Monitoring Natural Resources on Rangeland Conservation Easements: Who’s minding the easement?

Abstract

June 2007 Introduction Conservation easements are quickly becoming one of the most popular tools for conserving working landscapes in the United States.1 Easements held by local and state land trusts increased from 2.5 million acres in 2000 to 6.2 million acres as of 2005 with many on western rangelands.2 Recent scrutiny of conservation easements by the media, Congress, and the Internal Revenue Service has increased the focus on how conservation easements should be monitored to ensure that they are protecting natural resources over time.3,4 Conservation easements are land use agreements individually negotiated by a landowner and a nonprofi t land trust or government agency in which a landowner agrees to restrictions on land use, often in exchange for a direct payment or tax reduction. The land trust or agency then becomes the holder of the easement. Conservation easements have a variety of purposes, and many share the goal of protecting natural resources from development and degradation. Monitoring has been much studied and discussed as it relates to rangeland management on public land,5 but here we focus on monitoring for land trust conservation efforts on private lands, an expanding and new area for rangeland management. Land trusts usually conduct annual “compliance” monitoring of the conservation easements they hold. Compliance monitoring of easement properties is monitoring to see if the easement is being stewarded as agreed in the terms Monitoring Natural Resources on Rangeland Conservation Easements