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(Branson Reynolds photo) |
When I was growing up in a small Kansas town in the early 1970s, most of my friends lived out in the country. When I went to visit them, I’d hit the edge of town and was immediately on a dusty country road. Have you noticed that dusty roads are becoming scarcer and moving farther from the edge of town? That’s because more and more of what we call the country is being subdivided. Ranches and farms are being broken up and sold. Seemingly overnight, houses and roads sprout in fields that once grew hay and wheat. Paved streets and sidewalks follow, and the rural character of the country disappears.
Some say it’s just the price of progress.
A friend and I were driving out to meet with a family the other day to discuss how the Elk Foundation could help them permanently protect their ranch through a conservation easement. As we left town, the road followed a creek up the valley. My friend shook his head and told me how he loved to hunt and fish here not long ago. He knew all the ranch families who owned and worked this country. But now it was snipped into so many pieces, he’d given up trying to figure out who owned what and get permission on each little place. He figured he was better off just holding on to the memories.
We drove on through several new subdivisions, mostly small ranchettes a few acres in size. A few of the original ranch houses still stood, surrounded by mature poplars and cottonwoods. Here and there a tire swing still hung from a thick, gnarled branch, with ranching equipment and outbuildings scattered around—all telling a story of past lifestyles and traditions on the land. As we got farther from town, the land was still subdivided, but into larger pieces, with a single home on 20 or 40 acres. The forested slopes above the valley are public lands, and I wondered if elk still lived up there. Finally, we left the pavement for a dusty road, and I immediately felt better. Maybe we could help at least one family conserve their ranch. Together, maybe we could fend off the paved roads and subdivisions . . . this time.
The term conservation easement means many things to many people. For some, it summons images of someone being forced to give up rights to their property, like when the government condemns land for a right of way to widen a highway. Let’s clear that up right now. A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement that is negotiated between a willing landowner and a qualified organization, such as a government agency or a land trust like the Elk Foundation.
Such easements are legally binding, but landowners make the final decision to place one on their property and can tailor the agreement in dozens of ways to fit their land and their family’s needs. All land protected by these easements remains in private hands and on the county tax rolls. The agreement restricts future activities on the land to protect its wildlife habitat and natural values. Most importantly, in exchange for a tax credit, tax deduction or some other payment, the landowners agree to not develop their land.
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“The easement has not interfered with what we want to do with our ranch or how we want to manage it. In fact, we feel the same about it now as we did when we donated the first easement: it is good for both ranchers and sportsmen.” — Jim Watkins, who donated two easements totaling 8,800 acres on his South Dakota ranch to the Elk Foundation in 1995 and 2003 |
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Conservation easements are one of the strongest and most effective tools ever devised for conserving private land. Over 1,500 national, regional and local land trusts have already protected nearly 10 million acres through the use of easements. This is important, because federal, state and local agencies have fewer options for protecting land these days. The cost of buying private land is often prohibitive, and some people take issue with the government acquiring more land. Many nonprofit land trusts shy away from actually owning land to avoid tying up all their cash in a relatively few properties (especially with today’s spiraling real estate prices). Owning land can also bring its own stream of complicated management challenges.
Conservation easements offer a great way to help landowners protect family farms and ranches and traditional agriculture, while securing wildlife habitat, scenic vistas, open spaces and historical sites.
State wildlife agencies have developed easement programs, often paying cash to willing landowners. But the interest in purchased easements greatly exceeds the limited public funding available. Nonprofits began taking the reins more than 30 years ago, and today land trusts conduct most of the land protection work, cooperating with generous conservation-minded landowners to protect millions of acres of the last great places in North America.
One of the country’s most effective land trusts, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation holds 108 fully donated conservation easements in 11 states and one Canadian province, protecting nearly 172,000 acres of precious elk country. In addition, the foundation has helped lock in another 15 easements protecting more than 122,000 acres, by either securing and granting easements to other land trusts or contributing to purchased easements held by other land trusts.
Why are easements good for elk? They conserve habitat for elk, other wildlife and all of us whose lives are made richer by the great outdoors. Habitat is a finite resource that is disappearing at an alarming rate. Elk and other wildlife depend heavily on private lands, which often lie in the valley bottoms or foothills and provide critical winter range, migratory corridors and calving areas, as well as summer range and year-round elk habitat.
Landowners who donate easements to the foundation choose this tool because they love the land. They want to maintain traditional agricultural uses, they want to continue providing a home for the wildlife, and they want to safeguard natural areas and open spaces for their grandchildren to enjoy. Conservation easements allow them to take matters into their own hands, to conserve something near and dear to them.
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Richard McFarlane (left) with siblings: (L to R) John, Shirley, Grant and Jim. “Hopefully other landowners will realize, like we have, that this is one of the best, one of the most satisfying things you will ever do with your life. When I visit the ranch now, I can smile knowing there’s not going to be a subdivision or an oil road or a parking lot, and I think, by golly, we’ve done a little bit for making the world a better place." — Richard Macfarlane, who, along with his siblings and with help from the Elk Foundation, placed an easement on his family’s 5,553-acre Utah ranch in 2000. Trust for Public Land holds the easement. |
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Since accepting its first donated conservation easement in 1990, the Elk Foundation has always taken its easement responsibilities seriously. As a nonprofit public charity providing opportunities for tax deductions from the IRS, the foundation and the landowner must ensure the property protected by an easement provides a public benefit and serves a specific conservation purpose. This includes protecting natural habitats of fish, wildlife or plants, or preserving open space, including farmland and forestlands that provide a significant public benefit. The Elk Foundation maintains a dedicated conservation easement protection fund. This fund provides the resources to legally defend the terms and conditions of every easement with current or future landowners, ensuring the land is protected and enhanced in the way the original landowners and the foundation envisioned it would be.
When someone calls the Elk Foundation wanting to explore conserving their land, one of the foundation’s lands program managers (LPMs) schedules a meeting with the landowners to tour their property and learn their goals. The LPM then visits with local staff from state and federal wildlife and land management agencies to determine how important the property is to the area’s wildlife, plant and human communities. This also helps clarify the bigger picture: who owns the land surrounding the property and how at risk is the area to future development? It’s up to the LPM, with final approval from the Elk Foundation’s board of directors, to determine whether the land meets the foundation’s criteria for accepting an easement. Using our GIS-driven MAP (Measure and Prioritize) Habitat program, the Elk Foundation can determine the quality of the property as elk habitat and the threats to it. The system evaluates and ranks land by identifying winter ranges, calving areas and migration corridors, then assesses whether the habitat is threatened by changing land uses, habitat conversion and human population growth. If the landowner and the Elk Foundation agree they are a good fit, then the two sit down to start drawing up the easement.
The next step is a baseline study that describes the condition of the property at the time the easement is donated. The study records the property’s manmade improvements and natural resource values using text descriptions, maps, photos and plant and animal inventories. This provides a reference point for landowners to use in making decisions about the stewardship of range, forest and wildlife. It’s also a crucial tool for evaluating future condition of the property to determine if management activities are positively or negatively impacting the land and wildlife. Each year the foundation and the landowner and/or their representative refer back to the baseline while monitoring the condition of the land under easement. It’s often useful for resolving any controversial issues that may arise.
All Elk Foundation easements define both permitted and unacceptable activities on the property to ensure wildlife habitat is protected and traditional uses continue. These activities are mutually agreed upon by the foundation and the landowner. Some permitted uses include ranching, farming and cultivation activities and facilities, limited residences, recreational facilities, range and forest management, and habitat improvement projects. Uses that are usually not permitted because they tend to damage wildlife and habitat values include subdivision, game farming, incompatible commercial activities or facilities, introduction of noxious plant species, commercial feedlots, dumping of hazardous wastes, game-proof fences and any surface or open pit mineral activities.
Elk Foundation easements do not require the landowner to grant public access. However, many landowners the foundation works with believe in and support hunting and fishing. Some allow the public opportunities to hunt and fish on their land.
Each easement is evaluated on its own merits. The foundation prefers to protect large parcels of land but accepts smaller acreages, too. Our largest easement to date is nearly 28,000 acres. They average about 1,500 acres. Whatever the size, the land always contains valuable elk habitat and benefits other plants and animals. In many cases the property lies adjacent to public lands and has already been identified by federal and state agencies as being critical to managing for biodiversity and wildlife.
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Many people know that elk trespass at will. If they’re spending time on public lands next to private lands, you can bet they’re spending time on the private lands as well. An Elk Foundation easement adjacent to public land can have benefits for elk and other wildlife that reach far beyond private land boundaries. Landowners who show this kind of commitment often galvanize the neighboring land management agency to enhance their own habitat. This ultimately helps keep elk and deer on public lands and out of the neighbors’ fences, rangeland and crops.
Another great benefit of easements is they tend to ripple out from the original ranch. As neighbors talk with one another, they may well decide to protect their land, too. This keeps important winter range and migratory corridors intact and creates great opportunities to manage wildlife on a larger scale. For example, neighboring ranchers, agencies and the foundation can coordinate efforts and share costs of fighting weeds, conducting prescribed burns and improving water sources on larger swaths of both private and public land, achieving better results with less money.
An easement is often the first step in developing a long-term relationship between the foundation and a landowner that continues to improve the property’s habitat values and increase the land’s productivity for ranching and farming activities. Elk Foundation staff thoroughly monitor every easement at least once a year, preferably either with the landowners or their designated manager. This is where the baseline study comes in really handy. As the easement holder, the foundation has the responsibility to ensure the terms and conditions agreed to by the original landowners are enforced in perpetuity. Monitoring the property allows the foundation staff to assess wildlife population trends and note any changes such as weed or insect infestation, erosion, impacted riparian areas, new structures or wildlife depredation. More importantly, it lets everyone see how well the efforts to improve habitat are working.
When possible, the Elk Foundation may help out by shouldering part of the costs for habitat enhancement projects on lands protected by easements. Foundation volunteers and members raise funds across the country through banquets and other events to support these projects on both public and private land. Every project must be reviewed and approved by the foundation’s state Project Advisory Committees (PAC), which meet once or twice every year. The PACs ensure that funds raised by Elk Foundation supporters are spent only on the best and most effective wildlife projects. The foundation always leverages members’ money by sharing project costs with at least one partner, including federal, state and local agencies, conservation organizations and private landowners. Multiple partners can bring down the cost to landowners, making the projects both more affordable and more effective.
For example, in Colorado a group of landowners who donated easements to the Elk Foundation completed a series of projects seeded by PAC dollars, which restored and improved a block of more than 13,000 acres of private land. By thinning, clearing and burning overgrown pinyon-juniper and ponderosa pine stands, the partners improved the quality and quantity of forage for elk and livestock, while reducing the impacts of livestock on streams and wetlands and lessening elk depredation of adjacent private lands. Mule deer, wild turkeys and black bears all benefited as well. The landowners, Elk Foundation and Natural Resource Conservation Service split the bill.
In Montana, private landowners who donated easements to the Elk Foundation have partnered with the foundation, Ravalli County weed department, Forest Service, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to combat noxious weeds on 550 acres of private lands. And a New Mexico project included a series of prescribed burns, tree thinning, well installation, rock barrier construction to slow stream flow and catch silt, and relocation of three miles of road out of a streambed. All told, these projects greatly improved fish and wildlife habitat on more than 17,000 acres of private lands.
Another benefit the Elk Foundation brings to private landowners is an army of volunteers spread across the country. Foundation volunteers have contributed thousands of hours of labor, assisting private landowners with hands-on projects to improve wildlife habitat. Volunteers have built new fences for grazing rotation systems, removed old, unneeded fences impeding wildlife movement, installed signs, gates and cattle guards, cleaned up old homesteads, planted seedlings, removed conifers encroaching into meadows, and happily have done just about anything else that needed doing. Elk Foundation volunteers love to get dirt under their fingernails. They are also friendly neighbors who stop by just to say “hello” and “thanks again” for protecting the land with a conservation easement.
Despite three decades of success, easements are still widely misunderstood. Landowners who’ve had successful experiences with conservation easements are the best advocates. There is nothing better than having a landowner talk to his or her neighbors about how an easement can protect the family ranch and continue the traditions they have passed on for generations. Certainly, to some degree people donate easements on their land for the tax breaks or income, but the primary motive for most is to forever protect the country they love for future generations of both people and elk. Their generosity benefits all of us.
Conservation easements preserve a way of life. They also protect soil, water and clean air, and provide food and shelter for elk and other wildlife. Where public access is granted, easements provide places to hunt and fish. They protect traditional land uses, and actually do more to help keep the cost of community services low and save taxpayers money than does subdividing and selling land and taxing it as residential development.
Some people say more paved roads and fewer gravel roads is progress. I disagree. Paved roads allow us to travel faster and smoother, but they need to accompany development that is fashioned in a thoughtful, controlled manner. As land continues to be sold off and developed, we trade wildlife habitat for houses, yards, fences, noise, traffic, dogs, all terrain vehicles and more. Taxpayers always pay for development but do not necessarily benefit from it. Suburban sprawl increases the need for roads, county employees, law enforcement, fire protection and ambulance service, road signs, weed control, school buses with their spiraling fuel costs and on and on. It also greatly increases both the risk and cost of fighting wildfires.
We are losing wild places for wild things at an alarming rate, especially in the foothills and low country so critical to wintering wildlife. The American Farmland Trust reports that since 1982 we have converted 25 million acres of land, and 55 percent of those acres were agricultural. Millions more acres will change hands in the next generation, likely to be the greatest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. Conservation easements allow land trusts and landowners to work together to conserve some of our last best places on private lands. It’s our chance to put conservation into action—to give something back for all we have received from elk country today—not tomorrow, for tomorrow will be too late.