Not so in my area. What I have seen is how they drive down the cost of land so they can buy it for pennies on the dollar. Then they carve out the pieces that they want and sell the rest to the govt at a huge profit.
Sure TNC may be really friendly to your agency. Nobody bites the hand that feeds it. You are spending millions of taxpayer dollars on them. They will also let the hunters in for ten years or so and likely give PILT money to the county for a few years too. Then it will be over. Its a cost of doing business for them.
My question is this: If TNC only buys from willing sellers, why do you even need them? If people "really" wanted to sell, why not sell to your agency?
My agency (the NRCS) doesn't buy land. We're not the BLM.
That is actually the relevant question. I understand that selling to the Nature Conservancy creates a situation in which people can continue to use their land as they did before, while ensuring that it won't be developed. But why do we need the Nature Conservancey for that? What are they doing that landowners couldn not do for themselves without a middleman?