Why It Matters: Voluntary conservation easements represent an important opportunity to promote wildlife conservation practices on private land while protecting that land from future development. Recently, efforts designed to eliminate the availability of perpetual conservation easements have emerged, posing a significant threat to easement programs and the benefits they provide to participating landowners and our shared wildlife resources. Recognizing this, 12 bipartisan members of the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses (NASC) Executive Council (EC) prepared and adopted a resolution in support of conservation easements and their benefits.
Highlights:
- Voluntary conservation easements on private property can provide landowners with financial benefits, technical assistance, and long-term assurances that their property will remain in a desired state while providing important wildlife habitat, often in perpetuity.
- Recently, efforts to eliminate perpetual easements or require them to be term-limited have increased, posing a significant threat to easement programs and the benefits they provide to both landowners and wildlife.
- In response to the increase in anti-easement rhetoric, 12 members of the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses Executive Council issued a resolution highlighting their support for voluntary conservation easements and their associated benefits for landowners, wildlife, and sportsmen and women.
Conservation easements represent one of the most attractive options for landowners who value wildlife conservation and worry about future development on their private property. Easement programs provide landowners with the opportunity to sell or donate (or a combination of the two) the development rights to another party, often a land trust, in exchange for the value of the easement, federal and/or state tax benefits, or both. From there, they agree to maintain certain characteristics on their property (e.g., relatively natural habitat or open space), including assuring that their property will not be developed or subdivided, as defined in the deed of conservation easement, during the term of the easement, many of which are perpetual or permanent.
Recently, some have viewed conservation easements as a negative for future landowners, citing the land use limitations created by easements as a violation of the next owners’ property rights. While easements do limit future land use changes based on the terms of the easement contract, most within the sporting-conservation community tout the conservation value of easements while pointing out that most other land use decisions by current owners are undertaken without regard for future landowners. Instead, easements are a transaction where, rather than selling the entire property (which they could rightfully do), they are selling and/or donating certain uses to another party in the same way mineral rights, water rights, farming rights, timber, access rights for hunting or fishing, and other rights are sold or leased to third parties in some parts of the country.
In an effort to demonstrate support for conservation easements among state legislators, 12 bipartisan members of the National Assembly of Sportsmen’s Caucuses Executive Council recently signed onto a resolution that has since been shared around the community. This resolution highlights many of the conservation benefits associated with easement programs and clearly states the support that each signing member has for this important conservation tool.
Moving forward, the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation (CSF) and many of our partners are prepared to act in support of voluntary conservation easement programs while striking a balance between protecting private property rights and promoting conservation enhancements that support wildlife and sportsmen and women.
