CONSERVATION EASEMENTS
Thoughtful land use sustains families and communities of the rural West. We encourage the use of conservation easements to honor open- space, wildlife, and water quality - the natural resources of agricultural communities
A conservation easement is the most secure tool available to landowners for protecting rural lands. Conservation easements are perpetual restrictions on subdivision, development, and other land uses, tailored to the agricultural and ecological goals of the landowner.
These restrictions are freely negotiated and enforced by non-profit organizations known as land trusts, or by public agencies. In return for granting a qualified conservation easement, a landowner may claim an income tax deduction based on the value of the rights forgone. A change in land value associated with a conservation easement also can lower estate and gift taxes, helping families pass their land intact to the next generation.
Information about conservation easements and the beneficial tax implications can be found at the Montana Land Reliance a Montana land trust; and www.LTA.org, the Land Trust Alliance, the national umbrella organization for land trusts.
can help you explore how to use a conservation easement in your particular situation. Please call 406.443.7085 office and cell, or email
David W. Orr talks about the human spirit, "Ecology ... is anchored in the faith that the world is not random but purposeful and stitched together from top to bottom by a common set of rules. It is grounded in the belief that we are part of the larger order of things and that we have an ancient obligation to act harmoniously with those larger patterns. It grows from the awareness that we do not live by bread alone and that the effort to build a sustainable world must begin by designing one that first nourishes the human spirit. We are sensuous creatures who developed emotional attachments to particular landscapes."
Little Boulder Valley
"... But at the millennium there are too few of the other in America, the traditional time-honored brakemen on an affluent, leisured, and root-less society. There is a reason why farmers defiantly, brazenly, want their children raised differently, want them to subtract from, not add to, the current American madness, want them, I suppose to be like themselves : to have fields without dreams, rather than dreams without fields."
Fields Without Dreams 1996 by Victor Davis Hanson
