Land Conservation

Land trust have been able to increase their holds during the last five years. Lower land prices and conservation easements on working ranches and farms have enabled greater conservation efforts.

A forest management company in Northern Idaho has set aside a 647-acre grizzly bear habitat. Part of the deal is that the company will not log while the grizzlies are in the house.

In Red Wing, Minnesota, the city is seeking to turn 200-acres of marshes and forests into a permanent conservation easement. A citizen group has complained that locking down the land forever is a bad idea.

A new study in the San Francisco Bay Area says no, that had there been no controls in place there would be only 6.5% more housing built over the past 50 years.

High housing prices cannot be blamed on land conservation efforts, at least not in Silicon Valley, is the word from researchers at Stanford University.

Bill Fulton was prepping for a panel on transferable development rights programs for last weekend's New Partners for Smart Growth conference in Seattle when he realized the hotel he was in was the beneficiary of just such a program.

While plenty of investors and homeowners are feeling the pain of the current real estate market, groups trying to protect land from development are welcoming the downturn.

The developer of the Tejon Ranch agreed to a plan to put permanent conservation easements on almost 375 square miles of ranch lands and wilderness 60 miles north of Los Angeles, in exchange for rights to develop 10 percent of its land holdings.