Public Access to Information on Private Land Conservation: Tracking Conservation Easements

Abstract

Conservation easements reveal major tensions between the privacy concerns of landowners and the right of the public to access information about private land conservation. State and federal governments face important choices about how to provide public access to this information given growing concerns that the public’s substantial investment in conservation easements will be lost without comprehensive tracking over the long term. In this Article, we reflect on the public nature of conservation easements and the challenges posed by their perpetuity, and we provide concrete recommendations for legislatures seeking to improve conservation easement tracking. We employ interdisciplinary methods to assess multiple approaches to conservation easement tracking, focusing on California as a case study.Our California analysis examines the legislative history of state and county efforts to track conservation easements. We interviewed conservation experts and used a telephone survey of county recorder offices to assess county compliance with a California law requiring conservation easement indexing. We also employed a Geographic Information System to evaluate access to spatial data on conservation lands. Despite state, county, and non-profit tracking efforts, access to conservation easement data remains fragmented and incomplete. Based on this integrative research, we suggest that five elements are particularly important to an expanded, statewide system for tracking conservation easements: (1) including as many conservation easements as possible; (2)tracking public financial investments; (3)mapping conservation easements; (4)including specific purposes and restrictions in conservation easement databases; and (5) monitoring of monitoring.