Cultural Geography and Land Trusts in Colorado and Utah

Abstract

AMERICANS concerned with environmental conservation have become deeply frustrated by the failure of governmental landuse-planning programs to protect cherished places from urbanization. Citizens are increasingly establishing private, nonprofit conservation organizations known as land trusts to protect their homelands from incompatible forms of development (Emory 1985; Wright 1992). Land-trust members employ the politics of the possible to conserve the best of what remains of local landscapes rather than opposing all growth and change. This article briefly describes the origin, diffusion, and methods of land trusts in the United States, and then examines land-trust activities in adjoining but culturally dissimilar Colorado and Utah. The origins of cultural attitudes regarding the highest and best use of land are analyzed to explain the disparity in the number of land trusts and their success in these two distinct states. The broad implications of these findings are discussed. LAND TRUSTS Local and regional land trusts use the same voluntary, negotiated, compensating techniques as do national organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the American Farmland Trust. Private-sector landscape-protection techniques include conservation easements, or tax-deductible gifts of development rights, purchase of development rights, land trades, cluster development designs, and direct purchases (Brenneman 1967; Hoose 1980; Montana Land Reliance and Land Trust Exchange 1982; Diehl and Barrett 1988; American Farmland Trust 1990; Daniels 1991). Land trusts receive tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and operate as charitable entities. This legal standing allows the value of gifts of land and conservation easements to be claimed by the grantor as deductions against income taxes, estate taxes, and capital-gains taxes (Small 1989). Land trusts purchase properties only as their budgets allow. The 889 local and regional land trusts in the United States have used these techniques to protect more than 2.7 million acres of private land from subdivision and development (Land Trust Alliance 1991; Barton 1992). Trusts hold conservation easement on 450,000 acres and own 440,000 acres. Another 1.8 million acres have been either acquired and transferred to other groups or secured by restrictive covenants. Land trusts are concerned with a great diversity of landscape elements, but about 70 percent of trusts focus on wildlife habitats, scenic open space, recreational areas, and agricultural land. Membership exceeds 775,000, an increase of 300,000 since 1984 (Land Trust Alliance 1991; Barton 1992). Despite the fiscal and technical rigors of establishing and operating land-conservation programs, trusts continue to grow in number (Brenneman and Bates 1984; Wright 1992). HISTORY AND DIFFUSION OF LAND TRUSTS Approximately one-half of the land trusts in the United States have incorporated in the last decade, and new groups are forming at the rate of more than one a week. However, the land-trust concept has existed for more than a century. Land trusts began in Boston in 1891 with the formation of the Trustees of Public Reservations. By 1950, New England still contained most of the 53 trusts in the United States; fifteen years later, however, there were more than 126 groups in 26 states, mostly in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic regions. The first Earth Day, in 1970, further raised environmental awareness. Land trusts subsequently diffused widely; by 1975 they totaled 308 (Abbott 1982). In 1981 a national organization, the Land Trust Alliance (then known as the Land Trust Exchange), was formed to attend to the interest of trusts. The alliance greatly increased communication among groups, served as a catalyst for innovations in techniques, improved the training of members, and facilitated creation of new trusts (Montana Land Reliance and Land Trust Exchange 1982; Brenneman and Bates 1984; Diehl and Barrett 1988; Stokes, Watson, and others 1989). …