WHAT IS A LAND TRUST?
Time is running out for many of American's undeveloped areas. Thousands of acres of wetlands, farms, and forests are lost to development each day. Land trusts can respond creatively and effectively to local conservation needs and are uniquely suited to meet the challenge of saving these lands.
Land trusts are private, nonprofit, tax exempt organizations that protect environmentally significant land for the public benefit. Land trusts are funded through membership dues and donations from individuals, businesses, and foundations. They can organize private fund raising campaigns to fund land acquisitions which provide direct public benefit.
Land trust protect land permanently and directly. They accept donations of properties, buy land, or help landowners establish legal restrictions that limit harmful use and development. They protect land that has natural, recreational, scenic, historic, or productive value, depending on the needs of the community or region.
Land trusts are usually not adversarial, but work cooperatively with landowners and government agencies. Some own and manage nature preserves, recreational areas, or historic sites. Others monitor the development restrictions they have helped establish, but own no land.
Some work in partnership with government conservation agencies, acquiring critical land they later convey to the agencies. They can acquire land for mitigation land banks. These may involve endangered species issues, the development of regional impact process, comprehensive plans, and other environmental or growth management issues.
Land trusts use a variety of creative methods that achieve conservation goals while meeting specific needs of the community and landowners. Many approaches offer income, estate, or property tax benefits that help make conservation affordable. Land trust tools include:
Donation: The land owner gives property to the land trust by gift or will.
Purchase or bargain sale: The land trust buys the property from the landowner. Sales for less than market value, called bargain sales, reduce the cost to the trust and offer tax benefits to the seller.
Life estate: The landowner sells or donates the land, but retains the right to live on it throughout his or her lifetime.
Limited development: The land trust arranges a strategy whereby the least environmentally significant portion of a property is carefully developed in order to finance conservation of the rest. Limited development may be used when conservation of an expensive property would otherwise be impossible.
Conservation easement: The landowner enters into a perpetual legal agreement with the land trust that permanently restricts harmful uses and development of the property. The land stays in private ownership and use, and the land trust sees that the restrictions are carried out. Also known as conservations restrictions.
