Discover Top Posts Tagged with #conservation easements

Interest from owners wanting to set aside their property for conservation has increased in the past few years

Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:

Environmental groups and lawmakers are placing an increased focus on private lands in national conservation strategies. The “30x30” campaign — which has been adopted by the Biden administration — aims to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030, a goal that relies heavily on voluntary conservation efforts from private landowners.

But the growing interest in preserving privately held land has sparked a fierce debate between supporters who say such efforts guarantee environmental protections and critics who say they take away individual property rights.

A handful of states are considering expanding their conservation easement programs, which offer tax breaks to landowners in exchange for giving up development rights to their farms and natural lands. In many cases, those easements last in perpetuity, offering durable protection even when the property changes ownership.

“We’ve seen a greater emphasis on the value of private land conservation,” said Lori Faeth, senior government relations director with the Land Trust Alliance, a national group that convenes and advocates for local land trusts. “There’s a great opportunity for that to grow over the next several years.”

Land trusts, which are mostly nonprofit, have conserved 61 million acres across the country through a mix of easements, outright purchases and transfers to state agencies, according to the Land Trust Alliance. That is greater than the combined area of every national park in the United States. A quarter of that total has been added since 2010.

Roughly 40 million acres nationwide are protected by conservation easements, with about half of that under the stewardship of land trusts. Reaching the goals outlined in the 30x30 conservation plan would require another 440 million acres to come under protected status.

#private lands conservation #conservation easements #land trusts #30x30 Initiative

Congress can create millions of jobs and fight climate change by working to conserve at least 30 percent of U.S. lands and ocean by 2030.

Summary of this essay from the Center for American Progress:

Investments to protect 30 percent of U.S. lands and ocean by 2030 can create between 446,900 and 717,000 jobs by protecting clean air, clean water, and wildlife; fighting climate change, and providing safer and more equitable access to the outdoors for every person in America.

Summary of the recommendations:

Protecting more parks and natural areas. Congress should pass the Great American Outdoors Act, which would fully and permanently fund the LWCF at $900 million per year. This annual investment through the LWCF would create between 15,300 and 27,900 jobs per year. [Note: the Senate has already passed the Great American Outdoors Act by an overwhelming margin. The House will take up the bill after the Fourth of July recess. trump has said he will sign it.]

Reforesting America’s lands. Congress should restore the health of at least 6 million acres of public lands per year by investing approximately $4.2 billion per year. Each annual investment of this size would create between 50,400 and 126,000 jobs.

Restoring America’s coasts. By investing $3 billion in shovel-ready restoration projects, Congress could immediately create 45,000 jobs in communities from the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes to rural Maine and coastal Alaska.

Plugging orphan wells and restoring damaged drilling sites. Congress should invest at least $2 billion to plug dangerous orphan wells on private, state, federal, and tribal lands. This money should be contingent upon governments demonstrating that they have adequate bonding requirements in place for any future oil and gas development. A $2 billion investment would create between 14,000 and 24,000 jobs.

Fixing aging dams and removing unnecessary ones. Congress should create a $1 billion Safe Dams Fund to remove unnecessary and unsafe dams. This investment would create approximately 10,000 to 13,000 jobs.

Cleaning up abandoned mines and restoring abandoned mine lands. Congress should invest $1 billion per year in abandoned mine clean-up. Some money could be recouped by assessing a reclamation fee on ongoing hard-rock mining operations on federal lands. This $1 billion annual investment would create an estimated 31,500 jobs per year.

Helping family farmers, ranchers, and private forest owners save their lands. A letter signed by 79 members of the House recommends that Congress appropriate at least $6 billion to protect and restore private lands, including through increased funding for USDA conservation easement programs.35 Congress should also increase funding for DOI and DOD conservation easement programs by at least $250 million.

Addressing the maintenance backlog on America’s public lands. Fully funding the maintenance needs of U.S. land management agencies would require approximately $10.3 billion in investment and create approximately 133,700 jobs. Congress should pass the Great American Outdoors Act—which would fully cover the maintenance needs of the National Park Service and partially fund the maintenance needs of other land management agencies—and then determine what additional immediate maintenance investments are warranted. [See note above about the Great American Outdoors Act.]

#public lands #climate change #reforestation #carbon capture #conservation #national parks #abandoned mines #orphaned oil wells #dams #private lands #conservation easements

Summary of this story from the Center for American Progress:

U.S. policymakers need to act quickly and decisively to help family farmers, ranchers, and forest owners keep their lands—and keep them healthy—through the coronavirus pandemic by expanding and accelerating the nation's private land conservation easement programs.

Excerpt:

This report is part of a series of publications that the Center for American Progress is releasing on the nature crisis in the United States and the strategies that policymakers and communities can adopt to accelerate the protection of the nation’s lands and ocean. The first two reports in the series—“How Much Nature Should America Keep” and “The Green Squeeze”—assess the condition of nature in America, analyze the factors that are driving its decline, and outline principles for how the nation could and should pursue a 30×30 goal.

One critical finding of the first two reports in this series is that nature in the United States is declining most quickly on privately owned lands. According to an assessment of natural area loss in the contiguous 48 states, commissioned by the Center for American Progress and conducted by a team of scientists at the nonprofit organization Conservation Science Partners, natural areas are being lost almost five times faster on private lands than they are on lands that are owned and managed by federal or state agencies. Wildlife species that are listed under the Endangered Species Act are being hit hard by the rapid disappearance of nature on private lands; research has shown that the habitat of threatened and endangered species is disappearing more than twice as quickly on unprotected private lands than it is on all federal lands.

One reason why natural areas are disappearing most quickly on private lands should not be surprising: Only a small portion of the nation’s privately owned lands are protected from development. Overall, 12 percent of U.S. lands are permanently protected to retain their natural condition. The vast majority of this “protected area estate” is on nationally owned public lands— places that have been designated as national parks, wilderness areas, national monuments, national wildlife refuges, and other protected areas.

Only 3 percent of U.S. protected areas, however, are on private lands, notwithstanding the fact that 60 percent of all U.S. lands are privately owned. Outside of the American West, where large portions of lands are publicly owned, the sparsity of protected private lands presents a particularly grave threat to biodiversity and the provision of clean water, clean air, food, and other necessities that nature supplies. For example, in the Southeast and Midwest—the regions that experienced the most rapid disappearance of natural areas from 2001 to 2017—wildlife have relatively few protected lands, public or private, in which to find refuge.

#public lands #farming #agriculture #conservation #conservation easements

#Alexandra Fasulo #conservation easements #landmark case #Youtube

It's still so funny that almost every time a person ends up arguing with the government about a conservation easement, it's them being unable to sell the property for a price they want, so they imagine what the property "would" be worth if all of the facts were completely different, and use that as the basis for a tax deduction.

#us taxes #conservation easements

Conservation easements ensure sustainability on Oregon’s Zumwalt Prairie Preserve.

Excerpt from this story from The Nature Conservancy:

It's no secret that there can be tension between conservation interests and cattle ranchers, but the owners of the Lightning Creek Ranch in eastern Oregon have found some common ground.

Lightning Creek Ranch owners, the Probert family—led by Dan and Suzy Probert—have teamed up with The Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and The Climate Trust to ensure their 12,225-acre ranch will be managed to benefit both ranching livelihoods and the native habitat and wildlife it supports. The Proberts sold an agricultural conservation easement on the property that will prohibit conversion of native grassland caused by tilling or energy development, while allowing the property to be used for livestock grazing that follows a grazing management plan.

In addition to helping conserve North America's largest remaining grassland of its type and supporting the local ranching community, this agricultural conservation easement prevents the Lightning Creek Ranch from any conversion for residential or commercial energy development or crops. Preventing these changes and maintaining the native grassland will keep an estimated 55,000 tons of carbon in the ground, a benefit that secured funding for this transaction from The Climate Trust.

“Lightning Creek Ranch is the first grasslands project to join our Climate Trust Capital Fund I portfolio, and we are elated to be able to provide capital to this charismatic project in our own backyard,” said Mik McKee, Land Asset Manager for The Climate Trust. “The environmental benefits to be gained from preserving native grasslands are vast, with impacts ranging from improved water quality and soil erosion prevention to the safeguarding of carbon stored in the ground. This investment grade project reflects our ongoing strategy of supporting quality projects in the early stages of development to elevate their impact.”

#ranching #conservation #Oregon #grazing management #conservation easements #Zumwalt Prairie

An Alaska Native group on Thursday will announce that more than 44,000 acres of land near Bristol Bay, the site of the world’s largest wild salmon fishery, are off limits to future development, according to details shared exclusively with The Climate 202.

Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:

The move will make it harder for the developers of the proposed Pebble Mine to build a road across the land, posing another setback for the controversial gold and copper mine that the Environmental Protection Agency is already considering blocking.

Pedro Bay Corp., an Alaska Native group that owns land near Bristol Bay, announced last year that nearly 90 percent of its shareholders voted to let the Conservation Fund, an environmental nonprofit organization, buy conservation easements on more than 44,000 acres.

The corporation will reveal on Thursday that a successful $20 million, 18-month fundraising effort enabled the Conservation Fund to purchase three conservation easements on the land. The new protections cover a portion of the proposed mining road, which would be used to transport ore.

The protections also cover the most productive spawning and rearing habitats for sockeye salmon within the Iliamna Lake watersheds.

Half of the funding was provided by the Wyss Foundation, Patagonia’s Holdfast Collective and Alaska Venture Fund. (The specific dollar amounts of the individual contributions were not disclosed.)

“Protecting this last great stronghold for salmon is critically important for the health of the marine resources, the land, and the people who live in the Bristol Bay region,” Larry Selzer, president and chief executive of the Conservation Fund, told The Climate 202.

#Alaska #Indigenous people #Bristol Bay #Pebble Mine #conservation easements

Boeing and dozens of other companies have granted “conservation easements” on some of the most contaminated land in the U.S. Companies can save millions on cleanups with these deals, arguing that no one will ever live there.

#Boeing #Pollution #Conservation Easements #News