Reinventing Conservation Easements

Beyond tax and other public subsidies, one of the driving forces favoring this phenomenon is that conservation easements are perceived as a win-win strategy in land protection, by which willing landowners work with private land trusts or government agencies to provide lasting protection for portions of the American landscape. Conservation easements leave land in private ownership, while allowing the easement holder (the land trust or agency) to enforce voluntary, contracted-for, often donated but increasingly paid-for restrictions on future uses of the easement-encumbered property. Conservation easements are often welcomed as achieving the goals of land protection without regulation or adversity, and usually without any government oversight.

At the same time, the rapid increase in the use of conservation easements raises the concern that they may present something of a time bomb that requires preventive action. Most of the laws and conventions concerning conservation easements were created at a time when no one could have foreseen their explosive growth and complexity. These laws and conventions require well-considered approaches to reform, lest we ultimately risk losing the public benefits that we thought conservation easements would secure in the future.

Thanks to Chris Steins