservation-easement time, which is not the present but the long-term future. Otherwise, we may simply leave to future generations a legal chaos involving many thousands of conservation easements whose terms, holders, and locations may be difficult to determine, and whose public benefits ultimately could be lost.