Private Lands Conservation
The Nature Conservancy works to establish local groups that can protect land.
Private lands conservation is an innovative tactic that leverages the increasing interest of the private sector to take part in conservation. TNC works with landowners, communities, cooperatives and businesses to establish local groups that can protect land. Some of the main tools used to achieve these goals include land trusts, conservation easements, private reserves and incentives.
Private lands conservation is an innovative tactic that leverages the increasing interest of the private sector to take part in conservation. TNC works with landowners, communities, cooperatives and businesses to establish local groups that can protect land. Some of the main tools used to achieve these goals include land trusts, conservation easements, private reserves and incentives. In addition, a Private Lands Program was developed by The Nature Conservancy to use our experience in the United States in developing land conservation tools internationally.
Outside the U.S., TNC does not generally acquire land for its own protection but instead works with local communities and national governments to encourage the protection of ecologically-sensitive land.
Conservation easements have protected millions of acres of wildlife habitat and open space.
Conserving Land, Water & a Way of Life
Conservation easements are one of the most powerful, effective tools available for the permanent conservation of private lands in the United States.
The easement is either voluntarily donated or sold by the landowner and constitutes a legally binding agreement that limits certain types of uses or prevents development from taking place on the land in perpetuity while the land remains in private hands.
Conservation easements protect land for future generations while allowing owners to retain many private property rights and to live on and use their land, at the same time potentially providing them with tax benefits.
In a conservation easement, a landowner voluntarily agrees to sell or donate certain rights associated with his or her property—often the right to subdivide or develop—and a private organization or public agency agrees to hold the right to enforce the landowner's promise not to exercise those rights. In essence, the rights are forfeited and no longer exist.
An easement selectively targets only those rights necessary to protect specific conservation values, such as water quality or migration routes, and is individually tailored to meet a landowner's needs. Because the land remains in private ownership, with the remainder of the rights intact, an easement property continues to provide economic benefits for the area in the form of jobs, economic activity and property taxes.
A conservation easement is legally binding, whether the property is sold or passed on to heirs. Because use is permanently restricted, land subject to a conservation easement may be worth less on the open market than comparable unrestricted and developable parcels. Sometimes conservation easements will enable the landowner to qualify for tax benefits in compliance with Internal Revenue Service rules.
For more than four decades, The Nature Conservancy has been using conservation easements to protect landscapes from development — affording them better protection than could be accomplished through outright purchase.
How The Nature Conservancy uses Easements
In the Blackfoot Valley, TNC accepted Montana’s first conservation easement in the mid-1970s. Today, hundreds of thousands of acres across the state are covered by easements.
Resources
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The Nature Conservancy actively supports rigorous oversight that would tighten rules governing syndicated easements.
The Nature Conservancy has long recognized the enormous conservation benefits that are realized when conservation easements are properly and effectively employed; we currently hold easements on 3.1 million acres of lands in 49 states.
These easements protect landscapes from development, safeguard land for sustainable use, protect sources of drinking water, keep generations of families connected to their land, protect endangered wildlife and build greater support for conservation. They are also an incredibly efficient tool for achieving public benefits at low cost, especially at a time when there is not enough public funding to protect land and water resources.
The Nature Conservancy actively supports rigorous oversight of the kind of syndicated easements mentioned in Peter Elkind’s story. TNC is on record and is currently working alongside partners such as The Land Trust Alliance to strongly support the IRS’s effort to control syndicated easements and to advocate for proposed changes to the tax code outlined in HR 4459 that would tighten the rules governing such easements. We urge you to voice your support of this bill by writing your congressional representative today.
Syndicated easements which rely on abusive appraisals jeopardize the many conservation-minded landowners who wish to voluntarily protect their land through conservation easements. Longstanding TNC policies and standard operating procedures have prevented TNC’s involvement in such abusive transactions. TNC firmly believes that syndicated easements—which promise investors aggressive tax deductions in exchange for modest cash investments—are wrong. Continued unchecked, such tax shelters will endanger the thousands of legitimate conservation easements and the well-intentioned people and conservation organizations behind them.
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Tax incentives are available for private landowners interested in protecting the important conservation values of their lands through the donation of conservation easements. Learn more about this unique opportunity.