The role of a land trust

By Susannah Wood
Residents in Norfolk voted overwhelmingly in favor of protecting open space and maintaining the rural character of our town during the meetings to create a plan of conservation and development. It was also suggested in that document that such land protection be under the aegis of a conservation organization such as a land trust. It seems appropriate therefore to take a look at how land trusts work.
The first land trusts began in Massachusetts in the 1850’s, often in the guise of societies for village improvement. Today, there are 1,700 land trusts across all 50 states, protecting 37 million acres.
The two main tools for land protection are outright donation of property and a conservation restriction, also known as an easement. Over 20,000 acres in Connecticut are currently under easement. Many smaller land trusts choose to hold only fee properties (meaning they own them), seeing ownership as less troublesome than an easement, though this is changing. The Norfolk Land Trust has about 460 acres in fee properties and holds conservation restrictions on about 3,050 acres. A gift of property that has increased substantially in value can mean avoiding capital gains tax, and the value of donated lands may be deducted as normal charitable donations.
A conservation easement is a voluntary legal agreement between a property owner and a land trust or some other conservation organization to preserve land that has conservation value. Such value could be wildlife corridors, water quality, rare species or habitat, view sheds, or ecological diversity. Easements protect land from development in perpetuity. An easement offers considerable flexibility for use of the property. A building lot may be set aside, provisions made for farming or timber management. The landowner retains the right to sell or pass on the property to heirs, but the easement goes with the property. It is the role of the land trust to ensure that the terms of the easement are carried out.
In addition to preservation, landowners can benefit from significant tax savings. As of this year, a landowner can deduct from federal taxes the appraised value of an easement up to 30 percent of adjusted gross income over a period of five years. A more generous deduction lapsed in 2009. An easement can also reduce estate tax. In some jurisdictions there have been property tax reductions as well. In Norfolk, the bulk of the conservation easements concern property already designated as 490, forest or agricultural land, so property taxes are not affected.
Setting up a conservation easement that will be recognized by the IRS and will be defensible in the future requires the assembly of a number of documents, in addition to the easement itself. These include an appraisal and a survey, which must be completed by a professional, as well as a baseline document that assesses the condition of the property at the time of the easement signing.
Land under easement should be monitored every year to make sure there are no changes to the easement, such as encroachments. Studies show that violations rarely crop up under the original landowners, but problems become more common as the property changes hands.

A road less traveled: the Norfolk Land Trust holds a conservation easement on this open space known as Bobolink Meadow.

Photo By Susannah Wood