PRESERVING OPEN SPACE

Conservation Easements Gain Ground in the West

By Headwaters News, 11-30-06

Every five years, the Land Trust Alliance conducts a survey of U.S. lands protected under conservation easements. The Alliance is an umbrella organization for about three-quarters of the 1,667 local, state and national land trust groups in the United States.

USA Today reports that the latest census, which covers 2000 to 2005, indicates that over the past five years, private lands protected from development under land trusts and conservation easements have annually outpaced the number of acres being developed each year.


The National Land Trust Census says that an average of 2.6 million acres each year is put under some sort of protective agreement, while U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 2.2 million acres of previously undeveloped land is developed each year.

The Census also showed that a total of 37 million acres of land are now protected by land trusts and conservation easements, representing a 54 percent increase from the amount of land so protected in 2000.

The report said that conservation easements, agreements between private and public groups and landowners that permanently restrict how the land can be used in the future, represented the largest amount of increases, with easements increasing 148 percent since the last land trust census.


While land conservation efforts increased in every region of the United States, the West posted the highest increase for private lands permanently protected from development by local and state trusts.

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