Cowboy conservationists race to preserve ranches

San Jose Mercury News ^ | 21 July 2003 | Paul Rogers

[CounterCounterCulture]

Out in the golden hills of southern Monterey County, two hours south of Salinas in an area so rural the county doesn't paint lines on the roads, Jack Varian has spent the past 41 years roping, branding and herding cattle.

[Uncle Miltie]

The #1 issue in North Dakota is depopulation. Come on up North, pardner! You can buy 10 times the rangeland up here, and there ain't any pesky liberals to get in the way....

[CounterCounterCulture]

Homer Simpson: "There is no North Dakota!"

;-)

[truth_seeker]

Real pretty country. Not many people, either.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.

[HairOfTheDog]

I like land trusts and conservation easements as a choice. However, I tend to think of them on a very small scale that we have here, where estuaries and rivers flow through small parcels of land, and setbacks and good environmental stewardship would encourage development setbacks measured in feet not acres....

I wonder, in the case of these easements, how hard they would be for his kids or grandkids to undo if the way growth happened anyway 50 years from now, they found themselves owning a big tract of land now completely surrounded by development anyway. Right now.... selling the ranch as a ranch is a smart business decision.... but if the ranches around him get swallowed up by more "valuable" land use, one can no longer say that it is a good deal for his land to be worth hundreds an acre rather than many thousands. It would be pretty impossible to not feel robbed.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Valin]

Bump

[marsh2]

I have long been a staunch supporter of the USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) http://www.fsa.usda.gov/dafp/cepd/default.htm This is a long-term lease arrangement and not a conservation easement.

At this time, I cannot endorse conservation easements as a recommended strategy. An easement permanently transfers an ownership interest in the land - generally, it is a split estate interest in the use permitted of that land. (These are commonly mischaracterized as sale of "development rights." Most commonly, they are for a specific purpose, such as riparian or wildlife conservation.) The easement can be bought and sold and is frequently purchased by a federal agency and transferred to a land trust or vice versa.

Conservation Easements commonly have a "third party suit" clause. This allows both the owner of the easement AND any person or organization claiming an interest in the conserved values to sue the underlying landowner to require them to manage in a certain way or eliminate all uses that are not consistent with the protected values, (including a house.) This has resulted in farmers selling "development rights" and losing all the viable commercial use of the land. http://www.paragonpowerhouse.org/what_you_need_to_know_about_cons.htm & http://www.wcel.org/wcelpub/10362/10362_5.html To buy out of the easement generally costs far more than the land is worth due to accruing interest.

There can also be various negative tax implications.

[sasquatch]

There can also be various negative tax implications.

...And they can be HUGE.
I concur; be well