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Conservation Easements
A conservation easement is a legal document
that outlines specific land-use restrictions on privately-owned or public land that are agreed upon by both the land trust and the landowner. The conservation easement creates permanent safeguards against uses of the land that could damage or destroy its ecological, scenic, recreational, or resource values.
For example, a landowner may transfer the rights to develop a property for commercial, industrial, or residential purposes while retaining rights to use the land for farming, harvesting of timber or recreation.
The ALT becomes the "grantee" of these rights but is prohibited by the terms of the easement from ever using these transferred rights and therefore extinguishes certain land uses forever.
Landowner Benefits:
- Easements are flexible documents tailored differently for each property
- An easement runs with the title, applying permanent protection of your land to all future owners.
- Your land can remain in the family while you retain the right to sell it or gift it to others in the future.
- Easements can qualify as tax-deductible gifts that potentially help reduce estate taxes, property taxes and income taxes.
How ALT enforces conservation easements:
- Baseline Documentation: Prior to accepting an easement, ALT will compile a record of the land using photographs, maps and written descriptions to document the current condition of the property. This allows ALT to assess changes overtime and identify any activities that may be in violation of the conservation easement.
- Easement Monitoring: ALT will make annual visits to document the condition of the land to ensure compliance with the easement restrictions.
- Stewardship Endowment: Should an easement violation occur, ALT will need to enforce the restrictions, potentially requiring ALT to spend money on legal expenses. Easement donors are asked to consider a gift towards our endowment fund to support our enforcement obligations.
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